By: Dr Stane Granda
There are no New Year holidays this year, as we are on the threshold of the parliamentary elections.
Slovenia is celebrating some fine anniversaries of its existence. It has outlived old Yugoslavia and is entering the period in which Tito’s Yugoslavia finally began to disintegrate, an entity that, after the death of its “immortal” president, existed more or less only on paper. Every election is a celebration of democracy. In a normal, politically balanced, democratic country, “our side” always wins, one side of the political competitors who, together with the opposition, are first and foremost citizens of a common state, and only then political rivals, never enemies. In Slovenia it is different. Because of the revolution and the civil war, we citizens are so divided that a shared future becomes ever more difficult. The tragic past dominates people’s judgment. They invest most of their energy in fighting over interpretations of times long gone, times no one can change. What lies in the background is not the past itself, but its crimes and criminals, whom we are not allowed to label or name as such. The recent beheading of Tito’s statue in Velenje revealed all the irrationality. We more or less all agree that he was a dictator and a mass murderer, just do not say it out loud.
The true and long‑term winner of the elections will be the one who lets Tito’s era sink into its own mire. It deserves only silent contempt, not endless debates that are, from one side, irrational and schizophrenic. There is no more time or space for that. We are at a turning point from which we will emerge either with the shield in hand or fallen upon it. Slovenia and Slovenians gained independence for the sake of the future. Time to show the plans, especially because the opponents have none. Their vision is organised state theft, which they may call privatisation or something else.
Historians will have great difficulty in a few decades when they write about the madness of Robert Golob’s government. Not because he is a doctor of technical sciences, not because he is from the Primorska region, whose people are usually not narrow‑minded, not because he grew up in the shadow of the “Our Tito” sign on Sabotin, but because what he does and how he does it is incomprehensible. It seems to stem from some deep‑seated trauma, whether from local fascism, communist upbringing, or something worse, as suggested by his advocacy of official state execution of the incurably ill and helpless. I would be afraid to be close to him.
Slovenian independence is the greatest achievement of Slovenians in history. Golob and his circle declared it a product of fascism and even appointed a special state secretary – doctor of “Repetovščina” – whose main task was to fight against independence. When she succeeded in abolishing the Museum of Slovenian Independence and sending its director out onto the street to fend for himself, she had to leave the government.
Folk wisdom says that citizens have the government they deserve. The governing majority reflects the voting majority. And this majority was largely raised in independent Slovenia. How is this possible? What is happening in Slovenian schools? What is the prevailing morality of Slovenians? Anyone who watched the last two Thursday broadcasts on the national television channel got the impression that we citizens are victims of a highly organised criminal network that is looting the state according to the principles of the former UDBA parallel economy. Although its influence should not be underestimated, it must be understood that it was never monolithic. Its creators used it to outmanoeuvre Belgrade, to ensure Slovenia’s survival and progress, while its operatives found in it a source of personal enrichment, usually protected by the top of the Communist Party, which was simultaneously the top of UDBA. Only this can explain the major role of Milan Kučan in these activities, especially in protecting key actors. Nor can we ignore the characteristic of Ljubljana’s residents, who, as Prešeren wrote, revere: “Last year the swindler still sold old junk, carried boxes, measured cloth and ribbon by the yard; this year he buys himself a mansion…”
Whatever the past may be, as a citizen I care about the future. Slovenia needs a moral renewal. The result of the last referendum shows that the moral potential for this exists, though it is already weak. At the head of my Slovenia I therefore do not want just different people, but fundamentally different people. The prime minister‑designate of the new government will have to choose not those who want to be something and are already offering themselves to him, but those who actually know something, those who are different, above all morally and politically, the truly Slovenian opposite of the current decadence in every respect, direction, and meaning.