The unelected Alenka Bratušek, who won just 5.58 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections in the Kranj 2 district, but who, despite the fact that the people did not want her, managed to get to the position of Minister of Infrastructure, also got the necessary infrastructure for water on the land of her holiday house, according to the web portal “Trma”. And she did it without any legal agreement. Considering that she and Zoran Janković were good friends (at least in the past), she obviously learned a thing or two from him – namely, how to bypass the rules.
In order to connect to the Kranj water supply system, a resident must first pay a municipal contribution to the municipality, which, according to the Trma portal, Minister Alenka Bratušek did not pay, and the municipality of Kranj has reportedly confirmed this. In fact, in her application, she did not even identify the water pipeline as necessary, and given that the payment was not made even a month after the water supply connection installation, this indicates a clear and undeniable failure to pay the required fees.
The Minister of Infrastructure Alenka Bratušek has therefore not paid the municipal contribution to the Municipality of Kranj for the water connection installation on her plot 183/2 KO Rupa, where she started the process to legalise a wooden building on agricultural land in 2022 and obtained the relevant permits for a longer-lasting building. She also has water and electricity connections on the agricultural land and, according to the aforementioned portal, has not paid a single cent for the water connection to date. There has been no request for a water connection at all, although the public utility company Komunala (the municipality of Kranj is the majority owner) has brought water to what used to be an agricultural plot (size 1000 m², building part 75 m², floor plan 29 m²), the portal writes.
However, it seems that the Minister is being allowed to do more than she should be, including legalising her hitherto illegal building, which further raises questions about the unauthorised water and electricity supply on the land. According to the portal, the Minister is in breach of the law and is also not paying for services already provided by the public utility company Komunala Kranj. The latter has refused to make the invoice public. According to the portal, what remains unknown at the moment is whether the permit for the building, which has been in existence for a longer period of time, is sufficient for the Minister not to have to pay the municipal contribution, which is not clear from the e-mail. The Minister of Infrastructure made it very clear that she wanted a different building on the plot, because she wanted to change the use of the land as part of the initiatives to amend the spatial plan of the Municipality of Kranj – but the Ministry of Culture refused to give its consent for it, and the initiative was scrapped.
The portal concludes that judging by the communication with the competent authorities, it is clearly unnecessary to request an assessment for the water connection as part of the municipal contribution. The municipality had installed the water line for her on the basis of the legalisation procedure for her building in Rupa. If this is sufficient, it means that the builders apparently obtained the relevant permit by legalising the building and thus do not have to pay the municipal contribution for the water supply in Kranj.
As unbelievable as it sounds that the Minister is not paying her dues or fees or playing by the rules, it is not surprising, as she has had plenty of time to learn from the “best” when it comes to cheating the system. At least during the existence of the Positive Slovenia party (Pozitivna Slovenija), when she was still friends with the Mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, who is now also building a sewage canal through a drinking water catchment area without the necessary permits or consents. Bratušek herself has admitted in the past that it is the Ljubljana sheriff who is responsible for her political rise.
And why shouldn’t Bratušek be allowed to do everything when Janković is allowed to do it too? As we have reported several times, he, too, has not obtained the necessary and even crucial environmental consent for the construction of the C0 sewage canal, and yet the building process has not been halted yet. It is not yet known whether the Minister will finally pay the water contribution, but there is something seriously wrong in our country, because the rules are clearly not the same for everyone.
Ana Horvat
