By: Aleksander Rant
The presidential election is approaching with unstoppable speed. While voters on the right will be faced with a relatively easy choice between Logar and Cigler Kralj, on the left it is more complicated. Nataša Pirc Musar was a leading candidate, so to speak, already the winner of the presidential race. She was supported by two former presidents, Danilo Türk and Milan Kučan. Her rival from the Gibanje Svoboda party, Marta Kos, resigned. The door was open for a first-round win. Then the forces that control our political left decided to throw some confusion into the race. We got two more candidates, one more extreme than the other. Milan Brglez and Miha Kordiš.
As a phenomenon, Miha Kordiš fell to the bottom of the scale, to the periphery, where his ideas also belong. Miraculously, Milan Brglez almost caught up with Nataša Pirc Musar in just a few days. Polls predict he may even beat her. But Pirc Musar still leads and, according to the Mediana polls, she would be the only one to defeat Logar in the second round, Brglez would not succeed in this feat. But we still have to ask ourselves what kind of country we are that Brglez and Kordiš can even run for office. Both are, to put it mildly, fringe politicians. The definition of a far left that worships mass murderers and even glorifies their methods of exterminating people.
So how can two people who proudly wear T-shirts with the images of Josip Broz Tito and Che Guevara run for the highest office in the country in a modern democratic country based on respect for human rights? There is no point in wasting words about Tito. He was at the head of a criminal communist autocratic regime that put about a million people to death without trial, without process. He is the biggest executioner of our modern times on our territory. And Kordiš comes to the National Assembly with a T-shirt on which this criminal is painted. Kordiš even declared that Tito is the best Slovenian president in our entire history. It is no different with the cult of the revolutionary killer Che Guevara. A man who personally killed people extrajudicially and, most importantly for our time, persecuted homosexuals en masse. Both Kordiš and Brglez are big public supporters of the LGBT community and pride parades, and on their chests, they wear the face of a man who is responsible for the persecution and death of members of this community.
Now imagine a presidential candidate wearing a picture of Augusto Pinochet or maybe General Franco on his T-shirt. Do you think that the media would have the same patience with candidates with such shirts as with Kordiš and Brglez? Would you stand quietly and listen to a candidate who would say that although Pinochet killed some people, Chile is now the richest country in South America? Would you stand by and not report if a candidate said that General Franco did kill a few people, but that because of this Spain went through World War II relatively peacefully and flourished economically? Of course not. With all the cannons at their disposal, they would declare such a candidate an extremist, a fascist, a man who should not run for office in a democratic country.
Today, we have a choice of people on the left who do not represent the ideals to which those who declare themselves to be politically left leaning aspire. We have a socialist Brglez who called the post-war massacres a natural right, preached socialism and then went to vegetate in Brussels for a top salary until he was needed in his homeland. We have Kordiš, who would drive entrepreneurs into the sea with bayonets, who would tax the rich, who would nationalise companies – a man who destroys the constitutional order of our country with every word. Moreover, in his entire political career he has not proposed a single measure that would hit the toes of the richest. And we have Nataša Pirc Musar – a rich privatiser who sells herself as a leftist.
On the other side, we have Janez Cigler Kralj, who sticks to his principles and achieves low results. We have Anže Logar, who decided to take the message of his political thought across the political middle. We have Mayor Prebilič, who speaks from his experience in local self-government, and we have Sabina Senčar, a candidate from the extreme Resni.ca, who in her speech acts much more calmly than her party’s views.
The choice will therefore not be black and white this year. It will not be simple. But one decision should be crystal clear. Slovenia is a democratic country based on human rights and the self-determination of the Slovenian nation. Candidates who trample on human rights, free entrepreneurial initiative, the right to self-determination, the right to judicial protection and wear the shirts of murderers cannot be our presidents. Candidates with a murderous pedigree must be told before the election that they are not acceptable to our democratic society.