By: Peter Jančič (Spletni časopis)
We caught our Prime Minister Robert Golob once again spreading falsehoods and concealing documents that would reveal inconvenient facts about him.
This time, his identity was not stolen in Romania, as the rumours claimed about commissions in the Balkans, when he responded that he did not have any foreign bank accounts. At that time, as editor-in-chief of Siol.net, I wrote in a column that I did not believe him because he had an account in Romania. This week, his “identity” was spoiled by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, when she sent a letter to Parliament that Golob had long been hiding from the MPs. In this letter, she informed our Prime Minister that she was rejecting the candidacy of Tomaž Vesel, as he lacked the necessary experience and competencies for the role. In the letter, von der Leyen set a deadline by which Golob had to immediately send a new candidate. Recently, that candidate has become Marta Kos – a political activist known for her rhetoric.
Golob: Vesel stepped down on his own
Before the letter was revealed, Golob stated:
“Look. Tomaž Vesel made the decision himself to withdraw his candidacy. He also explained his reasons. I believe he is the only one who can provide an explanation. As far as I know, he told me that the reasons were mainly due to differing views on how the European Commission should operate. Tomaž Vesel is an expert, and the President of the EC was looking for a different profile. Therefore, he decided to step down, as he assessed it would be difficult to collaborate in such a commission. These are the reasons he explained to me, and there is no conspiracy…”
The Prime Minister was speaking falsehoods and knew that he was speaking falsehoods. This is also called lying. Vesel did not step down because of differing concepts or because he is an expert. He stepped down because he was rejected by the head of the European Commission, as he lacked the competencies for the commissioner position. This was something we already knew, even without the letter. But Golob concealed the letter from the MPs and the public. He gained power through similar concealments. And back then, many media outlets accepted it calmly, uninterested in the facts. This time, many of them, along with ruling politicians, slandered the chairman of the Committee for European Affairs, Franc Breznik (SDS), who did what everyone should have done, especially the media. He demanded the official government documents. And since he did not receive them from our Prime Minister, he requested them from the President of the European Commission. She responded normally, sending him a document that contained nothing confidential and had no confidentiality markings. However, it was highly embarrassing for the Prime Minister and our government because it showed that Golob had lied. And he was not alone in this.
Von der Leyen did not lie or conceal anything for Golob.
By concealing this from the Parliament and the public, Robert Golob and his associates abused their positions. If the previous Prime Minister, Janez Janša, had done this, the media would have lynched him. So would the opposition in Parliament. But now, with a few rare exceptions, everyone was silent.
Respectable Tarča, Delo embarrassed itself
Among those who at least did their job was Tarča show by Erika Žnidaršič, where it was unofficially revealed that the letter exists and that it includes a deadline by which Golob must propose a new commissioner. The most embarrassing, however, was the newspaper Delo, which openly propagated the false government spin that there was no letter from the President of the European Commission. Journalist Uroš Esih reported this based on information from “sources” that he concealed from the public. The reason for the concealment was that it would have been awkward if people knew who was lying. Esih had previously been involved in a similar spread of lies by Mladina editor Gregor Repovž on Tanja Gobec’s show.
Gobec, along with Mladina journalist Marcel Štefančič, is part of Golob’s “depoliticisation” of RTVS, which is turning the media into an occasional tool of extreme, low-level propaganda for government parties.
The motive for the prime minister’s concealment and false spin, that Vesel resigned on his own, was that Golob was trying to protect the reputation of Vesel, himself, and the coalition, which was greatly embarrassed by the situation. Proposing a candidate without qualifications and then using a voting machine in parliament to declare him excellent is embarrassing for all involved. This includes the government MPs, and especially all those media and journalists who uncritically praised Vesel as a candidate. They embarrassed the country as well.
With Marta Kos’ candidacy, we once again hear that she is a candidate for the entire country, for all people, around whom we must unite. The people’s candidacy with Vesel ended even worse than it did with Alenka Bratušek, who, after stepping down as head of government, tried to catapult herself into a well-paid job in the European Commission but failed after a disastrous hearing in the European Parliament. Vesel did not even get that far. Whether Marta Kos will pass her hearing remains to be seen. The media in Brussels mention her among those who could fall due to a lack of political experience, as well as due to turbulent dilemmas regarding her cooperation with the secret political police during her journalism career, and her peculiar concern for maintaining good relations with Russia when it attacked Ukraine, and her lament over the supposedly dangerous closeness to the U.S. Beware: we must not get too close to our ally the U.S., with whom we are aligned in NATO and which is the EU’s main military ally. It may have been a slip, but Kos is an expert in public appearances, and it seemed she was not just another Bratušek. Yet, it was not her only slip this week. She also stumbled in front of MPs when she denied that her paid advertisement against the SDS in 2008 targeted SDS. Of course, it did. She lied. She knows it.
I had already unofficially learned, when Vesel was being convinced to resign, that there was a letter from von der Leyen in the background. And so did many journalists. At least, I assume so. I am nothing special. When Golob failed to send Vesel’s resignation letter and von der Leyen’s letter to parliament, I personally requested them from the government. People have a right to know. The government responded that they had sent everything important to parliament. They had not. They concealed it from the MPs. Because if the public saw the letter, it would embarrass the prime minister and the ruling coalition. In such a situation, there is not much journalists can do. We can only point out the issue and initiate a procedure with the Information Commissioner, but this usually takes a long time, and the results are rarely worth the effort. This time, the Commissioner responded that journalists do not have the right to receive documents as a response to inquiries, and that I would have to wait a few months to even file an appeal. This response shows that the media, and thus the public, do not have the right to the most basic information about government operations, and, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the Information Commissioner is primarily authorised to prevent public access to public information. This was evident with Vesel when the parliament censored his resume, sent by the government, under the pretext that it was private. They did this due to the Information Commissioner, who punishes officials for releasing personal data. A candidate’s resume for an important position is private business. If people know too much, there are problems. For instance, with Agriculture Minister Mateja Čalušić, who does not have a university degree. It is better to hide the resume. Afterward, the President of the European Commission rejected Vesel due to a lack of qualifications. But Golob did not reject Čalušić.
I do not trust Lukšič much, but a little
We have already witnessed similar concealment as with von der Leyen’s letter in the scandal with the unusual bank account. In April 2022, I wrote that I did not believe Robert Golob’s claim, in response to a story about commissions in deals in Bosnia, that he did not have a foreign account where he could receive commissions. I did not believe him because he has such an account in Romania, as I wrote as the editor-in-chief of Siol.net in a column titled What is Robert Golob hiding from us. In the following days, it turned out that Golob could not be trusted. The account in his name was indeed opened in Romania at Raiffeisen Bank. Since 2018. Right next to the GEN-I office there. In the column, I detailed what candidates attempt to hide. That is journalism. Everything else is propaganda. With Golob, much was hidden. Even under-the-table payments to a company owned by the journalist whose articles Siol.net used to publish, Vesna Vuković, who, after Golob’s election victory, became the general secretary of Svoboda party and helped replace me as editor of Siol.net. Since then, Siol.net no longer asks uncomfortable questions about what the prime minister is hiding.
When the leader of the opposition SDS parliamentary group, Jelka Godec, later tried to ask the prime minister in parliament when he reported the identity theft allegedly connected to the Romanian account to the authorities, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, forbade the question. It cannot even be asked. Embarrassing letters and resumes are concealed. If the Information Commissioner does not help with the concealment, the Speaker of the National Assembly will ensure that the public remains in the dark.
Later, despite the ban, Golob answered the question.
There is still a small possibility that Prime Minister Robert Golob did not lie, that the media did not spread false spins for him, and that important information was not systematically hidden from the public, which would have embarrassed the ruling coalition. This possibility was raised by former SD President Igor Lukšič, who believes that what is behind all this is such a high level of incompetence and stupidity that a lie would be an improvement.
Since former SD President Tanja Fajon, who was taken down by Svoboda before the European elections when Golob’s responsibility for the judicial building scandal was also pinned on the SD, is also in the running for the commissioner position, I do not entirely believe Lukšič.
But a little.
