I do not remember exactly when I first heard of the phrase “the rule of law”, but I assume it was during my studies. At that time, politics was focused on “writ of law”, which is also a constitutional category. Generally speaking, both phrases are supposed to mean the same thing, but with a slightly different emphasis. However, they both depict an ideal of a country where the same rules apply to everybody and where the rule of law is respected. Even though we all know that this is not always the case.
The rule of law has become the topic of discussions during the negotiations on the European Union budget. However, it was mainly a skilful attempt by Eurosocialists to ensure that the European Union deals more strictly with “right-wing” governments in power and their fairly independent policies, at least regarding migration and some other current issues. For the Euro-left-wing, for example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is far less disturbing than Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Many former countries of the socialist bloc (e.g. Poland) have started to reform the judiciary branch, which upset the centralists in Brussels. Interestingly, they have recently attempted to discipline Poland because it strongly opposes the LGBT agenda – an agenda unacceptable even to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von den Leyen, a member of the conservative European People’s Party (EPP). There is a good reason for this – the former president of the EPP member party, Civic Platform from Poland, Donald Tusk – former president of the European Council – is now the president of the EPP. In Demokracija we recently revealed that one of the party’s officials ensured that the Slovenian association Jasa was eliminated from the international network of non-governmental organisations, because Jasa’s colleague Anej Sam allegedly expressed homophobic views on Facebook. In other words: George Soros has a strong influence even on the EPP.
But let’s talk about the rule of law. There are quite a few high-profile cases in Slovenia that deny the rule of law. In Demokracija, we have repeatedly pointed out the trial of dr. Milko Novič, who is now on trial for the third time regarding the same matter. We also wrote about the Patria case, where the involved actors tried to ensure that in the case of a lawsuit against them, the court case would happen at home because they know that hawk will not pick out hawk’s eyes. After all, it was the judiciary branch (not the government nor the parliament) that wrote off millions of tax debt of the Janković family, as well as the tycoon Zdenek Pavček, who was also involved in the Patria case. And we can bet that besides some loud quibbling nothing will happen. Because justice is supposed to be an independent social subsystem and God forbid anyone from outside interferes with it. It has remained largely intact from the time when the foundations of this system were laid by the infamous Ljubo Bavcon and his comrades.
But Slovenia apparently only started to become a big problem in the European Union from March 2020 onwards!?
One of the main problems with the rule of law is the fact that law is not something that exists by itself. The constitution, laws and regulations are written and adopted by people (well, not everyone) – and as we know, no regulation translates into an ideal state. It is a kind of a compromise, a social contract with which we protect ourselves – however bizarre it may sound – from each other. It is hard to avoid conflict when we talk about the law of God (for example, the Ten Commandments). After all, we cannot even agree on what “natural law” is – partially due to the fact that the Slovenian legal system is a reflection of a mentality that is typically socialist and totalitarian. And it has remained such for thirty years after the formal fall of communism, because we have a well-protected system of preservation and development of revolutionary traditions (SORRI), which, among other things, has the credit for the fact that no perpetrator of post-war communist crimes has been convicted so far.
Just a week ago, I visited the area of the embankment along the Sava river near Mostec between Brežice and Dobova. There was a press conference at the beginning of the exhumation of the remains of about 140 people who were killed there after the end of the war in 1945. And these were not “members of the Home Guard” and “Ustashas” as the indoctrinated masses probably imagine. In the pile of skeletons there were remains of women’s shoes, a prosthetic leg, as well as the wires with which the victims were first tied before they were murdered. This is only a small part of the total number of victims, and the exhumation of victims here was only necessary because soon the construction of the hydroelectric power plant Mokrice will flood this area. A former SKD MP, Ciril Kolešnik from Brežice informed me about the communist/covert killing field about five years ago, but the killing field was actually recorded in the early 1990s – journalist Ivo Žajdela published the testimony of a truck driver in 1990 in the newspaper Demokracija (bulletin SDZ or Demos). The ground was first unsuccessfully tested in 2008, and two years later the work there continued. Marko Štrovs from the Sector of War Cemeteries at the Ministry of Labor, Family and Social Affairs wrote in a report at the time that there could be up to ten thousand victims of killings in the ditch near Mostec. But the first excavation and removal of the remains is happening only today – thirty years after the mass killings became public and received a memorial in one of the media.
I must admit that when I was at the scene of the Crime Without Criminals – where the press conference of the government Commission for Cemeteries and all those involved took place – I was shocked to see how indifferently the journalistic cream walked around the remains of the victims. (and in fact Dr. Jože Dežman said out loud that the moment of the crime is captured here). But this is mainly due to the fact that the ideological apparatus after 1945 (even in the independent country) through the media and education has been convincing us that any empathy for the victims of post-war massacres is out of the question. They say, these people were traitors and with such statements they close this chapter of our history. Clearly, this system has crippled us, both spiritually and psychologically. In other words: it introduced a class division among the dead, and thus even assigned to one of the pillars ethos, that is, the consecration of the dead, which was often talked and written about by dr. Tine Hribar. The consecration of the dead, essentially means that a person never loses his/hers dignity, even when he/she dies or when only his/hers bones remain. Thus, it is necessary to treat the remains with the utmost respect.
This spiritual and psychological mutilation is not a typical Slovenian invention. It also occurs in the developed world, for example, it can be seen in the attitude towards aborted children. Unfortunately, a child is not under the protection of the legal system until it is born. And here the rule of law fails. When the murder of a certain category of human beings is legalised, an important foundation of civilisation is thus challenged. But not only that: unborn children are actually dehumanised and degraded to the level of a “fetus”. For when such degradation occurs, we must remember the excuses used for murdering those who were, as propaganda from the SORRI arsenal puts it, “on the wrong side of history.” For example, no one dares to dehumanise the victims of the Srebrenica massacres publicly with such a discourse.
And this is the reason why the rule of law begins and ends with the dignity of a man as a person. Preferably where that dignity is trampled. For example, at Mostec. And, of course, in gynaecological clinics, which claim hundreds of millions of lives every year.