By: Ana Horvat (Nova24TV)
That Golob’s government is one big “joke” was already known, just like we knew that the MPs of the Gibanje Svoboda party are “one big joke”. One of them is Lucija Tacer, who, during the 23rd urgent session of the Committee for Labour, Family, Social Affairs, and Disabled People, where one of the most important topics – the long-term care law – was discussed, found a way to make a completely unnecessary accusation of sexism, which was not even the case. The NSi MP used it to simply point out the deception of the Gibanje Svoboda party.
“Dear colleagues, how easily you deceive,” said NSi MP Aleksander Reberšek, who, during the 23rd urgent session where the long-term care law was discussed, wanted to point out the misleading “marketing moves” of the Gibanje Svoboda in advocating for the new law, even though many consider it incomplete and ambiguous. He mentioned the “cute photo of a fellow MP” with a caption, which he found misleading. However, Lucija Tacer was not interested in the facts and quickly found a comment with which she wanted to divert attention from the essence and portray Reberšek as a sexist.
“I have to speak up because I have zero tolerance for discriminatory and exclusionary speech. He referred to his equal colleague as ‘cute’. This was a sexist remark. I would like him to apologise to his colleague,” said Tacer, who obviously did not hear (or chose to ignore) that Reberšek actually said, “cute photo of a fellow MP”, and not “cute MP”, referring to a marketing move in promoting the law, which he repeatedly emphasised was deficient for the people. “The Ministry of Solidarity’s Future has prepared a new, unsympathetic law on long-term care. This will further burden everyone – employees, employers, farmers, self-employed individuals. Even retirees were not excluded,” said Aleksander Reberšek during the discussion on the new long-term care law in the labour committee.
You can listen and judge for yourselves about Reberšek’s words and intent.
Tacer should have learned that healthy workplaces require empathy and authentic relationships. Men and women should understand each other as human beings, colleagues, and friends. Fear of what can and cannot be said creates barriers between genders that prevent us from achieving this. Compliments have significant power in general: they can increase endorphins, strengthen relationships, and build trust. They do not necessarily have to be rooted in coded sexuality or chauvinistic statements; it can simply be one person telling another that they look nice. Of course, it all depends on the context, which Tacer completely failed to understand in this case.
Tacer should have taken a moment to reflect before labelling someone as a sexist. This was also discriminatory on her part. In this case, Reberšek commented on the photo and the text that was misleading, not the appearance of the MP in the photo, and even the MP from the photo was not as offended as Tacer, who decided to speak up. But this is not new for the members of the Gibanje Svoboda party, as facts and truth are the most painful for them.