By: Mitja Iršič
In certain parts of New York, especially in Queens, the notorious mobster John Gotti had the reputation of a modern‑day Robin Hood. People did not see him as a criminal and cold‑blooded murderer, but as someone who helped residents with money or favours and acted as a kind of informal authority, far more “present” in the neighbourhood than the distant and despised institutions of the state.
At the height of his fame, many political analysts in the United States believed that John Gotti could easily have become the mayor of New York if he had run. On some level, people knew he was a criminal, but they believed he stole only from the rich and even fought against institutions that people did not trust. They failed to put two and two together, that in reality he was returning to them only crumbs of the money he had stolen from ordinary people, not from the wealthy: most of his scams were focused on public projects financed by taxpayers.
New York in the 1980s was very similar to contemporary Slovenia: chronic corruption, distrust in institutions, and a silent pact between corporatists, politicians, and the underworld to squeeze taxpayers through public infrastructure projects. People had become so accustomed to the broader pattern of corrupt politics that they began to perceive corruption as a kind of normality.
In a way, young Slovenian democracy is very similar to the grimy streets of New York forty years ago. After the left’s march through the institutions, the erosion of the rule of law has become so severe that systemic corruption is not only something forgiven, but something even expected, following the old communist saying “Tito je krao, a i nama dao” (Tito stole, but he also gave to us). According to this twisted logic, the Slovenian voter somehow rationalises politics as a group of important men who manage all the state’s assets and are also responsible for handing out a few crumbs to the people.
No one looked over Tito’s shoulder when he rode around in Mercedes cars, wore a Rolex, or deposited gold and foreign currency in Swiss banks. For the former Yugoslav citizen, today’s Slovenian voter, this is a kind of jus sanctum (divine right) of politicians. Therefore, it is no shock that more than 330,000 of our fellow citizens gave their vote of confidence to a political party whose close associates and former business partners, just a week before the elections, were heard in wiretaps explaining in detail how the prime minister illegally controls both the police and state‑owned companies, how journalists are bribed through the state‑owned DARS so that they will write something nice about government politicians, and so on.
Some claimed that voters did not believe the wiretaps, but that is the wrong conclusion. They did believe them, they simply did not care, because they take systemic corruption as part of the deal. We heard that nothing new had been revealed, nothing they did not already know. Our local New York simply has rules of the game that everyone understands. There, the mobster was almost a kind of left‑wing politician implementing measures of social redistribution. Here, we expect something similar from politics, that it will do something for ordinary people, meaning that it will redistribute the money it has been given to manage. That it will take something for itself is, of course, taken for granted, ever since Tito.
The point of this piece is not to portray official politics as a form of organised crime, but to begin understanding voters and what they truly care about. They do not care about corruption. Voters expect it and forgive it, sometimes even admire it, saying “what a guy, he beat the system.” That is why it is better not to talk about it at all in future elections. Slovenia is not yet at the stage where this would matter enough to voters. At least one more generation unburdened by communism will be needed before we can explain to Slovenians that life can be different. But the breakdown of election results by age groups suggests that such a generation is already knocking at the door, and that Slovenia, too, will soon become a normal country.