By: Lea Kalc Furlanič
For those who do not know Svetlana Makarović, let us remind you that the witch comes from her fairy tales about the witch Zofka, and the flying spoon from the fairy tales about two Kosovirs* on a flying spoon. Weak, non-national and subservient Slovenes, as Makarović cynically calls us, know the Levica party, which narrowly crossed the threshold of parliament with a few hundred electoral votes. Despite the small percentage of its voters, Golob’s government makes decisions about many important things: in what conditions will we live in our old age, what kind of public RTV will we listen to and watch, to whom will Slovene culture belong, what will housing policy be, etc. etc.
The last act of the Levica reached the bottom: on their flying spoon (read: manipulation with an elderly artist who seeks public attention), outside the programme of the central Slovenian cultural event in Cankar Hall, they brought Makarovič on stage so that she could warn the city and the world of her anger of the right-wing and the Catholic Church. To Father Rupnik, because of whom she refused Prešeren’s award years ago, since he had also received it. Unfortunately, the Father deviated in his private life (which has not yet been proven), but Makarović has no right to declare her anger in front of all of Slovenia in such a way. If the commission for the Prešeren awards decided not to comply with her wish to return the award, this must be respected. But the lady and everyone who staged it went too far.
Neither the Levica party nor Golob’s government, and even less an institution like Cankar Hall, and public television, have the right to usurp the entire Slovenian public for their political activism. Especially not on the Culture Day. Until now, we have firmly believed in the latter, that it is nationally formative, that it is on a high spiritual and ethical level. From now on, this will no longer be the case. With their performance, they devalued the sanctity of Prešeren’s awards. And Culture Minister Asta Vrečko gave them a standing ovation for that. Above all, they trampled, sacrificed culture to cover up their leadership incompetence and madness. Now everything revolves around Makarovič. That is what the excess in Cankar Hall was for. They do not care about the witch Svetlana, for them she is negligible collateral damage. Too bad, really.
*Kosovir is an original literary character of the Slovenian author Svetlana Makarovič.