The Friedrich Ebert Foundation recently published an analysis entitled “Democracy and the State of Emergency”, which analyzes the political situation in Slovenia, Croatia and the countries of the Western Balkans during the corona crisis. The foundation is a formally independent institution that “promotes democracy, political education and students with outstanding intellectual abilities and personalities”. But in fact, since its inception in 1925, it has been closely associated with the German left-wing SDP party, so its promotion of democracy is strongly inclined to the left political spectrum. It is similar with the above-mentioned political analysis, in which the Slovenian part of the analysis was contributed by dr. Igor Lukšič.
Lukšič admitted though, that under Janša’s government Slovenia was doing well in the field of health and social policy and that Slovenia was the first European country to declare the end of the pandemic. But this is followed by three sides of complaining about the “poor democratic standards of the government coalition” and accusing the government of using the pandemic to “introduce authoritarian measures and consolidate power”.
As examples he mentions government replacements in the RTV council and the head of the statistical office (and forgets to mention that these are people who were also politically inclined themselves), he mentions that the government coalition rejected the opposition’s complaints about Logar’s “letter” to the EU Commission (as if the government coalition should support the opposition against its own government) and he mentions the government’s “war with the media” (and forgets to mention that the media supported protests against the government even before it was even constituted). He also mentions that prime minister Janša regularly appears on the “party Nova24TV” (it is not clear what this has to do with “poor democratic standards”).
But dr. Lukšič, on the other hand, affords himself a bit of deception, especially when mentioning cycling protests. So he says that they take place all over Slovenia (a few thousand cyclists in Ljubljana and a few hundred in Maribor are not a “protest all over Slovenia”), he mentions “more than ten thousand” protesters (the most police listed were 5,500 in one case, the usual estimates are between 4,000 and 5,000 protesters) and he mentions that in mid-May, 57 percent of respondents agreed with the protesters’ demands, while only 27 percent opposed to them (he doesn’t mention, however, according to which survey this was found or where it was published).
As said, the analysis of dr. Lukšič is strongly inclined to the left, which, of course, is not a surprise considering the client of the analysis.