Former president Janez Drnovsek, who helped lead Slovenia to independence from Yugoslavia and later enthralled many of his countrymen by adopting a New Age lifestyle, died on Saturday, his office said. He was 57.
Mild-mannered but resolute, Drnovsek had been a political icon for years, in part for working to keep violence at a minimum when Slovenia declared independence in 1991. He later led the country to EU and NATO membership. The country of 2 million currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency.
In Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Drnovsek played a "crucial role in preparing Slovenia for entering the European Union [in 2004], where Slovenians gained their rightful place in the family of European nations."
PHOTO: EPA
In recent years, as he battled cancer, Drnovsek won the hearts of many of his countrymen again for his radical shift to a holistic lifestyle and his authorship of New Age-influenced books.
Drnovsek served as prime minister from 1992 to 2002, after which he became president. He did not run for a second term in elections late last year and was replaced by Danilo Turk in December. Drnovsek had not been seen in public since then.
His office gave no specific cause of death, but said he died at his home.
Drnovsek had a cancerous kidney removed in 1999. In 2005, he acknowledged that doctors had diagnosed what he described as "formations" -- apparently cancer -- on his lungs and liver in 2001, a year before he was elected president.
Nevertheless, he generally carried out his duties without disruptions.
He said he realized in 2005 that doctors could not cure him. Instead, he insisted that he had cured himself simply by changing his diet, his lifestyle and his way of thinking.
After many years as a straight-laced politician, Drnovsek turned into a New Age guru.
"It is hard for me to say if the change was only caused by the illness," Drnovsek said in an interview last year. "It is true that the illness acts as a shock -- it awakens one."
He moved from Ljubljana, the capital, to the remote village of Zaplana, where he lived with his dog. He baked his own bread and ate only organic fruit and vegetables. He had no TV.
He considered some of the daily political give and take a waste of time and focused instead on the fight for the poor and weak, from Darfur to Kosovo.
Once an important Slovenian supporter of the EU, he grew critical of it, complaining at one point, regarding the union's agricultural subsidies, that the EU "subsidizes a cow each day with US$2 -- that's more than half the human population gets."
He wrote about the perils of technology and urged humans to rely instead on each other.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS