By: Gašper Blažič
Some media in the so-called “right hemisphere” have recently highlighted a major “problem” of the Gibanje Svoboda party. Namely Milan Kučan’s reservations about the presidential candidacy of Marta Kos, the vice-president of Golob’s party. As if to say that all the leading positions in the country cannot be held by the Gibanje Svoboda party alone. This was followed by the rather bizarre reaction of Prime Minister Robert Golob, saying that he respects Milan Kučan, but sometimes the former president also makes a mistake.
That Kučan’s primary choice is Nataša Pirc Musar was also shown by the first opinion poll, as every fourth respondent would vote for her. Anže Logar follows with about 16 percent, the other candidates, even potential ones, would get much less. In the survey, for example, Nina Krajnik, who is supported by the circle of civil society, is barely noticeable (1.5 percent). Of course, we have to take polls with a lot of caution, as they mostly do not represent the true mood of the people, but serve the purpose of engineering human souls, i.e., psychologically influencing the behaviour of the masses.
Example no. 1: Türk vs. Stanovnik
Regardless, it is clear that the transitional left leaves nothing to chance, and after Pahor’s departure, it will by all means bring its own man to the presidential office. This is already clear, and we have already learned a lot from the past elections. Let’s look at an example from 2007. At that time, the transitional left sent two candidates into the fire: Mitja Gaspari and Danilo Türk. Since Janez Drnovšek did not run for a second term at that time, it was clear that the president of the republic would be a new person. Lojze Peterle, who was originally even the leading candidate in public opinion, appeared as a candidate in the spring. Danilo Türk, unlike Gaspari, had not been involved in politics until then, as the public knew him primarily as Slovenia’s ambassador to the UN, so he was a fairly fresh face for politics, and at first, he was even said to have offered himself as a candidate of the Spring Party for mayor of Ljubljana. Well, then he was supported in the presidential race by Zares, SD, and DeSUS (LDS had its candidate Gaspari at the time), but there was a problem with the Fighters’ Union.
In the middle of the summer of 2007, Türk gave a speech in Rodik, where he said, among other things: “The fact that the Communist Party, as one of the organisers of the resistance, abused partisanship for its own conquest of power and that it legitimised an undemocratic political system with partisanship must be acknowledged.” Because of this speech – at least that is how it appeared in the media – he had an argument with the then president of the Association of Fighters for the Values of NOB, Janez Stanovnik. The latter later said for Delo newspaper: “I already told Türk at Rodik that it would be better if he had left out that thing about partisanship. The statement is full of manipulations and untruths, and it is especially unacceptable that a presidential candidate whose sponsor is a party such as the SD and which includes all former members of the Communist Party spews on partisanship. If Türk were to talk only about communists, that is his business. But he took up partisanship, which involved the defence of the homeland. To say that someone abused partisanship for their own conquest of power is foolish and untrue. It is true that later, through manipulations and machinations, the communists ousted others and took power themselves, but this is a post-war government that does not concern us. In this respect, partisanship is innocent, and it is unseemly for someone to spit on it for the sake of political settlement.”
Of course, it was clear that this “dispute” was only a kind of theatre to “hair dress” public opinion. This was shown in the second round, when Türk strongly defeated the then favoured Peterle. It turned out that Türk gained quite a lot of potential Peterle’s voters at the expense of the playful dispute with Stanovnik, of course, in addition to all those who supported the transitional left. As soon as the elections were over, the disputes between Türk and Stanovnik were immediately forgotten, and as president in his only term, Türk quickly made some scandalous statements, such as the one about the victims of Hude Jame as a “second-class topic”. This is also the reason why we have to be extremely cautious about similar frictions that are happening now in the relationship between Nataša Pirc Musar vs. Marta Kos. Pirc Musar even attributes a kind of “urbanisation” to the latter.
But perhaps one more thing about how Türk’s presidential career ended: in 2012, he was defeated by challenger Borut Pahor, previously the president of SD and Prime Minister in the 2008-2011 mandate. His term as Prime Minister was cut short by the departure of Zares party from the coalition and the resulting preliminary elections. In the first round, Milan Zver (SDS) also appeared as a candidate. In the second round, two candidates of the transitional left competed.
Example no. 2: Pahor vs. Šarec
A similar scenario happened in 2017 – even then we had two candidates from the transitional left in the second round, except that Pahor was no longer in the role of a challenger, but in the role of one who had to defend his first mandate. As a challenger, the political underworld at that time set the then politically little-known mayor of Kamnik, Marjan Šarec, who in some normal circumstances should not have played a major role. However, he had it, as the media-propaganda apparatus immediately began to inflate him, even to the extent that he qualified for the second round, and Borut Pahor defended his victory with a rather close result (he received 53 percent of the votes). In the core of the transition left, they were aware that Pahor is the undisputed favourite, and it will be difficult to defeat him, but the result was almost shocking for many. It turned out that with a fairly weak voter turnout (less than half), the left part of the electorate mainly participated in the elections.
Of course, already during the pre-election campaign, Bojan Požar drew attention to the fact that Šarec’s candidacy was actually a preparation for the parliamentary elections, which followed already eight months later (June 2018). It turned out that this was true, because within a few months, Šarec’s local list became a nationwide party, but it still did not reach the first place in the elections. Despite this, Šarec managed to become Prime Minister with the help of the “rainbow” coalition of five parties, of course until the moment when he threw in the towel. He ruled for only a year and a half.
These elections also confirmed the rather bitter experience of the spring camp, that tottering in the middle and concealing one’s political roots does not bring success, but rather defeat. Therefore, those (Party-approved) presidential candidates who achieve a worse result than their party in the elections cannot be considered successful. But after all, the LDS already offered its “straw” candidate in 1992. This was one of the few real liberals at the time, economist, dissident, and publicist Ljubo Sirc. In the elections, he won only crumbs, as LDS voters massively supported Milan Kučan, who won already in the first round.
Marta Kos as a replacement for Golob?
Both of these examples should be a clear enough warning why we should not fall for the provocations coming from the deep state. When it comes to the statements of Kučan, Pirc Musar, and Kos, they are very well thought out statements, but they are not sincere, but rather they are said to have a certain effect on public opinion. Already now, the transitional left has achieved a fairly large success, because it managed to break up the already weak spring party, which is represented by only two parties in the National Assembly, and there will obviously not be a common candidate of civil society and the two opposition parties. If at the same time we consider the re-raising of the head of the gay lobby, which wants to distance NSi as much as possible from SDS (hence also NSi’s abstention during the vote on whether the new law on RTV should be adopted by emergency procedure). If Ljudmila Novak re-joins the presidential campaign, it would mean even more chances that someone from the transitional left will take over the position after Pahor’s departure. Even if it is not Marta Kos, this means that they may use her as a possible substitute for Robert Golob, who analysts do not predict will have a long tenure at the head of the government. The fact is that the transitional left eliminated its weakness, which was manifested through party fragmentation: following the example of the LDS congress from 1994 (where Kučan and the godfather of the parallel economy Niko Kavčič participated in the background), the Gibanje Svoboda party absorbed LMŠ and SAB parties. If, according to some scenario, the possible entry of NSi into the coalition were to happen, it would mean its political erasure in the next elections, which would again be a success for the political underground, since SDS would remain completely isolated.