By: Dr Metod Berlec
There are only ten days left until the parliamentary elections. We are witnessing a heated pre‑election atmosphere that is gaining new momentum with each passing day.
In recent days, audio recordings of conversations have begun appearing on the Facebook profile Maske padajo, featuring the former secretary‑general of the Freedom Movement and the right hand of the party president and prime minister Robert Golob, Vesna Vuković, speaking with various officials of the party and the government. They are astonishingly vulgar and revealing. Naturally, the recordings are highly damaging for those in power, which is why they immediately declared them to be forgeries, created or manipulated with artificial intelligence. But experts warn that they are genuine. This raises the question of who illegally recorded the notorious Vuković or ordered the recording. According to Bojan Požar, it may even have been Golob himself, who in autumn 2023 allegedly carried out a preventive check (on the advice of Miloš Milović?) into what his team for media battles and special operations – Damir Črnčec, Vesna Vuković, Primož Cirman, and Tomaž Modic – was doing. Let us recall that there were already numerous tensions within the party at that time, which is why Vuković was no longer secretary‑general of the Freedom Movement after 31 March 2024.
The most widely discussed recording is the one in which Vuković, in conversation with the government’s secretary‑general Barbara Kolenko Helbl, claims that the former director of the Infrastructure Directorate, Bojan Tičar, revealed irregularities in the construction project of the second railway track Divača–Koper. The recording includes allegations of financial gain for the infrastructure minister Alenka Bratušek through a company from Styria that was allegedly involved in the project. Vuković literally says: “This Tičar … hey Barbara … he told me directly where Alenka is stealing.” The sums involved were supposedly in the millions, with at least part of the money allegedly ending up with the infrastructure minister. Before this, a recording had been published of a conversation between Vuković and Freedom Movement MP Tamara Vonta, in which the former secretary‑general explains to the MP, who chairs the parliamentary inquiry commission on illegal financing of parties and political propaganda in the media, that the commission was established to go after Janša. In doing so, Vuković also verbally attacks the commission’s first chair, Mojca Šetinc Pašek, claiming she was “not a trustworthy person,” a view with which Vonta agreed at the time.
The published recordings also include the above‑mentioned group attacking Tina Gaber, as well as vulgar comments by former health minister Danijel Bešič Loredan about the president of the republic, Nataša Pirc Musar, and the list goes on. In short, the recordings expose that the group currently in power operates like a kind of criminal‑mafia network that should by no means hold the levers of authority. Yet this harmful group, judging by their latest statements for Kolektor’s in‑house newspaper Delo, is still supported by both the last party chief, Milan Kučan, and his notorious adviser Niko Toš. Probably only until the bitter end that is now approaching…