Ljubljana - The legacy of Jože Pučnik, a crucial figure of the Slovenian independence movement and the second president of the party that would evolve into the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), was discussed at a panel debate in Ljubljana on Monday. Participants called for Pučnik to get a more prominent role in the country's collective consciousness.

The opening remarks on Pučnik, who was succeed after three years in 1992 by SDS leader Janez Janša at the helm of what was then called the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia, were delivered by President Borut Pahor.

Pahor labelled Pučnik, who died in 2003 aged 70 and whose name is rarely mentioned bar when referring to Ljubljana's airport, the central figure of Slovenia's political democratisation process. He added that Pučnik was one of the founding fathers of independent Slovenia, one nobody can match in terms of influence.

"Pučnik never held a major political office before, during or after independence, but none of us here today probably doubt in the slightest that his visionary nature, straightforward approach and determination made him a central figure" of this processes, Pahor said.

The president moreover broached at the meeting, hosted by the nation's oldest cultural and scientific society Slovenska Matica, the question of Pučnik's presence in Slovenia's collective consciousness.

While arguing that Slovenians perhaps do not like to glorify individual political figures, Pahor said "some may say that for a part of the public the worship of Pučnik was not acceptable because of his dissidence, others might say that he had a political character that did not suit everyone".

Pahor feels the grudges by a part of the public against Pučnik, who had been imprisoned for seven years in Slovenia and forced into exile, started in the face of his efforts to shine light on the summary executions that occurred in the country after the Second World War.

Janša, who also participated in the debate, agreed, saying that Pučnik, who ran the commission investigating the executions, had been striving to secure a consensus in society that a crime is a crime irrespective of who commits it. Janša added that such a consensus is still missing in Slovenia.

The participants of the discussion, including Pučnik's son Gorazd and former Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, were unanimous in describing Pučnik as somebody who always stayed true to his beliefs and who fought for the Slovenian state without ever seeking personal benefits or power.

Philosopher and sociologist Spomenka Hribar took the opportunity to reiterate her criticism of Janša, saying the former prime minister's character was a polar opposite of Pučnik's, with his hunger for power having already showed early on in his political career.

According to Hribar, Janša has managed to turn Slovenia into a right-leaning country, which the Slovenian left "allowed" him to do, which she condemned.

Pučnik, a graduate of philosophy and comparative literature, left Slovenia, or Yugoslavia, after he could not get a job following his 1966 release from prison. He found political asylum in Germany, where he again graduated in philosophy and in sociology and later earned a PhD in both. He returned to Slovenia in the late 1980s.