By: Janez Remškar, dr. med.
The elections to the Assembly of the United Work (ZZD) were a great fraud by the successors of the communists at the beginning of the democratisation of Slovenia. But this was just the beginning. In the following 30 years, with the help of the media, and in recent times the so-called depoliticised media, we have lived in a country where fraud or lies are a constant and without consequences.
We began democratisation and independence with a great deception! The 1990 elections to the ZZD were not fair. In the ZZD, the “proud successors of the communists” received a much larger majority compared to the other two chambers. The way the elections were held in the ZZD was among the first important “decrees” with consequences, especially regarding the distribution of the so-called social property until then and the subsequent political power tied to capital.
At that time, I was a delegate in the ZZD (non-professional, as I worked at Golnik while serving in the assembly), elected on the Demos list to represent healthcare. The elections to this chamber – alongside the Social-Political Chamber and the Chamber of Municipalities in the then National Assembly of the RS – were free and democratic, but they were not fair. Prof. Dr Lovro Šturm, former Minister of Justice and member of the Demos electoral headquarters, explained in a lecture organised by the Study Centre for National Reconciliation on the 20th anniversary of the first free elections on April 7th, 2010, that the Slovenian Assembly passed an electoral law in December 1989. “The law allowed new political organisations to participate in the first free and democratic elections in Slovenia, which were held on April 8th, Palm Sunday,” he emphasised. He added that the newly established political parties, united in the Demos coalition, were at a disadvantage compared to the parties that were the successors of the former social-political organisations (the League of Communists of Slovenia, the Socialist Alliance of Working People, and the Union of Socialist Youth of Slovenia). These organisations could operate everywhere – in all organisations, in the state administration, public services, and in work organisations – but the new ones could not. As a result, the then-political organisations had a significant advantage during the elections in 7,000 polling stations for the ZZD across Slovenia. This was evident, as Demos, despite a completely different general opinion, only gained 25 delegates in the ZZD (data from the book by Dr Rosvita Pesek The Independence of Slovenia).
The consequences were evident during the election of the chairman of this chamber. The proposer was known for most of those elected to the ZZD. The majority came from the old political structures, but not all! Among the 55 delegates, unbelievably, 18 were independent. This is telling because among them was Colonel Milan Aksentijević and the long-time headmaster of the Celje High School, Jože Zupančič, who became the chairman of the ZZD. The acceptance of legislation, including the privatisation law of the previous “social” property, one of the most important pieces of legislation, took place under the leadership of the old political structures. The words of the elected chairman Zupančič say it all. From his book Between School Benches and Parliamentary Seats, I quote: “Well, I also discovered something. I got an absolute majority (55 votes). This means that Demos is in the minority in our (my) chamber! It is the opposition in the ZZD, and the ZZD is a kind of opposition in the Assembly, which can support or stop everything that is adopted in the legislative field.”
It is important to note that as long as a specific chamber did not address certain legislation or adopt a resolution on a proposal, such a proposal could not be discussed at a joint session of all three chambers!
The privatisation legislation thus remained in the drawer of the ZZD president until it was adjusted in such a way that it became acceptable to the majority of “red directors” who, according to Dr Jože Mencinger, bought worthless shares with bank loans, and the so-called PIDO barons. This led to a large-scale theft of previously shared property and, consequently, to the substantial political influence of the “renewed, democratised” successors of the communists, now organised in various parties, which continues to this day.