Political newcomer Alenka Bratusek faced Thursday the tough task of trying to form a government in crisis-hit Slovenia, a day after Prime Minister Janez Jansa was turfed out of office. Slovenia's first female premier has said her top priorities are "normalising" life by softening "excessive" austerity measures that, as in other eurozone nations, have been unpopular with ordinary voters. First though she has two weeks to present a cabinet to parliament or the president will call early elections -- the second in two-million-strong Slovenia in 14 months.

The end was nigh for Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa late Wednesday as lawmakers prepared to vote on a no-confidence motion after weeks of political turmoil in the small eurozone country. The vote was expected to kill off Jansa's centre-right administration after barely a year of presiding over Slovenia's worst crisis since independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. The mandate to form a government was expected to pass to Alenka Bratusek from the centre-left, making the 42-year-old political newcomer the recession-hit country's first female premier.

Slovenia's parliament started debates Wednesday ahead of a no-confidence vote expected to spell the end of Prime Minister Janez Jansa's one-year-old government. The motion was filed last week by the main opposition party Positive Slovenia as Jansa's five-way coalition crumbled under his refusal to resign over corruption claims.

Thousands of supporters of Slovenia's bruised Prime Minister Janez Jansa took part in a show of force in the capital Ljubljana on Friday, hours before a planned counter-protest by his opponents. Some 12,000 people, according to organisers, attended the rally in Ljubljana's central Congress Square. Police estimated there were about 9,000 present.