By: Dr Metod Berlec
Slovenia’s domestic political scene has become almost bizarrely predictable over the past decade and a half. Since October 2011, when more than two dozen “well-known public figures” of the transitional left, led by the last head of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia, Milan Kučan, “pilgrimaged” to Ljubljana’s city hall and publicly endorsed the candidacy of the controversial Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković in the parliamentary elections, we in the land beneath Triglav have witnessed a nearly identical political ritual time and again. Behind-the-scenes patrons install someone before each parliamentary election who presents themselves as a centre-left politician, allegedly untainted by politics and capable of uniting people, while solemnly swearing that they will under no circumstances enter a post-election coalition with Janša’s SDS. Just recall the political developments surrounding the rise of Miro Cerar, Marjan Šarec, and Robert Golob onto the national political stage.
The founding congress of Vladimir Prebilič’s party Prerod (Renewal) in Kočevje delivered rhetorical flourish and a recycling of old political faces, from Dušan Vučko, Brane Golubović, Robert Pavšič, Mitja Bervar, Dragan Matić, Klemen Grošelj, Andrej Bertoncelj, and the list goes on. The newly elected president claimed that the party’s programme is ambitious because it places “Slovenia as a safe, healthy, connected, competitive, and learning community” at the forefront. According to him, such a programme demands “cooperation that transcends divisions and uncompromising commitment when it comes to fundamental values and goals.” Of course, these are just empty words for naïve voters who, since the disappearance of Drnovšek’s LDS from politics, vote for “new faces” through which the left ensures the status quo is maintained. In Prebilič’s case, it is telling that during his mayoral tenure from 2010 to 2024, the municipality of Kočevje dropped in the national development index from 0.91 to 0.86. In this case, we can repeat the words once uttered by the controversial Karl Erjavec: “A new face is a new mistake.”
Naturally, the charm of parliamentary democracy lies in its ability to refresh itself through new faces in politics. But the recent example of MEP Milan Zver proves that experience and persistence matter. After more than two years, he forced the European Commission via the EU Court to disclose the infamous third point of the memo “What we want from Accetto,” which Brussels had long kept hidden. In it, the then-European Commissioners advised Vice President of the EC Věra Jourová to examine the views of the President of the Slovenian Constitutional Court regarding the RTV Slovenia law, a law that was under review by the court at the time. This revelation further confirms suspicions of scandalous political pressure on Slovenia’s Constitutional Court (even with Brussels’ help), exerted by Golob’s government. As a result, the then-president of the Constitutional Court, Matej Accetto, succumbed to the pressure and enabled the implementation of the controversial law, through which the government took control of RTV Slovenia and began a brutal crackdown on “Janšists”…