January 19 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS) and the Constitutional Arch Coalition (KUL) have withdrawn their motion of no-confidence against the government led by the populist conservative Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), local media reported on Tuesday.
DeSUS president Karl Erjavec withdrew the motion, because he would be unable to muster the support of at least 46 lawmakers in the 90-seat parliament due to COVID-19 infections or mandatory self-isolation, public broadcaster RTV Slovenia reported.
Parliament speaker Igor Zorcic cancelled the extraordinary parliament session scheduled for Wednesday to discuss the motion, RTV Slovenia said.
On January 15, DeSUS and KUL filed the no-confidence motion signed by 42 members of parliament, who also proposed Erjavec for the position of prime minister. The reason for the motion is that Slovenian citizens do not trust prime minister Janez Jansa, DeSUS said last week.
Deputy parliament speaker and DeSUS member Branko Simonovic refused to sign the motion on January 15, citing disagreement with the motives for its filing. Currently, the leaders of the groups of Social Democrats (SD) and DeSUS in parliament, Matjaz Han and Franc Jursa, are in self-isolation after testing positive for COVID-19.
The KUL bloc, formed in October, comprises centre-left opposition parties List of Marjan Sarec, Social Democrats and Alenka Bratusek Party, as well as the socialist Left party. The bloc has 39 seats in Parliament, while DeSUS, which left the government coalition in December, has four.