By: Peter Jančič
The resignation of RTVS management chief Zvezdan Martić after less than a year, following the ruling party’s largest purge in RTVS history to remove everything that could be right leaning, was the most surprising event of the campaign before the European elections.
Even more surprising than the police investigation at the home of TV host and director of Nova24TV, Boris Tomašič, who is not among the suspects of any crimes, but just before the elections, in which his daughter is running on the SDS list, police seized his phone and computer with a court order. This is intimidation of journalists and has also raised suspicions that the goal was to obtain information about his sources and other details about the SDS campaign. In Slovenia, it is not good to be naïve. Especially not in politics.
Surprisingly, this time, even politicians at the EU level responded, where, when it comes to Slovenia, the much more influential left, which controls the journalists’ association and all the major media, is usually more assertive.
The police strongly deny that the investigation at Tomašič’s place was pre-election or that they were acting on behalf of the ruling parties. But we all know that Golob’s people have been demanding this investigation for years and that his deputies are investigating the same thing with a special parliamentary commission for monitoring and discrediting the SDS and the media, which was long led by Mojca Pašek Šetinc. She was replaced after sharply criticising Defence Minister Marjan Šarec for attempting to transfer two million euros to POP TV, who is now a Svoboda party’s candidate in the EU elections. Since then, the investigation against media not controlled by the ruling parties has been led by Tamara Vonta, who once worked at POP TV. Vonta will certainly not make the same mistake as Pašek Šetinc by publicly opposing additional million-euro funding for her own television. This funding is, of course, not being investigated by the police. They must not.
Prime Minister Golob, along with the purge in the media, repeatedly replaced the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior and the police because they did not sufficiently follow his orders to crack down on “Janšism.” The opposition. It is clear whose side they are on and for whom they work. Golob has turned the police, prosecution, judiciary, and media into tools to stay in power. This is nothing new when it comes to the left. Let us recall that to bring Miro Cerar to power, they even jailed Janez Janša before the parliamentary elections in 2014, and all the rulings were later unanimously annulled by the constitutional court as legal shams. The court also noted that the trial was additionally unfair because the then-head of the supreme court, Branko Masleša, did not recuse himself. Incidentally, Masleša was a secretary of the communist party among the judges in the previous regime. A functionary of the totalitarian party who, as an independent judge after the abolition of the dictatorship, judges leaders of democratic parties. An independent judiciary of a very special kind. The freest.
We witnessed a repetition of this abuse of the judiciary in the last days before the start of voting in the European elections. On top of that, by seizing the phone and computer of TV host and director Tomašič, who is not suspected of anything, the ruling party has crossed a new, incredible line. They now openly monitor journalists’ and media communications and their documents. This has not happened since the collapse of communism. Imagine if the police raided the office and seized the phone and computer of Zvezdan Martić because they were investigating transfers from the government to RTVS at a time when Igor Kadunc was the general director and Martić was a journalist. Just as Tomašič was a journalist at the time of the contracts that the police are now investigating, allegedly involving millions of euros overpaid to five television programmes over three years, according to the ruling party. After the police seizure of Martić’s phone, a story would suddenly appear in some media about how Martić corresponded with Robert Golob, asking him to send twenty million for minorities, well, for salaries at his TVS. Golob has already sent an additional amount to the hundred million euros that all citizens must pay to RTVS. Nova24TV could operate for ten years with twenty million, according to balance sheets published on the Ajpes portal. With the annual contribution for RTVS, they could operate for half a century. Or even longer.
The propaganda zeal of Primož Cirman and his Necenzurirano team regarding the investigation into Telekom and Nova24TV in recent days has a private background. Cirman learned about the investigation from Golob’s people before anyone else, which is an achievement for a journalist. During the administration appointed by Marjan Šarec, now under police investigation, Necenzurirano lost a lucrative private business on Telekom’s Siol.net, which had previously been arranged for them by Golob’s clan. This business was even more profitable because Vesna Vuković was also receiving additional payments to a parallel company from Golob, Klemen Boštjančič, and Gorenje… Over a few years, more than one hundred thousand euros. Not to television, but to some private individuals.
I know their history because in 2020, when Šarec’s government had just fallen, I took over the management of Siol.net as an editor. During Šarec’s time, Siol.net was without a responsible editor for a long time, even though the law requires every media outlet to have one. Without a proper editor, it is easier to exert political influence. Cirman, Vesna Vuković, and Tomaž Modic stopped working for Siol.net under a special contract just a few months before my arrival, even before Šarec’s resignation. But they were never employed in the editorial office, which is self-evident for serious journalists in a serious editorial office—they must be employed. So that it is clear who they work for. So that they are not corrupt. And so that the entire media is not contaminated. When Robert Golob took power two years later, Vuković became the general secretary of Svoboda, which then appointed its own editor for Siol.net with a purge. Cirman dissolved the parallel company to which Golob, Boštjančič, and others were transferring money, and Modic was engaged by Svoboda in Mojca Pašek Šetinc’s investigative commission to investigate the leadership of Telekom from the time of Marjan Šarec, during which they lost their politically arranged journalistic private business.
This is Robert Golob’s independent journalism, which is then cited as a credible source by POP TV, which, when Necenzurirano got the job at Telekom, also saw its fee increased twelvefold, for which the police are now investigating Nova24TV. For much lower amounts, of course. Which do not go to foreign owners, as they do in the case of POP TV.
When the previous chairman of the board of Telekom, Cveto Seršen, reduced payments to POP TV and announced that PROPLUS would also be sued for draining Telekom’s resources, the company responded with a counterclaim worth 58 million euros. These are the higher amounts. However, today no one mentions the leftist “takeover” of ownership of Planet from the Greek co-owner, for which Telekom had to pay the Greek company Antenna Group 17,595,000 euros for a 34% stake in this company, plus default interest and arbitration costs in Switzerland, following an arbitration ruling in Switzerland.
There were no investigations and no seizing of phones and computers with Marjan Šarec, who is a Svoboda candidate in the elections, for two million euros. Even for our crazy country, that would be too much. Moreover, Šarec is in a peculiar position. As prime minister, he became famous for a letter in which he demanded that companies in state and parastatal ownership should not fund Nova24TV and similar media for political reasons. Now, the state is investigating directors who were appointed during his time for allegedly over-financing these media. Compared to other achievements, this is mere pocket change.
When Šarec was still in power, Telekom and other companies certainly adhered to the demands to suppress opposition-friendly media wherever possible. The media outlet Nova24TV was already being declared a party mouthpiece, a factory of hate speech, and much more to justify their abuse of power. This is still being done today by Golob’s propaganda apparatus and the ruling parties with Necenzurirano, Nika Kovač, and other party fighters who declare themselves completely non-party affiliated. And they lie to you before the elections.
You can read the full record of Šarec’s statement, when as head of the government he called on state-owned companies not to advertise in “naughty” media, here.
The peak of the “European” campaign will be ensured by the ruling parties in the coming days, when by recognising Palestine after the brutal terrorist attacks by Palestinians under the leadership of Hamas, they will bypass the biggest Western allies, namely the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, and others, dramatically worsening relations with the friendly state of Israel. Israel helped us in our independence, enabling us to protect our country with weapons that were neither Russian nor Yugoslav under Russian license. Good cooperation with Israel, a modern democratic state where several million Arabs live with all rights, also took place in other areas, such as medicine.
At best, this pre-election manoeuvre to gain political points will not cause significant damage to export-oriented companies and the country, nor will it exacerbate the conflict in the Middle East, as we are a small and not very important country.
At worst, this pre-election game by the ruling parties in the interests of Iran and Russia and against the interests of the USA, the EU, and the West will bring a serious bill. Few believe that Hamas’s utterly inhumane crimes, which triggered this war, were committed randomly and without the influence of states with longer-term goals, and those who do believe it usually do so out of naivety, which politicians certainly should not be.
The connection of our politics with the Iranian and Russian concept of politics is also shown by the purges at RTVS and the police investigations just before the elections in the media to intimidate people. These are patterns of undemocratic states. Dictatorships. Not to mention the billions that, during the left-wing government of Borut Pahor, travelled through NLB for the intelligence supermen and Mickey Mouses of the Iranian regime in the West.
If a bill for all this does come, it will be paid by ordinary people and not the current ruling politicians who concocted all this for their own benefit in a ruthless struggle to retain power.