Vili Kovačič

Vili Kovačič (born 1941) is a Slovenian impact litigation activist and blogger, who was the first in Europe to successfully challenge a referendum result based on a campaign finance violation.

[2][3] His successful challenges to elections and referendums resulted in Constitutional Court reforming Slovenian electoral laws and practices.

[8][9][10] His other projects were the removal of the statue of the communist leader Boris Kidrič from the Council of Europe Park in Ljubljana, and a call for electoral system change in 2014.

He was active in protests at the Supreme Court of Slovenia in 2014, in collecting signatures on the Family Code referendum, and at the murder trial of dr. Milko Novic, who was accused of killing dr. Jamnik, the director of the Chemical Institute of Ljubljana, where the daughter of Boris Kidric is employed.

[2] In 2017, Kovačič collected 4500 signatures and triggered a referendum procedure on a railway project between Divača and Koper, called "Drugi tir".

On 14 March 2018, the Supreme Court held its first public hearing since the independence of Slovenia, and Kovačič questioned prime minister Miro Cerar as a witness.

[19] In 2018, Kovačič challenged local elections results in Ljubljana due to alleged campaign finance and electoral corruption violations by mayor Zoran Janković.

It ordered that within 30 days, the Administrative Court had to hold a public hearing and if violations are found, the composition of the city council should be changed or new elections should be held.

[25] During Milko Novič's highly publicised Jamnik murder trial, in 2017, Kovačič publicly called judge Špela Koleta a "sow".

He later asserted that this was not meant as a personal insult, but as a reference to George Orwell's Animal Farm, in which pigs represent authoritarian rulers abusing their power.