By Sara Kovač (nova24tv.si)
Vesna Vuković is not only a public relations representative of the Gibanje Svoboda party, but she is also obsessed with controlling the media. The employee of the state-owned companies is making great efforts to remove all who do not report in accordance with the doctrine of Golob’s party from the state’s money.
Even before Robert Golob entered the political scene, Vesna Vuković presented herself as an independent journalist of the portal Necenzurirano, which systematically attacked the government of Janez Janša. Of course, this is not surprising if one knows that the portal was established with the intention of attacking the SDS party and, of course, the party president. Anyone who took just a few minutes of their time during the previous government would have realised that there was no sign of the so-called independent journalism they are supposedly practicing from the flood of attacking articles. Otherwise, the fairy tale about independence was dispelled the most by the news that Vuković took the position of Gibanje Svoboda’s publicist.
No one, especially someone who is used to pulling all the strings, would put someone they were not close to in such an important position. That their acquaintance did not begin just one day before the elections is evidenced by the information on the cooperation between Vuković and Golob, namely the state company GEN-I, during the time when Golob was in charge, financed the journalist Vuković’s private company SEE M. & C., with 103 thousand euros. Vuković did not want to explain the circumstances regarding the transfers from GEN-I to her former private company, and the Information Commissioner refused Siol’s request that GEN-I should disclose the contracts with Vuković’s company. To this day, it is not known why her former company received funds from GEN-I.
According to investigative journalist Bojan Požar, in the days when Golob’s confidante was still working at Dnevnik, Vuković even “had (made?!) lists of people whom the police should investigate”. She herself allegedly even communicated directly with some investigators (criminologists) of the National Bureau of Investigation and gave them direct suggestions or dictated who to investigate. “Bobnar also said this informally, and there is already a lot of talk about it within the police.”
In light of Požar’s disclosure, it is undoubtedly not so surprising that Vuković’s name appeared in connection with the affair where Tatjana Bobnar, as Minister of the Interior, accused Robert Golob of political pressure on the police. In her letter, Bobnar revealed, among other things, that Golob’s publicist Vuković hinted in a certain situation, saying that “someone” at the police was not doing his job as he should. Of course, Bobnar did not agree with this, because she found it completely unacceptable that someone in a democratic country exerts such pressure on the police, as a career policewoman she decided to resign. This, of course, slightly reduced Golob’s popularity, which is no longer at the top or just below it but occupies fourth place.
Media that are critical of Golob are not welcome
If the mainstream media now also report something unpleasant about things that Golob or the government covered up and thus cannot boast of successfully navigating through the energy crisis and rampant inflation, it was not like that at the very beginning. Perhaps also because
he surrounded himself with colleagues who took care of maintaining a good image of Golob in the public eye. According to Požareport, Vuković is said to personally “call the editors of individual media outlets, if the journalists of these media outlets happen to ask some slightly uncomfortable questions for members of Golob’s government at press conferences, saying, what are you doing…?!” Vuković knows from personal experience how important the reporting method is for creating a good public image. For this reason, it is not surprising that Golob announced that under the pretext of fighting against hate speech, he would deal with media such as Nova24TV and Demokracija, who dare to criticise him. Golob’s supporters even went to the media with a special investigator led by the former “independent” RTV journalist, now MP Mojca Pašek Šetinc, where, of course, they did not forget to invite the external professional collaborator Tomaž Modic, who was completely coincidentally Vuković’s colleague before the elections.
Months ago, we reported that, according to reliable information, Vuković earned enough in exchange for her loyalty to Golob to afford a 240,000-euro apartment in Krtina near Domžale. It seems that Vuković is very well aware that her loyalty to Golob is worth it, so it is expected that she will do everything possible to minimise affairs about him as much as possible, and in cases where it is necessary, she will find potential scapegoats. It is the government that brings the money.