A few days ago, we remembered the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (SHS), which was ceremoniously proclaimed at the Congress Square in Ljubljana on October 29, 1918.
This was an important historic event for the Slovene nation, which at least temporarily brought about the birth of the Slovenian statehood. On the same day, the secession from Austria-Hungary and the establishment of the State of SHS were also announced by the Croatian Parliament in Zagreb. Two days later, on October 31, the first Slovenian national government, headed by Josip vitez Pogačnik, was appointed.
Formally, the National People’s Council of the SHS was above it. Its chairman was the Chief of the SLS Party Anton Korošec, who was the highest and externally independent state power in the State of SHS. In practice, however, the Slovenian national government was completely independent.
Unfortunately, that was short-lived, since as of December 1, 1918, due to various causes, the State of SHS and the Kingdom of Serbia were merged, creating a unitary Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Instead of the cosmopolitan Central European Vienna, our capital city became the Balkan Belgrade.
The Slovenes got zip of their statehood. That was the case in 1945 when we found ourselves in a totalitarian communist Yugoslavia. It was not until 1991 that the Slovenian nation, under the leadership of the victorious coalition Demos and its president Jože Pučnik, finally won its independence and statehood.
By joining NATO and the European Union in 2004, Slovenia became an equal part of the European family. During the EU presidency in the first half of 2008, under the leadership of Janez Janša, Slovenia even came to be known as the so-called “Lighthouse of Europe”.
However, it is becoming increasingly clear that Slovenia is becoming an increasingly less important factor under the incompetent left governments. This was recently pointed out in the study of the London-based think tank ECFR (European Council for External Relations), which placed Slovenia, among the 28 EU member states, on the 25th and last place according to the overall influence of the country on EU policy. Slovenia shares this position with Croatia, Latvia and Malta.
If this continues, it is bad news for us! Will we be left without a state soon?