The re-election of the ex-communist, Mr Milan Kucan, as president of Slovenia will help to ensure steady if unspectacular progress towards economic reform and membership of the European Union, analysts said yesterday.
Mr Kucan, running as an independent candidate, won 55.6 per cent of the vote in Sunday's election to secure a second and final five-year term as president of the former Yugoslav republic. This was down from the 64 per cent he won five years ago but well ahead of the score of his nearest rival, parliamentary speaker Mr Janez Podobnik, who got 18.4 per cent.
Analysts said that while economic reform in Slovenia has sometimes been slower than they would like, Mr Kucan's commitment to developing a free-market democracy fully integrated into western Europe has never been in doubt.
Although the president's duties are largely ceremonial, Mr Kucan's position as Slovenia's most popular politician and the man who spearheaded its successful breakaway from Yugoslavia gives him considerable moral authority.
Slovenia will be among six countries with which the EU expects to start membership negotiations in early 1998, and its prospects for being among the first round of new members early in the next century are good.
The country, with Alpine peaks and a coastline on the Adriatic, is the richest of Europe's former communist countries. Most former state-owned companies have been privatised, with the major exception of key monopolies such as telecommunications, energy and insurance and two of the three largest banks.
Unemployment remains high, at 14.4 per cent of the workforce in September, and social inequality has increased since independence.
Slovenia has been ruled by a three-party centrist coalition under Prime Minister Mr Janez Drnovsek since 1992.
The country was elected this year as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Apart from the EU, of which it already has associate membership, it is also a frontrunner for membership of NATO.