By: Peter Jančič (Spletničasopis.eu)
“You are stealing the time of the Constitutional Court and the public,” they should say to the Helsinki Monitor of Slovenia, which is asking the Constitutional Court to stop shooting bears and judge constitutionality. In normal times, they would be ignored in the media. Anyone can suggest anything. Even the silliest things.
But we do not write about every stupidity. But in the case of bears, Prime Minister Robert Golob had already taken care of the problem, who publicly called on his Minister Uroš Brežan in April to freeze the decision to “remove 230 brown bears from the wild”. The Prime Minister did not talk to the minister and tried to find a solution for the government. He publicly declared that the minister’s behaviour was objectionable to him. And only talked to the Minister later. But now it has found itself before the Constitutional Court. Golob’s biggest problem, as we could already see with the announcement of an immediate salary increase for judges and prosecutors at the beginning of the year, is Golob himself. He has such serious problems with himself that even Milan Kučan had to come to his aid this week regarding his attitude towards independence.
DOCTORS WOULD BE ORDERED TO “TAKE THE ELDERLY FROM NATURE”
Similarly, a proposal by a group of citizens that tries to impose on doctors the obligation to kill seriously ill citizens, which, as they wrote in the bill, will be cheaper for the national budget than the current medical care of the dying would not be worthy of public attention. As a rule, the elderly. There are no provisions in the draft law to the effect that criminal law, which determines sanctions for murder, will not apply to these cases.
“Everything shows that we are facing a law that will not be feasible in practice. We can expect a request for a constitutional review, perhaps even a referendum. If we connect the bill on end-of-life assistance with the recent postponement of the implementation of the long-term care law, we can only confirm that there is a painful shift in the direction of denying fundamental humanistic principles. But perhaps everything can also be understood as an attempt to divert the public’s attention from the stagnation in solving the real problems of our healthcare and society as a whole.”
MATJAŽ ZWITTER
Although the proposal is completely incompatible with doctors, the Hippocratic Oath, and criminal law, the President of the Republic Nataša Pirc Musar, the President of the National Assembly Urška Klakočar Zupančič, and Prime Minister Robert Golob spoke out against the broad debate this week. Klakočar Zupančič and Golob cancelled their talks with Pavel Rupar because he summarised the concerns of medical organisations at the pensioners’ rally, which are firmly against euthanasia at the global level due to the tragic experiences of the Nazi era, and at the domestic level they point out that no one asked them anything. Rupar called on Nataša Pirc Musar to give up the services of her adviser Biserka Marolt Meden, who is trying to legislate the obligation of “removing seriously ill people from nature” to doctors who cannot be found anyway. He caused a stir with the assessment that Hitler would be happy with advisers with such ideas.
The President of the National Assembly even accused Rupar of spreading hate speech by criticising the poorly drafted law and that he may have even committed a crime. The reaction should attract a lot of public attention. This is an attempt to limit debate on important public issues. Will the opposition MPs also not be allowed to freely discuss changing the rules when it comes to life and death? Klakočar Zupančič should have been the first to defend the possibility of the widest possible public debate. With the ideas of euthanasia, discussing the actions of the Nazis is not hate speech. The behaviour of the Nazis is a horrifying historical experience of the abuse of euthanasia. The president’s label that recalling the horrors of the past is hate speech is dangerous and extremely reckless. Rupar is a rather insignificant former politician whose statements have no serious consequences. Urška Klakočar Zupančič is the second most important representative of the country. Her statements simply cannot be at a significantly lower level of deliberation than Rupar’s.
Professor and prominent oncologist Matjaž Zwitter in Delo provided a nice description of the content of the event: “Everything shows that we are facing a law that will not be feasible in practice. We can expect a request for a constitutional review, perhaps even a referendum. If we connect the bill on end-of-life assistance with the recent postponement of the implementation of the long-term care law, we can only confirm that there is a painful shift in the direction of denying fundamental humanistic principles. But perhaps everything can also be understood as an attempt to divert the public’s attention from the stagnation in solving the real problems of our healthcare and society as a whole.”
When it comes to the transfer of care for the elderly, the attempt to quickly take over RTV Slovenia and the establishment of a bunch of additional ministries, last week I presented to the public the huge sum of money that Svoboda party invested in the triple referendum in order to be able to carry out these projects. Svoboda’s report on almost 200,000 euros for campaigns was published on the Ajpes portal back in March. The fact that they spent three times more than all other campaign organisers put together did not attract the attention of the media. I am happy to have encouraged them and many major media have only summarised the information about the disproportionate stakes in recent days. It is right that important facts should be presented to the public. I do not mind that they forgot to say where the story is from.
Our week was also brightened by former president Milan Kučan, who is trying to correct the bad impression created by Robert Golob’s government with bears and old people, also when it comes to the attitude towards the abolition of the dictatorship with independence. Kučan proposed erecting a monument to independence on the square in front of the parliament, where there is now a monument to the revolution.
AN ACTIVIST PRESIDENT AND KUČAN AS A KING
Last year, the government closed the Museum of Slovenian Independence and announced the return of the statues of revolutionaries to Brdo pri Kranju. The government thereby supports revolutionary abuses and crimes and is against the respect of fundamental rights and freedoms in a democratic country, which the people defended with blood three decades ago, when after the first relatively free elections, still in Yugoslavia, the Demos coalition achieved independence and the establishment of its own country and the government of Lojze Peterle.
Kučan perceived the sloppiness of the behaviour of the rulers. He is trying to fix this by proposing to erect a monument to independence in the square in front of the parliament. Where there is a monument to the revolution and where nearby there are tons of monuments to communist functionaries who were not elected in fair elections because they were banned. For example, Boris Kidrič, to whom the top of the SD occasionally bows. As for Janez Stanovnik, who was against independence with all his might, Zoran Janković honoured him with a monument next to the parliament building.
Kučan was more pragmatic than Stanovnik and earlier accepted the reality that Yugoslavia and power based on violence and not the will of the people was over.
Publicist Igor Omerza responded to the proposal as follows:
Kučan’s proposal to replace the monument to the revolution with a monument to independence (I am not sure if Kučan, as a former communist, would not have left the monument to the revolution) could be upgraded with a call for the government to cancel the abolition of the museum of independence, cancel the elimination of the director of the museum of recent history, Jože Dežman, and let him stop with stupid ideological purges and bear fights. But Kučan will not criticise the Golob’s, whom he himself brought to power. If he did, left-wing journalists would declare him a supporter of Janez Janša.
In the background of Kučan’s monument “initiative” there is an additional event. Last year, with Kučan’s help, we got a rather politically inexperienced president Nataša Pirc Musar. If Kučan had not made a strong effort with his forces, the politically more experienced Anže Logar from the right would probably have been elected president. Even though the biggest media were against him, which in our country are “plurally” inclined towards Kučan.
After her election, the new president proves herself to be a daily political activist. She is quick to say things about anything. With this, we are losing the symbolic top of the country, which is above the daily political squabbles. We do not have a king like they just crowned in Great Britain. But we got a fighter for clean drinking water and a clean environment, who flies to the coronation in London with her husband in a government jet Falcon.
At home, instead of her, Kučan takes the role of president.
Who also helped make her president for this.
