By: Jože Biščak
What the democratic and freedom-loving West once watched with disgust in the East (and protested), it now uses itself. The realisation that the judiciary is an excellent tool for elegantly eliminating political competition through staged trials is terrifying.
A French court recently sentenced MP and former National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen to prison and a five-year ban on running in elections, allegedly for misusing European Union funds. However, even the court acknowledged that Le Pen did not personally benefit from it. The verdict is not yet final, and Le Pen has appealed. Still, it appears that her presidential candidacy has been blocked. “This verdict is a political death knell,” she stated. Thus, the main frontrunner for the 2027 presidential elections was not defeated by political or ideological rivals, but by the judiciary, which intervened directly in the political arena with a pre-emptive ruling.
We experienced something similar in Slovenia with Janez Janša in 2014, when the judiciary prevented the SDS from winning the parliamentary elections. The Patria case spanned three electoral periods: in 2008, a fabricated story was launched by Finnish television, which later morphed into the constructed claim that money from Patria had ended up with the SDS; before the early elections in 2011, a political trial began; and just ahead of the 2014 elections, the verdict became final. The case was a textbook product of communist ideology. In any truly lawful state, such a politically motivated prosecution would never have occurred, as this kind of witch hunt – through hijacked institutions – is inconsistent and serves one single purpose: to prevent a political opponent from winning an election. These are the methods of totalitarian regimes, the methods of the communist school of justice.
The communist regime (and its ideological and bloodline successors), which seemingly collapsed in 1991 when Slovenia gained independence and adopted a constitution declaring itself a parliamentary democracy, retained its influence over the judiciary (and other institutions). The Slovenian judiciary was never lustrated; judges with a socialist mindset, once directly subordinate to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, continued their work unhindered in the democratic state. They never severed ties with the totalitarian regime. Just for illustration: right before the collapse of the communist state, a survey was conducted among judges (published in Introduction to the Sociology of Law by Albin Igličar). It showed that 94.9% of professional judges in the unified labour courts were members of the League of Communists of Slovenia (100% on the Supreme Court and 61.9% on the lower courts). Nearly half of them stated that in their professional work they “always rely on the general social values and moral principles of socialism,” with emphasis on “the avant-garde role of the League of Communists” in implementing “new ideas and concepts in our sociopolitical system.” Additionally, 80% emphasised that “the moral principles of socialist society” played a significant role in their rulings. In short, judges ruled according to the wishes of the totalitarian regime.
The Slovenian judiciary never rid itself of this mindset. That is why in 2014, just before the parliamentary elections, it conducted a politically motivated trial and convicted the leader of the opposition, conservative politician Janez Janša. The Constitutional Court (which at the time still had some independence) later annulled the verdict due to violations of human rights – but the damage had already been done. And the reason for Janša’s conviction? It is truly astounding. Attention: Janez Janša was accused of “receiving a promise of a reward at an unknown location, at an unknown time, using an unknown means of communication”! Such an accusation would only have been possible under communist regimes – not in systems considered democratic and free.
Despite the scandalous verdict and obvious human rights violations, the institutions of the European Union (of which Slovenia is a member) remained silent. Unsurprisingly: the EU has become a swamp of communist ideology. The case of Le Pen only reinforces this fact.
