By: Dr Metod Berlec
“Slovenia in March 1994 was not just on the brink of a coup d’état, as was speculated at the time, but well beyond it. However, this coup was not carried out by the Slovenian Army, but by the UDBA mafia or a group (“Organisation”) under the control of Milan Kučan. Documents available today prove that the then Slovenian neo-communist structure abused a number of state and semi-state institutions for an illegal internal reckoning with political opponents.”
(Janez Janša in the book “1994 – Depala vas Conspiracy”, 2024, page 59)
These days we remember the 30th anniversary of the conspiracy of the old powers, the Depala vas affair, which strongly marked the Slovenian political scene in the mid-1990s. On March 20th, 1994, the security organ of the Ministry of Defence arrested a police agent, a spy who was trading in confidential military documents at Depala vas. The old undemocratic political structure under the leadership of the last party chief and then-president of the republic, Milan Kučan, exploited this event both with media and politically, and removed (despite massive protests in front of the National Assembly on March 28th, 1994) the then Minister of Defence, Janez Janša. At that time, Janša, similar to today, represented the symbolic last bastion, the defender of the DEMOS political establishment, which had declared independence for the Republic of Slovenia in 1991. The words Janša spoke on March 29th, 1994, at the end of his speech in the National Assembly, still sound prophetic today: “After today, the minimal balance in our society, which is in transition, will be disrupted, and everything that was talked about as a soft transition, long-term reforms, and the like, will fall away like a very transparent disguise.” With the Depala vas conspiracy, the old regime succeeded, after just over three years, in deeply taking over the Slovenian state or subjugating it to itself.
Today, thirty years later, we have in power a ruling coalition that is the ideological successor of the forces that prevented Slovenia from becoming a modern democratic European state with at least two equal elites that would alternate in power approximately at even time intervals based on democratic and free elections, and responsibly oversee each other. In power, we have a political establishment that did not come to power because of its abilities, values, or positive programme, but rather a group that came to power due to Slovenia’s distorted media construction of reality, which demonised the previous centre-right government and promoted supposedly “new faces” gathered in the Gibanje Svoboda party under the leadership of Robert Golob. The latter has proven to be completely unsuitable for the position of prime minister, as evidenced by the unsuccessful handling of societal problems, including the wave of strikes we are witnessing. Under his rule, as recently shown by the research of the American Heritage Foundation: the 2024 Index of Economic Freedom, Slovenia is dangerously regressing in terms of prosperity and quality of life. The Index of Economic Freedom for Slovenia during Golob’s government, as recently highlighted by the Assembly for the Republic when citing this research, has dramatically plummeted. “For the year 2022, during the government of Janez Janša, this index stood at 70.5, placing us among countries with a free economy. However, during Golob’s government, it plummeted to 68.5 last year, and for this year to 65.9. The decline in the index is accelerating. In this regard, we lag behind even a number of post-communist countries: Estonia 77.8, Lithuania 72.9, Latvia 71.5, Czech Republic 70.7, Bulgaria 68.5, Slovakia 68.3, Croatia 67.7, and Poland 66.0.” And as noted by the Assembly for the Republic, the current government is solely responsible for the decline in the index of economic freedom. “The nation has not changed since 2022, only the government has changed.”
In the opposition SDS, which is organising a protest gathering “ENOUGH!” today at 5 p.m. in Congress Square in Ljubljana, they note that instead of addressing developmental issues, demographics, healthcare reform, relieving the economy, and taxpayers, the government is almost exclusively engaged in staffing and settling scores with those who think differently, damaging public finances, and managing public funds wastefully and imprudently. For this reason, the SDS parliamentary group proposes a consultative referendum on confidence in the government with the following question: “Are you in favour of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, led by Dr Robert Golob, to end its mandate and to call for preliminary elections for members of the National Assembly?”
The answer is undoubtedly clear: “YES”. Enough of the madness of the ruling party…