Slovenians go to the polls amid social tension

Slovenians vote Sunday in a presidential run-off with polls favouring former prime minister Borut Pahor, despite his promise to help an increasingly unpopular centre-right government lead the eurozone country out of the crisis. Pahor, 49, pulled off an upset on November 11 when he won the first round with 39.9 percent of the vote ahead of the favourite, incumbent President Danilo Turk, 60, who tallied 35.9 percent. Pahor is backed by centre-left opposition party the Social Democrats (SD). A good-looking, relaxed, people's politician, he appeared to have won voters over by repeatedly admitting that some of his decisions as prime minister had been wrong. Turk is running as an independent candidate with the backing of the largest centre-left opposition party, Positive Slovenija (PS). Most commentators considered he had lost most of the candidates' televised debates, despite his attacks on the government's unpopular austerity measures. The latest polls, published Friday by the private Planet TV and independent weekly Mladina, suggested Pahor would win a little over 60 percent of the vote on Sunday, to 40 percent for Turk. Analysts say that a wave of protests against the government's austerity measures over the last week could reflect on the results. "Turk's victory would be a big surprise... but he still has some chances," Vlado Miheljak, a political specialist at Ljubljana University, told AFP. It might be possible for him to "ride the wave" of social dissatisfaction with austerity, he said. "People do not want their president to be excessively soft, they want somebody who can point his finger at the government," he argued. A week after the first-round vote, 30,000 people attended a rally in Ljubljana called by the country's main unions to protest the government's austerity measures. Several others followed over the week. At the latest, on Friday, police in Ljubljana used tear gas and water cannons and detained over 30 protestors after violence erupted at the end of a largely peaceful demonstration. "The government's austerity measures have caused great damage.... The government should radically change its course," Turk said at a debate with his rival on Tuesday. But Pahor, whose centre-left government suffered a no-confidence vote in 2011, has defended Prime Minister Janez Jansa's policy of austerity. There is no other option, he argues. "We should not lose any more time speculating about possible alternatives," Pahor said during one debate. "We should collaborate without further delaying the important decisions the government has to take." The Slovenian president has little power. But analysts argue that the prime minister would benefit from collaborating with the country's head of state -- particularly if the opposition and unions succeed in calling referendums to try to prevent the implementation of new austerity or reform measures. Some 1.7 million Slovenians are eligible to vote on Sunday. Polls open at 7:00 am (0600 GMT), closing at 7:00 pm, with the first partial results expected later the same evening.