By: Jože Biščak
In the modern history of Slovenia, the elites of the parallel mechanism have probably never been so nervous, but at the same time never so ruthless and self-confident. The phrase “threat to democracy”, which they use to point the finger at the centre-right government, is media programming of public opinion. Not a day goes by that they do not stumble on the right (especially on the Prime Minister) and label those who think differently as fascists.
Janez Janša often sets up a mirror for the media when he utters rather harsh criticism. Completely legitimate and justified. He draws attention to manipulation, hypocrisy, lies and perversion of facts. What would you think of a medium that manipulates numbers in such a way that the salaries of right-wing politicians look higher than the salaries of left-wing ones? This was done by national television. Not for the first time. And when someone publicly warns them about this, freedom of the media and democracy are at stake, and they then share press rewards with each other for wasting ink on manipulative and false stories.
Janša’s criticism of the media was never a threat to anyone. Editors, journalists, media experts, self-proclaimed civil society and their political accomplices are only afraid of losing the entrenched monopoly that monitors in an Orwellian way what and how something goes public and what the public cannot hear. And when someone stumbles upon it, all hell breaks loose. The whole machinery is triggered, shouting how the freedom of the media is threatened. But this becomes a threat only when manipulative news and false stories are criticised that exalt leftist ideology and glorify their apologists.
The media is not the only one. The tentacles of political corruption reach to the top of the judiciary, especially to the part that is supposed to be completely independent and impartial – the judiciary. Countless times it became actively involved in the election campaign. It is no different this time either. Without a blush of shame, the administrative court vehemently declared the Gibanje Svoboda party a parliamentary party. This is a treacherous abuse of law to fight centre-right parties, as Golob’s MPs were elected to parliament as representatives of a specific political party (which had nothing to do with the electro-oligarch’s party), not by their names. Even if this new judicial trick will be annulled in later instances, the retrospective damage will no longer be repairable. As was not possible in the Patria case. The deep state knows this, so its soldiers go beyond all bounds of common sense.
We are facing a reality that has nothing to look for in democracies – the courts are being used for conflicts in which they do not belong to. The malfunction of this system has long since crossed a point that it should never have. We can only helplessly observe how the courts (indirectly) bring the victory to certain political options that elections deny them. The case with the administrative court is the culmination of madness, so one wonders why we have elections at all, when the court, headed by Masleša, can decide the winner. Did Milan Kučan have this in mind when he said that this election would probably be “the last battle of my generation”? Think about who represented his generation; people who slaughtered, killed, persecuted dissidents, raised a one-party system, and cared for the benefits of the “new class” with the secret political police.
Slovenia is imprisoned under the curse of the past. That past that was never fully revealed. Those people who are full of human rights today and are actively cooperating with the mechanism that was transferred from the communist state to independent Slovenia are trying to cover it up. Also, the judiciary and the media, which have moved from a totalitarian to a democratic system without much-needed catharsis. That was the subversion we feel today. That is why we need radical reform and a new mandate of the centre-right.
It is obvious that the parallel mechanism where we recognise the former head of the Communist Party at its head is the sand in the wheel of the rule of law, which should act fairly and impartially regardless of the outcome of the election. The rule of law is not a matter of ideology, the rule of law is or is not. The frightening thought is that only an outraged and determined citizen will deal with a parallel system, which will ultimately bring the rule of law. It is even scarier that this will not happen.
Jože Biščak is the editor-in-chief of the conservative magazine Demokracija, president of the Slovenian Association of Patriotic Journalists and author of the books Zgodbe iz Kavarne Hayek, Zapisi konservativnega liberalca, and Potovati z Orwellom.