THE nearest the cheerful, obsessively tidy former Yugoslav country of Slovenia comes to hell on earth these days is when a British stag party lands in the capital, Ljubljana. But since President Janez Drnovsek experienced a spiritual rebirth, baffled Slovenians have been warned that they are living on the edge of the apocalypse.
Frequently dressed in Indian clothes and sometimes playing the flute with laurel leaves in his hair, the president has cast off the trappings of power. After he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, Drnovsek, 56, left his presidential palace in Ljubljana, sacked most of his staff and moved with his dog to a mountain cabin near the village of Zaplana, where he grows organic food and bakes his own bread.
Having rejected conventional medicine in favour of herbal therapies and a vegan diet, he has become a tireless crusader against “all things evil�?, warning that the world is about to end.
Drnovsek has embarked on a globe-trotting mission to preach positive energy, environmental awareness, spiritualism and animal rights, pledging to end the tyranny of “well-paid but inefficient international officials�?.
There is no formal word on his health — the cancer is reported to have spread to his liver and lungs and he has visibly deteriorated �