By: Franci Kindlhofer
Interview of the leader of the Svoboda party Dr Robert Golob on March 16th, has already triggered a lot of attention, hints, attempts at interpretation, laughter and, of course, discomfort among citizens. Finally, it is a political party, for which some are predicting a successful second place and related predictions that this party will cooperate, if not even form a government.
I took half a day to listen to Golob’s verbal masterpiece countless times to extract something useful from the content, from which I could at least partially gain, as a voter, an insight into his political and personal goals. I even tried to find historical comparisons from Marx, through Hitler to Putin. I did not even look for comparisons between democratic politicians, because Dr Robert Golob excluded the democratic option from his goals from the very beginning with his unbridled rhetoric: “The point is not in changing the constitution, the point is that we want to transform Slovenia”. So, in transforming his style, he does not need to consider the constitution in which the foundations of democracy are cemented. How he intends to do this is less clear than Marx and Engels were in their Communist Manifesto. There, they both clearly speak out for communism, which will abolish private ownership of the means of production and land, abolish the family, take away the nation’s homeland and national affiliation, and above all personal freedom, as everyone will have to serve only common communist things. Golob is much wider in these respects and leaves all options open. Those who support him and win the election will rule. He no longer speaks of his party with specific goals, but of CIVIL SOCIETY, as a universal movement to which other parties will join and merge after the elections. He did not mention what will happen to those that will not join the movement.
“We are already talking to civil society, because civil society is what we believe in and is part of our Slovenian society… I reiterate that we need to form a post-election coalition that will bring the demands of civil society into the legislative framework as soon as possible”. Here we must ask ourselves, what does Golob mean by this civil society? Is it represented by individuals who want to plunder the state again to meet their own needs and goals, such as Milan Kučan, Zoran Janković, former udba members and communists, ZZB and others? This vague vision of his reminds me very much of 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany. He, too, did not speak clearly about his plans, but covered them up with general “threatening” problems that threatened the German state and which could only be defeated by the common National Socialist movement. Golob and Hitler are surprisingly similar in that segment when it comes to the time immediately after the elections. Golob talks about the irrelevance of the constitution, about the quick procedures for consolidating power, as he himself says: “We will not wait, we will not give them six months of procrastination to destroy the country”.
We need to be careful here. Just two days after the solemn takeover of power in Potsdam near Berlin, Hitler submitted a law to parliament on March 23rd, 1933, securing all powers for a period of four years. Officially, the law was called the “Law for Overcoming the Distress of the People and the State”, briefly called the “Ermächtigungsgesetz”, which means the Law on Powers. The first point provided for the transfer of laws from parliament to government, point 2 allowed the government to amend the constitution, point 3 transferred the drafting of laws from the president to the prime minister – chancellor, and the last point limited the validity of law for four years and to the existing government. With this, Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship was sealed. Such a scenario can be seen from Golob’s interview.
That is why here is my serious call and warning to all voters: do not fall for the vague and seemingly open options of Robert Golob. Even if his statements sound ridiculous, frivolous and his goals harmless and unfeasible, we must be aware that around him, like hyenas, gather people who are more capable than him and use him only for the Trojan horse of the old nomenclature.
Franci Kindlhofer is a publicist, vice-president of the Association of Political Prisoners and Other Victims of Communist Violence.