By: Gašper Blažič
If you have Dejan Kaloh’s book “Milan Kučan – when the godfather talks about himself” with you, I recommend that you take a look at it these days. And not so much because of the comments, but more because of the quotes from Kučan’s statements and speeches, as these quotes speak for themselves and say more than many are willing to admit.
Why am I saying this? Mainly due to the fact that the last head of the ceka (the Central Committee of the League of Communists) celebrated his jubilee (80 years) on January 14th, and on this occasion a book with more than 80 testimonies about him was published. At the same time, I remembered how in the 1990s, as a teenager, I sat among the audience in Domžale, where the Slovenian of the Year event took place (of course, you can only guess once who this was), in mid-January. There was no end to the congratulations and praises, and the people in the hall applauded enthusiastically.
Normally, the co-organiser of the event was Nedeljski dnevnik, one of the main media supporters of the “little uncle”, who continues to have an influence in Slovenian politics, although we do not hear from him that often. That is why others do it for him. Recently, the international football official Aleksander Čeferin, who is closely connected with the equally infamous president of the Court of Audit Tomaž Vesel, has been making a lot of public announcements, while the official’s brother works at the Constitutional Court. When Čeferin became the president of the European Football Association more than four years ago, congratulations also came from all political parties.
Today, through the aforementioned Nedeljski dnevnik, Čeferin expresses judgments on the government just at the time when KUL is preparing to file a constructive vote of no confidence. Personally, I do not believe that Čeferin will get involved in Slovene politics, but he has undoubtedly become a means through which the political underground is preparing the ground for the removal of Janša’s government. He has a very suitable profile for this: a cosmopolitan who does not act in politics because he finds it “provincial”, but his word still means something. Because the main things in politics happen outside of “formal channels” – that is always been and always will be.
Gašper Blažič is a journalist of the magazine Demokracija.
