From The Times
November 15, 2007
All hail the mystic President
Slovenia’s President is a recluse. Told he had cancer, Janez
Drnovsek moved alone to the woods and embraced his inner
spirituality. His Government despises him but he is a hero to his
people
Martin Fletcher
It is not often that you ask a European head of state whether he
has gone loopy, but in the case of Janez Drnovsek, Slovenia’s
reclusive President, the question seems almost unavoidable.
Bald, monkish and skeletally thin, Drnovsek has abandoned his
capital for a mountain retreat. He no longer speaks to his
Government. He boycotts state occasions, and disappears for weeks at
a time. He has turned vegan, talks like a New Age mystic of his quest
for “higher consciousness” and “inner balance”, and communicates with
the Slovenian people through books on spirituality. He set out to
tackle the problems of the world from a country smaller than Wales,
and has become a champion of progressive causes.
It is an astonishing transformation for a man who, as Slovenia’s
Prime Minister from 1992 until he was elected President in 2002, was
regarded as a dull, grey technocrat. It was triggered by the prospect
of imminent death. In 1999 he found that he had kidney cancer and, in
2001, that the cancer had spread to his liver and lungs. His doctors
said his condition was incurable.
Any serious illness comes as a shock, but “the shock can be
beneficial because one is caught in patterns of behaviour and somehow
you do them mechanically and without really thinking about them. You
do like others do,” Drnovsek explained in the course of a two-hour
interview with The Times– the first he has given in months. “When you
are confronted with the perception of the end of your life, it’s an
opportunity to look at things from a different point of view, to
change priorities and establish a distance to this daily existence
and all these material developments that you are taught are so
important,” he said as he sipped black tea in his office.
He accepted that some people thought that he had gone crazy, but
was not perturbed. They do not understand, he said in soft, heavily
accented English. “Why should I worry what people of this level of
consciousness should say or think about me? This is so irrelevant.”
He used a Chinese philosopher’s tale to illustrate his point: “The
frog in its well was convinced that this well was the whole world.
And then came a turtle from the sea. The turtle told this frog that
there was a big ocean and the well was nothing. The frog said: ‘OK.
This turtle is crazy’.”
In fact, most Slovenians have grown very fond of their singular
President. Despite – or perhaps because of – his eccentricities he
will complete his term of office next month as one of the most
popular figures in his country.
Drnovsek is an erstwhile banker who won his nation’s respect – if
not its affection – by helping to negotiate its peaceful secession
from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, and then steering it from
communism to democracy and membership of the European Union and Nato.
As late as 2000 – one year after he had a cancerous kidney removed –
The Economistdescribed him as a “singularly uncharismatic . . . poker-
faced trimmer” whose preoccupations were growth and stability. It
quoted him saying, glumly: “People demanded vision. I hate vision.
The cemetery of history is full of visionaries.”
Drnovsek says that his conversion from conventional politician into
“Slovenia’s Gandhi” – as one commentator has dubbed him – was
gradual, and he adopted a low profile as he fought his illness. He
abandoned conventional medicine because his doctors told him that
they could not cure him. He dabbled with Indian and Chinese healers.
He gave up meat, dairy products and alcohol in favour of organic
vegetables and home-baked bread. He fasted for days at a time. He
also sought to nourish his soul, leaving Ljubljana for a remote home
set in beautiful beech forests south of the Slovenian capital. He
lives there alone, reading and writing, without so much as a
television for company since his dog died. He says modern man has
lost contact with nature, but it is “very beneficial for health, for
body but also for soul . . . Somehow we can purify ourselves of all
negativities that are concentrated in towns and urban centres where
there is all this activity and stress.”
The new Drnovsek began to reappear on the public stage in late
2005, but more in the guise of national guru than president. He cut
his staff. He quit his centre-left political party and launched the
Movement for Justice and Development that was open to “all people who
wish to change the world for the better”. He became a champion of the
environment, animal rights and the oppressed, and afierce critic of a
political class that is, he says, concerned only about power and
image. “If only we had a candidate like Drnovsek, or even a shadow of
him, the world would quickly become less intolerable,” gushed
Brigitte Bardot in the midst of the French presidential election.
Drnovsek travelled around the country. He was photographed wearing
a crown of leaves. He published books entitled Thoughts on Life and
Awareness and The Essence of the World that are found in the
spirituality – not politics – sections of Slovenia’s bookshops. He
wrote a monthly advice column in a popular women’s magazine, and a
blog in the name of “Janez D”, whose subjects ranged from diatribes
against pesticides to apocalyptic warnings about climate change – he
says that humanity has perhaps 20 years left to save itself.
Drnovsek also began to intervene in international affairs in a way
that infuriated Slovenia’s new conservative Government. He upset
nearby Serbia by supporting independence for Kosovo. He visited
Jerusalem, where he urged the Israelis to talk to the newly elected
militants of Hamas, and Sri Lanka, where he tried to meet Tamil Tiger
leaders. In China he defied the authorities by visiting Tibet. He
went to India for a conference on spirituality, and to Bolivia for
Evo Morales’s inauguration as that country’s first indigenous
president “after 500 years of colonialism and neo-colonialism”.
His most ambitious undertaking, however, was a one-man drive to
resolve the Darfur conflict that ended with the detention of his
envoy and the nonappearance of Sudanese and rebel leaders at a
Ljubljana peace conference. It was an embarrassing episode, and he
admits that he was probably naive, but says that he felt morally
obliged to try to stop the suffering. While international diplomats
were living in luxury hotels, earning fat salaries and indulging in
endless talks, people were dying, he says. “I thought somebody had to
do something to wake up everybody.”
By the summer of 2006 Drnovsek had exhausted his official budget,
and the Government seized the chance to ground him by refusing
further funds for his “exotic activities”. He was forced to cancel a
state visit to Spain and an appearance at the UN in New York, and
grew ever more scathing in his denunciations of the Government.
Drnovsek has described Janez Jansa, the Prime Minister, as the
“Prince of Darkness”. He disagrees with nearly all of what the
Government does, and accuses it of moving towards a “kind of
totalitarian system” by curbing the independence of the media. He
stops only marginally short of saying that it was unfit to assume the
EU’s rotating six-month presidency on January 1. “I will say nothing.
I’m still President of this country,” he replied when pressed.
Drnovsek has now abandoned his conflict-resolution efforts. He
tried his best, but was dismissed as “this crazy Slovenian
President”, he says. “I came to the conclusion that the only way to
change the world is to change the consciousness of as many individual
people as possible, and then the pressure on politicians will
increase to act differently.”
He has once again become an absentee President. He spurns official
receptions. He boycotted Slovenia’s National Day celebrations in
June. “ At a certain level of spirituality . . . it becomes more
difficult to do these things of this material life,” he says. “You
feel the ephemerality of everything, and if you know your activity
will have no real effect, you become more selective about what you do
and what not. I still have activities, but practically I stopped all
unnecessary political activities – those involved with other
politicians.”
He vanished entirely from June until mid-September, and failed to
greet Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister of Italy, when he visited
Slovenia in August. Drnovsek said that he spent some of that time
visiting monasteries in France, tapping into the “positive energy”
that monks had built up through centuries of prayer.
Drnovsek has infuriated the Government, but his people have warmed
to his evident humanity. His books are bestsellers, and while a few
of the Slovenes I approached in Ljubljana’s central market said that
they found his conduct embarrassing, many more expressed support and
affection for their unusual President.
“He’s a good and wise man,” said Katja Berlinc, a 21-year-old
theology student. “He’s great. He’s not afraid to speak his mind. He’
s not afraid of anything,” said Asim Begtasevic, who runs a flower
stall. “He stands for basic moral values,” said Sasho Adamich, a
young TV assistant. When a former lover revealed that Drnovsek had a
19-year-old daughter, it only boosted his popularity.
All this infuriates his critics inside and outside the Government.
“Nobody dares to question Drnovsek’s conduct or his travels because
of his illness, and because he was some sort of hero of the
transition to democracy,” says Janez Markes, the editor of the
newspaper Delo.
Drnovsek’s colourful and controversial presidency is drawing to an
end. He is not seeking reelection, and the charming old streets
beneath Ljubljana’s castle are awash with posters of the more
conventional politicians fighting to replace him. He is not planning
any great farewell when he steps down. He is not concerned about his
legacy or image. He accepts that a certain amount of ridicule is the
price to be paid for stepping outside the political system, and he
certainly will not mind the anonymity. “I don’t have worries. I don’t
have fears. I don’t have wishes. I’m very calm.”
Drnovsek also has one incontrovertible riposte to those who say he
went loopy. Against all odds, and in defiance of every medical
prediction, he has not died in office. Indeed, he now claims to be
cancer-free: “I am completely healed. I am cured of everything. I can’
t prove it beyond being alive. I don’t need confirmation from a
doctor. I just know.”
