By: Aleš Ernecl
On Thursday, a scandalous session of the Committee on Culture took place in Ljubljana, at which the Minister of Culture, Vasko Simoniti, and Zlatan Čordić, who was presented by the opposition as the victim of the government’s arrogance and bias, were supposed to face each other. The Ministry of Culture stripped Čordić of his status as a self-employed person in culture because he devoted much more of his time to activism against the government than to actual work in the field of culture. The session was marked by a disrespectful attitude towards culture and the Minister of Culture on the one hand, and the treatment of the wrongdoer Čordić as a “respected elder” on the other. All of the coalition deputies obstructed the session, and they stated that the reason for it was that the National Assembly was not the place to hold a session on the unfinished procedure, regarding a single person.
The session of the Committee on Culture was actually more of a general abduction of the meeting by the most primitive and extreme members of the opposition, who continued to self-righteously, inarticulately, unarguably moralisingly, theatrically prolong the meeting, to the point where the Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti was no longer willing to indefinitely listen to them accusing him of all kinds of things. He left the session, and in its continuation, in contrast to the Minister, Zlatan Čordić was praised by Violeta Tomić and others, as if he were Boris Pahor or Drago Jančar. Even before the Minister left, the deputies of the coalition announced that they would obstruct the session, as they did not agree with the fact that the unfinished procedure regarding one single person would be discussed at the session of a committee of the National Assembly.
At times, we say that someone has a “Christ complex,” but for Zlatan Čordić, one could say, much more modestly, but still, that he has a “Cankar complex.” The guy imagines that he is a kind of today’s, modernised (re)incarnation of Ivan Cankar, which he once again confirmed in his speech at the committee. Zlatan Čordić is a rapper who sings about a better world and has even created – we must admit – one song that is quite pleasant to hear, a “feel good” song with Nina Pušlar.
But while Ivan Cankar imitated creators, authors, top writers in his style, and often even exceeded their level, Čordić as a rapper culturally appropriates the ghetto subculture of the American black criminals. And he does it quite badly, might we add. It is incomparable and blasphemous that at a session of the Committee on Culture, no one interrupted him when he was once again comparing himself to Cankar.
The lies of Zlatan Čordić
In his speech, he served a whole bunch of lies and painted over the criminal patina of his actions with transparent euphemisms. He is only being “sarcastic” (he approached Dr. Krek as an artist, posing as a journalist was part of the act, part of the theatre, part of the performance), he is culturally subversive, he “warns” with his actions, he “never wanted (even though he did want it) to hurt the cameraman of Nove24TV and take his camera” (even though he did take it), he never encouraged people to not wear masks (even though he did it), everything was “taken out of context.” But the statement of the day was certainly made when Zlatko said that “he was accused of not working” and then tried to convince that this stems from the fact that the ministry does not understand that “every thought he has is work.” So, Čordić is thinking at the expense of the taxpayers.
Did anyone oppose this deception? No, they applauded him. What else did they applaud? His nonsense that followed, when he called “Janša’s” media outlets, which includes our media outlet, completely in line with the clichés that have already been abused thousands of times by the opposition, “fascist,” and even “Nazi-fascist.” Let us remind you that years ago, in the reality entertainment show Big Brother, Čordić said that the inscription at Auschwitz, “Arbeit macht Frei,” meant that “if you worked really hard, they gave you your freedom.” It is interesting that someone who certainly also found his inspiration in the Muslim interpretation of the Nazi attitude towards the Jews dares to call the media outlets, which have never ever spread hatred towards Jews, Nazi-fascist.
Violeta Tomić’s show and Simoniti leaving
With her long speeches, full of clichés, righteous moralising, bullying and slander, seasoned with her proverbial theatricality, Violeta Tomić hijacked the session, made it unnecessarily long and inconclusive in the end, and said that the coalition’s departure represents how “they try to find the needle in the haystack every time something doesn’t suit them.” When, despite the fact that the session was already known to be inconclusive, she persisted and persisted in going on with one of her “lessons” she wanted to teach Minister Simoniti, without actually giving the Minister who she left waiting, as if he was her lackey, a chance to speak, he also had enough and said that “he does not intend to listen to this anymore.”
In addition to disrespecting Minister Simoniti, Violeta Tomić also showed elementary disrespect for the institution of the Committee on Culture at the session, and thus also the Slovenian state and culture. She was leading the session dressed in a leather jacket, often wearing her mask under her nose.