By: Dr Stane Granda
The idea of a law on assistance in voluntary ending of life (ZPPKŽ) among Slovenians, who are world‑renowned for our suicide rates, can only be the product of a deranged or sick mind. In health terms I am in similar circumstances as the proposer’s father and the initiator of efforts for the law. What distinguishes me from him is greater fortune in social and private life, which it is not appropriate to discuss publicly in detail.
The law received political support from the coalition leader, who publicly, as prime minister, declares that it is a catastrophe to have elderly and sick parents, that they are the source and culprits of young people’s lives, who because of caring for them cannot start families or obtain housing. He wanted to conceal a much greater personal tragedy, repeatedly revealed publicly, when he was unable to care for a child with special needs, but instead left the family and shifted everything onto his wife. For parents you know that one day it will end; for a child you assume with high probability that he will outlive you, and what will his fate then be? Poor souls, with personal traumas that no one envies, torment their fellow citizens and drain the state, and are worthy of sincere compassion and appropriate therapy.
The notorious ZPPKŽ is one of the most tragic achievements of the current government. It publicly signals that it despises the sick and elderly as socially unproductive. That is why it has not offered even minimal improvements in palliative care, for which doctors plead and advocate. It admits that the law on care for the elderly and sick is only a source of collecting/stealing money, not of providing help. It reveals the misery and tragedy of leftist humanism, which is merely the reverse side of intermediate Bolshevik totalitarianism. It is also clear that ZPPKŽ is probably the last stage in the fight against doctors, which is the only constant of this government. They did not succeed in breaking them! Therefore, doctors are in fact the greatest winners of the referendum. Humane medicine triumphed over financial medicine, which Golob alone understands, and which alone supports him.
Victory was achieved under unequal conditions. Opponents were humiliated and even demonised as people and experts. DDDr, etc., etc. Andrejček Pleterski – the Komsomol member – could not conceal that his fundamental motive for adopting the law was not memory of his father, but hatred of the Catholic Church, which he never hid. He is not only the self‑proclaimed patriarch of Slovenian paganism, but above all an opponent of Slovenian democracy, and even more a consistent and vengeful member of the group that wants to conceal post‑war massacres. The movement for ZPPKŽ, for him and his like‑minded, places more emphasis on politics and ideology than on compassion in eliminating human beings. The person they invoke is despised and scorned.
The law on assistance in voluntary ending of life, given Slovenia’s existing high suicide rate, would contribute to a change in Slovenian identity. Suicide would not only be permitted, but even glorified, until it became a logical necessity. Killing the incurably ill was one of the fundamental moral bonds of Slovenian Bolsheviks with the Nazis. Victory in the referendum is probably one of the last calls, and certainly an opportunity, to begin fundamentally transforming the Slovenian state into what we became independent for. The Church has awakened, having been too occupied with itself for decades. Truly ecumenical connections have been made with it not only by some Christian communities, but even by Muslims. On these connections rests Slovenia’s civilisational and cultural future. Slovenian democracy thereby gains one of its most vital contents!
Most of all, victory in the referendum on ZPPKŽ revealed the educational impotence of Slovenian schools and families. So many barely‑adult youths, as I met today at my polling station, who overwhelmingly voted for the law, I have not seen in all 50 years since living in Ljubljana! I assume that the great majority of them voted for our death! Just as future political change must thoroughly shake up schooling, especially primary education, it must also begin to change our families. Parents, not the rainbow school, must again receive the duty and right to raise children. They are not “public property,” but ours! I doubt that otherwise, in a repeat referendum, already being threatened, we would succeed in winning again.