By: Dr Metod Berlec
The year 2023 came to a close, beginning with the funeral of the former head of the infamous UDBA (Yugoslav secret police), Janez Zemljarič, with state honours at the Žale cemetery in Ljubljana. It continued with the public apology by then Minister of Health, Danijel Bešič Loredan, to the notorious Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković and the scandalous closure of the Museum of Slovenian Independence.
The neo-socialist government, led by Robert Golob, on the proposal of the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, engaged in a shameful move that reveals their petty fifth-column mentality. They showed themselves as revengeful, intellectually limited Yugoslav nostalgics fixated on the failed socialist past. Officially, they merged the Museum of Slovenian Independence and the Museum of Modern History of Slovenia, establishing a new public institution, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary History of Slovenia.
With this move, the government, as the left-wing Mladina magazine noted shortly before, “killed two birds with one stone”, as they also got rid of two directors (Željko Oset and Jože Dežman) who did not suit them, throwing them out of their positions. The ruling coalition (GS, SD, and Levica) thus abolished a museum explicitly dedicated to Slovenian independence, an event representing the brightest point in Slovenian history.
In February, March, and the following months of 2023, the (financial and personnel) rewarding of quasi-cultural figures and so-called non-governmental organisations (NGOs) continued, which had brought the ruling coalition to power. In early February, Svetlana Makarovič stood out, who, in recent years, had gained notoriety for her primitive hatred towards the Church, dissenters, the previous Janša government, SDS, and more. She read her hostile, vulgar, and primitive poems at Republic Square in Ljubljana.
She was part of the hateful leftist circus, executed every Friday with strong support from dominant media, by leftist protesters. They used iconography, with posters, banners, and burning effigies, that would not be shameful even for National Socialists. Therefore, the applause given to Makarovič by the ruling elites after her appearance on the stage of Cankar Hall on the Slovenian cultural holiday was understandable but also disgracefully significant.
In March 2023, Prime Minister Robert Golob, who at that time was mainly dealing with verbal predictions of reforms, analyses, timelines, and the establishment of so-called strategic councils, negatively surprised again by appointing the notorious Nika Kovač as the president of the Strategic Council for Combating Hate Speech.
Simultaneously, under the leadership of Golob, the executive branch exerted clear pressure on the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia during the spring months of 2023 in the case of the amendment to the law on RTV Slovenia. With the help of the media, political pressures, and influential networks from behind the scenes, Golob succeeded in subordinating the Constitutional Court as well. In reality, four judges out of nine, at the end of May, illegitimately revoked their decision to temporarily suspend the implementation of part of the law amending the RTVS Act, which had been adopted by five judges out of nine on February 16th last year.
The constitutional initiative represented the only legal means by which the petitioners, under the leadership of the then President of the Programme Council of RTVS, Peter Gregorčič, prevented the current authorities from arbitrary, politically subordinate actions against RTVS. With the lifting of the temporary suspension, the Constitutional Court “protected the legislator (state authority) against individuals who, in accordance with human rights law, could be the sole bearers of human rights”. This was followed by personnel purges against the leadership of RTVS, which was disliked by the ruling coalition, as well as editors and journalists.
Certainly, Golob’s neo-socialist government continued its attacks on the opposition last year, internal disputes, ministerial changes, and an economic policy unfriendly to artisans and entrepreneurs. To the entire economy. In legislative changes, they continued with the policy of higher taxes and new burdens for the economy. Consequently, this is reflected in the decline of the gross domestic product and increasing difficulties for the Slovenian economy.
At the same time, the government continued to dismantle the protective fence on our southern border, even though illegal migrations along the Western Balkans route were significantly increasing. As a result, there is a growing number of illegal migrants from Africa and Asia in the country, successfully exploiting the right to asylum. This is particularly noticeable in Ljubljana, where the ethnic composition of the population is visibly changing. The Slovenian capital is undergoing a dangerous transformation…
In this context, we must be aware that the Slovenian state, under the current ruling neo-socialist government, is fundamentally endangered, as evidenced by the erosion and primitive, unconstitutional subordination of institutions of the Slovenian state, including the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia. The latter allowed a controversial purge at RTV Slovenia in an extremely contentious manner, which reached a new brutal climax just before the new year.
The newly appointed leadership of RTVS placed the responsible editor of the second TVS programme, Rajko Gerič, and over a tenth of Panorama employees, who are not politically aligned with Robert Golob, Tanja Fajon, and Luka Mesec, on furlough, as described by Peter Jančič. “They have been eliminated. At the same time, they are hiring journalist and supervisor Marcel Štefančič from Mladina on a contractual basis, a known political activist for Golob, and they are bringing back programmes by journalists without education…”
This means that the ruling nomenclature is appointing people to leading positions who have totalitarian tendencies, who do not understand the functioning of parliamentary democracy in the slightest, let alone the division of power. We have limited individuals in power who think in a Stalinist/Bolshevik manner and will do everything to maintain power by abusing state institutions, with the support of law enforcement agencies and regime media. At the trough…
Therefore, in the year that is starting these days, namely in 2024, we face a challenging effort for a political turnaround, for a shift towards a democratic and European Republic of Slovenia. Towards normality…
- S. On behalf of the editorial board of Demokracija and on my behalf, I wish you all the best in 2024! God bless Slovenia! God bless you!