“The European Union needs to hear about these shameful ‘death lists.’ These are not professional politicians. This government is targeting ordinary officials,” political analyst Mitja Iršič criticised the latest move of Golob’s government, which decided to not only remove the top civil servants, but ordinary officials as well. Before entering politics, the long-serving President of the Management Board of the Gen-I energy company, Robert Golob, announced that everything would be different with the change of government. However, it seems that some new standards that are far from the established procedures will actually be introduced. And as Golob supposedly announced this before the election already, the mainstream media have decided to just do nothing about it. Apparently, everything is allowed, as long as you belong to the right side.
Given that Robert Golob is presenting himself in the media as a kind of victim of political staffing, even though this was not really the case because his term simply ran out, the first moves of his new government are showing us what a political purge in the crudest sense of the word means. Namely, lists of all employees who got their jobs in ministries and other government offices during the Janša government will be compiled.
At the first regular session of the new government, ministries, bodies within ministries, and all government services were instructed to prepare a list by the 7th of June 2022, by 9 a.m., of all employees who got employed between the 1st of January 2020 and the 1st of June 2022. The list has to include their names, salary grade, and type of employment (permanent employment, fixed-term employment, employment on trust). With all those who are employed for an indefinite period, the list should also specify whether the employment relationship already existed prior to the employment in question, and the legal basis for the previous employment should also be specified. For the time period in question, the lists will also have to record those who were transferred within, to or from the body, specifying their title and salary grade before the transfer and title and salary grade after the transfer.
The international public needs to know about this
Political analyst Mitja Iršič believes that the lists in question are shameful because they are actually targeting ordinary officials and not professional politicians. “This is an attack on the real civil society, not the one that cycled around Ljubljana on Fridays. If the European Union is dealing with Hungary, it will now also have to deal with Slovenia,” Iršič pointed out, adding that he will undoubtedly inform Brussels about this, as the officials were already concerned about what is happening in Slovenia during the Janša government, when the leftists exported lies as if on a conveyor belt, after they failed to take over the power in Slovenia with the help of Karl Erjavec.
“And rest assured that the political cyclists, the national media outlet RTV Slovenia, the largest commercial media outlet 24ur and others, would label such a measure, if it were introduced by the Janša government, as fascism and send letters about the erosion of the rule of law to the European Union and the whole wide world. Civil society is not only the Peace Institute, the Slovene Association of Journalists, and the RTV trade union,” Iršič added in light of the recent personnel changes. It is clear to everyone that if the Janša government allowed itself to do something like this, it would cause quite a ruckus. Pompous headlines would appear in the media, in the sense of: “Unacceptable: the Janša government is carrying out personnel changes. They will even go after ordinary officials.” Instead, for example, we could read the following headline on the national media outlet’s web portal MMC today: “The first personnel moves of the new government: changes at the helm of the National Institute of Public Health and the National Laboratory of Health, Environment and Food.” Meanwhile, the 24ur web portal published an article with the following title: “Golob after the first government session: An excellent way to cooperate and connect.” This is what happens when you are connected with the godfathers from the background who control the mainstream media.
Right before leaving, the Šarec government employed 80 people – and nobody said anything
During the government of Janez Janša, everyone complained about how this government supposedly made inadmissible personnel changes and claimed that everything was different during Marjan Šarec’s government’s term. They claimed this despite the fact that Šarec’s government actually made many personnel changes right before it left. They published job vacancies (at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, and the General Secretariat of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia) with a three-day or five-day application deadline and thus employed as many as 80 of “their” people right at the end of their term. As the application deadlines were so short, this meant that the tenders were not intended for the general public, but mainly for Šarec’s supporters, who obviously wanted to make the work of Janša’s government more difficult.
In light of the first move of the Golob government, political scientist and full professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Dr Miro Haček, pointed out that this is an inadmissible interference of politics in the system of civil servants. “The government can only audit this for administrative managers (top civil servants), but not for all civil servants,” he explained. Political analyst Edvard Kadič commented: “Do not worry, the Human Rights Ombudsman will intervene, and the Information Commissioner, as well as the Advocate of the Principle of Equality… Not.” With this, Kadič made it clear that the institutions whose mission is supposed to be the protection of human rights will simply overlook the whole situation.
The new government has written the following words in the coalition agreement: to mitigate political influence on staffing. As the MP of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) Žan Mahnič pointed out, this is more than obviously just an empty promise. “What the then-opposition accused us of doing, when we were in charge, the current coalition will actually do, or is in fact already doing,” he was critical. Of course, it is understandable that each government chooses its own closest associates that it trusts so that it can achieve its goals, but it cannot simply replace everyone it wants. This is not appropriate in a democracy, and especially not in a Member State of the European Union. Namely, these methods are similar to those of dictators. And there should be no place for such actions in the 21st century.
Sara Kovač
