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.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in