Ljubljana - The weekly Reporter says in its latest editorial that Rober Golob, former CEO of energy trader Gen-I, clearly demonstrated at a public debate on the future of Slovenia that rather than striving for centrist voters, he will focus on left-leaning voters.

This means that he will be more of a threat to Marjan Šarec (LMŠ), Tanja Fajon (SD), Alenka Bratušek (SAB) and Luka Mesec (Left) than to Janša.

"Slovenia did not really need another politician fishing for voters in the anti-Janšist pool, but it got him any way."

The campaign presenting Golob as the new saviour of the left is in full swing, and Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković and former President Milan Kučan got actively involved last week.

The latter does not cheer for Golob as prime minister openly yet and has not yet organised a pilgrimage of respected citizens to Golob's home town of Nova Gorica to ask for yet another manager cut off by Janša to come and rescue Slovenia.

But it is telling that much like Golob, he labelled the ruling right-leaning parties as fascist and called on his generation of pensioners to the "last big battle" to save Slovenia from dictatorship.

Voters' opinion on Janša will probably not change much in the next few months but they could decide not to go to polls because of unattractive candidates on the left.

This is why Kučan, Janković and others find Golob very useful. He is giving the impression at the moment that he is willing to challenge the SDS head and he is not burdened by debacles such as the centre-left KUL coalition parties, which failed in the 2018-2022 term.

Golob is a determined and charismatic speaker, expressing the confidence of someone who has never failed at anything in his life (which is actually true), and if he is presented as a Primorska anti-fascist, many left voters would be willing to ignore the fact that he has been receiving fabulous pay and had so far not strived for the interests of the wider society much.

But the problem is that his potential at the election is still mainly hypothetical and at this point almost certainly overblown also due to the interest of the media for a "new face".

It is also not clear whether he will actually stand in the election as his ambition is most probably not a miserable political career, Reporter says under the headline Scraping By.