“Most of them cannot make a living from their business and consider singing, acting or fashion as a kind of hobby, because the few hundred euros that most singers and actors earn in our country and the one- to two hundred euros that the average model earns to walk half-naked on the Slovenian catwalk is not enough money for a decent life,” wrote the former Miss Hawaiian Tropic and Prime Minister Golob’s current companion or partner, Tina Gaber, in the conclusion of her bachelor’s degree thesis, lamenting the fact that “unfortunately, many people cannot afford cocaine”.
Tina Gaber, a Slovenian animal rights activist and influencer, now also known as the companion of Prime Minister Robert Golob, graduated in sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences in 2010. In her bachelor’s thesis, she researched the use of illegal drugs among famous Slovenians and came to a conclusion that clearly saddened her in the end, writing that cocaine is too expensive and that “unfortunately, many people cannot afford it” and that “lots of people do not earn enough money for a decent life,” referring to the poor earnings of famous Slovenians.
In principle, everyone chooses a thesis topic that interests them before they finish their studies. And Tina Gaber was clearly interested in the use of illegal drugs among famous Slovenians. In her graduation thesis, entitled “The white celebrities” (“Bela estrada”), she delved into the world of drugs, which, according to her findings at the time, dominated our entertainment scene. In her thesis, Gaber focused mainly on celebrities from the world of entertainment and interviewed some of them in order to get “first-hand information.” After her research and all the interviews, Gaber concluded – to summarise – that Slovenian celebrities are nothing special compared to foreign ones, saying that they are ordinary people who earn shamefully little money compared to foreign celebrities. So little that they cannot even afford cocaine.
“Most of them cannot make a living from their business and consider singing, acting or fashion as a kind of hobby, because the few hundred euros that most singers and actors earn in our country and the one- to two hundred euros that the average model earns to walk half-naked on the Slovenian catwalk is not enough money for a decent life,” wrote the former winner of Miss Hawaiian Tropic and current animal rights activist. An avalanche of comments poured in on Twitter, all with the same high level of surprise at the statements made by Golob’s companion.
There are no coincidences
Gaber graduated in 2010, the year that was also a year of “debate” on drug use on the political scene. It was the time of the Borut Pahor government and of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije – LDS) Minister of the Interior, Katarina Kresal, who, according to the media outlet Politikis’s reports at the time, had been rumoured for a long time in political circles to “have been white around the nose (read: used cocaine) several times.”
In addition, 2010 was also the year of the ministry of Tina Gaber’s former partner, Patrick Vlačič, who was the Minister of Transport at the time, while Gaber was a lobbyist. He, too, was known as a “snorter” behind the scenes.
Once a lobbyist, always a lobbyist?
Whether or not it is a coincidence that Gaber found “a passion for investigating drug use on the Slovenian celebrity scene at that very time” is for the reader to decide, but the fact is that even the Vezjak web portal was surprised by the confluence of circumstances and events at the time. At the time, the web portal wrote that it was “a number of seemingly contingent surprises. If “google suggestions” suggests “cocaine” after Patrick Vlačič’s name as the first word searched (similar to Borut Pahor), Miss Hawaiian Tropic Tina Gaber has been awkwardly wading through the media in recent months and scientifically explaining the findings of her thesis on the presence of drugs on the Slovenian celebrity scene, as if no other expert had ever come up with this. A lobbying campaign? If that is not enough, just a few months later, a newly trained sociologist applies for a business opportunity as a transport lobbyist (sic!) to the same Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, and finds herself on a list of 28 people, in the twelfth place. Did we read that right? We did,” wrote the portal, which explained what was going on at the time in Gaber’s relationship with the then-Minister – and it would be very easy to draw some parallels between her then-relationship and her present-day relationship.
“What is truly annoying in this case is the bizarre trajectory of a lady who, at one moment, presents herself in the role of a Miss Hawaiian Tropic, and in a very close second moment, presents herself in the role of a graduate sociologist and an expert on the use of cocaine among the Slovenian celebrities, and in the next, even less distant moment, she is a registered lobbyist, because of whom the Prime Minister reports their contact to the anti-corruption authorities, while the Minister, who is much more personally connected to the lobbyist, does not do the same thing. But it looks as if the Minister was lobbying for the current lobbyist, and not the other way round,” the web portal concluded at the time.
Today, the former registered lobbyist is fighting for the nutria. She has suddenly emerged from the background into the Cabinet Office, where she now has the support of the Prime Minister in whatever she decides. Even more recently, she joined the NGOs that handed over almost 25,000 signatures to the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday. On the same day, she posted a video address on her Facebook page, which caused quite a stir among hunters. They believe that she does not understand the role of the hunter in nature and society.
Tanja Brkić
