LJUBLJANA — He was a liberal dissident under communism but has morphed into a conservative leader railing against Brussels over migration.

Janez Janša, the front-runner ahead of Slovenia's general election this Sunday, doesn't just have a biography similar to Viktor Orbán's: He's using the Hungarian prime minister's political playbook and even getting help from Orbán on the campaign trail.

While Slovenia is a committed member of the European Union, a victory for Janša would add another staunchly anti-migration voice around the EU leaders' table.

Janša, 59, is campaigning not just as an ally of Orbán but also as a political survivor. Almost 30 years ago to the day, Janša and three others were arrested for spreading military secrets, when Slovenia was part of communist Yugoslavia. The arrests catalyzed the so-called Slovene Spring protest movement, a key episode in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

"Today, it smells like spring again!" Janša declared Wednesday at a rally for his opposition Slovene Democratic Party (SDS) and center-right allies in Ljubljana’s Grand Union Hotel, to a room full of applause.

Leading in opinion polls, Janša has run a campaign based on his anti-communist past and promising a future free of migrants.

Janša has weathered major scandals to remain at the forefront of politics in the country of 2 million people. Running for a third stint as prime minister, he will almost certainly become the only MP elected in every parliamentary term since independence in 1991.

Leading in opinion polls, Janša has run a campaign based on his anti-communist past and promising a future free of migrants, with a dose of rhetoric suggesting powerful nefarious forces are ranged against him — much as Orbán often does. Like Orbán's Fidesz, the SDS is part of the European People's Party center-right grouping in the European Parliament.

At the rally, Janša said “dark forces” were trying to stop a second “spring,” criticizing a demonstration to be held against him on Thursday evening under the title “Without fear — Against the politics of hatred.”

Sunday's election comes a week earlier than scheduled, after the government of Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s Modern Center Party fell due to a referendum defeat on a railway project and worsening relations with coalition partners. More than 20 parties are competing, with the left splintered.

Historic role

Whatever the future holds for Janša, he already has a prominent place in Slovenia's recent history. A photo exhibit in the Museum of Contemporary History, housed in a pale pink mansion in Ljubljana’s Tivoli Park, tells the story of the arrest of Janša and his colleagues after the magazine they worked for published articles criticizing the Yugoslav National Army.

After his release from prison, Janša rose swiftly up the political ladder. He was defense minister from 1990 to 1994, including the 10-day war during which Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991. He became president of the SDS in 1993 — a position he has held ever since.

Janša became prime minister for the first time in 2004, just after Slovenia joined the EU. Ironically for someone who made his name as a dissident journalist, he was accused of pressuring reporters and lost the subsequent election after the Finnish national broadcaster raised allegations of bribery during the 2008 campaign.

He stepped down from a second term as premier in 2013 after less than two years due to a corruption scandal as Slovenia narrowly avoided an international bailout over a banking crisis. He denied wrongdoing and in 2015 the Constitutional Court threw out a previous conviction over the affair.

His party has also come under fire for alleged links to a neo-Nazi group, Blood and Honor. In an echo of Janša’s own career, the journalist who discovered the connection, Anuška Delić, was indicted in 2013 for possession of military secrets. The charges against her were dropped several years later.

Hungarian help

In this election season, Janša and other center-right parties have campaigned against the EU’s migration policy, which allotted the country a quota of 567 migrants for resettlement.

Orbán came to stump with Janša in mid-May at a rally in the eastern town of Celje, declaring, “If Europe surrenders to mass population movement and immigration, our own Continent will be lost ... The aim is to settle among us people who do not belong to our culture, and who will want to live here according to their own religions and customs.”

At the rally in Ljubljana on Wednesday evening, Janša recalled the half a million migrants who passed through the country in 2015 and 2016 on their way to Western Europe.

"We will not allow this to happen again,” Janša said. “Slovenes are inherently [in favour of] solidarity, we proved this during the Balkan Wars, but we know where the reasonable boundary between solidarity and insanity is.”

Media reports have alleged that pro-Orbán media companies have provided financial support to SDS-linked outlets — allegations dismissed by Janša's party as “fake news.”

“If SDS comes out on top, it will be a long and painful process to make a coalition because all of the politicians will have to eat their words" — Tanja Starič, political analyst

Ali Žerdin, who edits the Saturday supplement at the Delo newspaper and wrote a book on the Slovene Spring, said that if Janša wins, “it is possible that Slovenia could become a little bit similar to Hungary” — although the SDS would not have the commanding majority Orbán's Fidesz party enjoys.

“The pro-EU orientation could change, at least a little bit,” said Žerdin. But Janša is “an eclectic politician” who has “remained very loyal to Angela Merkel and her Christian Democrats,” he added.

Pizza politics

Despite the scandals in his past, Janša and the SDS are counting on voters to appreciate his longevity. In one of their campaign ads, a man and woman argue over which pizza delivery company to order from. The man says he’s chosen a new company whose advert he saw on TV. The female voice of reason says she's ordered from a tried and tested company. The bigger box that the man ordered shows up half empty, while the box emblazoned with SDS has a perfect pizza inside.

While SDS tops the polls, some 45 percent of voters remain undecided, said political analyst Tanja Starič of Radio Slovenia. Turnout is key: It hit a historic low of 51 percent in the last general election in 2014, and low turnout would favor Janša, with his well-mobilized, loyal base and strong party structures.

“We really don’t know what will happen,” said Starič, citing a decade of decreased turnout since the global economic crisis of 2008 and widespread frustration with the political system.

Even if Janša comes first, Slovenia won't have a government before September, Starič said, because all of his opponents except one have promised not to go into coalition with him.

“If SDS comes out on top, it will be a long and painful process to make a coalition because all of the politicians will have to eat their words, to break their promises to their voters,” she said.