By: Petra Janša
I recommend you to read the conversation with the Supreme Judge Jan Zobec, who, like a voice crying in the desert, has been pointing out anomalies in the Slovenian judiciary for years.
Because of his critical view of the functioning of the Slovenian legal state, especially the judiciary, he has appeared before the Ethics and Integrity Commission of the Judicial Council several times; finally, the latter showed him a red card, saying that he acted unethically regarding the statements in the case of Masleša’s diploma. As Zobec said for our weekly, the ethics commission “for a legal position that is not liked by the highest political power in the judiciary, even if this position is based on convincing argumentation, supported by the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and on indisputable, true facts, declares the one who uttered and justified it unethical, it accuses him of unethical conduct”, as was he in recent days. The aforementioned commission accused Zobec of acting, you will not believe, with bad, evil intentions. Zobec says that in this case they even go beyond the infamous Article 133 of the Criminal Code of the SFRY, where the defendant had to be proven, in addition to evil intent, the untruthfulness of the facts that the defendant disseminated. “Today, 33 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ethics commission declares the truth to be unethical.” In the interview, Zobec recommends to all readers that they find and read the letter of Vaclav Havel on the website, which he addressed in 1975 to Gustav Husak, the then General Secretary of Czechoslovak communist party, and the content should be compared with the state of democracy in Slovenia. Among other things, Havel wrote down the following postulates of the communist rulers in this letter: “Avoid politics as much as possible. Leave it to us. Just do what we tell you, do not think too deeply and do not poke your nose into things that do not concern you. Do your work in silence, take care of yourself, and everything will be fine.”
Zobec notes that everyone who has a more critical view of the functioning of the Slovenian rule of law, especially the judiciary, will find it difficult to articulate their thoughts in Slovenia.