MP Jelka Godec, the leader of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) parliamentary group, has recently addressed a call to the Speaker and Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly, the leaders of the parliamentary groups, and the representatives of national minorities in the National Assembly, to express their views on respect for the rule of law in the work of the National Assembly. In recent days, the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia has revealed an extremely serious and worrying abuse of power and interference in the competence of the judicial branch of government.
On the 10th of May 2023, the 14th extraordinary meeting of the Commission for Public Office and Elections, convened only one day earlier, was held, with the agenda item “Taking note of the judgments of the Higher Labour and Social Court concerning the illegality of the decision of the Programme Council of RTV Slovenia on the appointment of the Director-General of RTV Slovenia and concerning the illegal dismissal of the Director of Television Slovenija”. During the meeting, the SDS MPs – members of the Commission for Public Office and Elections – repeatedly asked the Commission Chairperson, Janja Sluga, to explain the rules of procedure for convening a meeting with such an agenda item, but they did not receive any reasoned explanations, and therefore they later obstructed the meeting.
This extraordinary meeting of the Commission was then followed by four more meetings, at which the members of the Commission for Public Office and Elections would decide on the dismissal and immediate termination of the work of certain programme councillors of the national media outlet, Radio-Television (RTV) Slovenia.
As a result of all the above, the leader of the SDS parliamentary group addressed six letters to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, between the 12th of May 2023 and the 7th of July 2023, asking her to obtain the opinion of the Legislative and Legal Service of the National Assembly on the justification of the convening of the aforementioned meetings of the Commission. As a result of the Speaker’s ignorance, arbitrary decision on the irrelevance of the request and her refusal to grant the leader of the SDS parliamentary group access to the document, the MP was forced to obtain the above-mentioned opinion on the basis of the Public Information Access Act.
The completely incomprehensible rejection of the above-mentioned requests and the hiding of a document related to the work of MPs and the National Assembly by the Speaker of the National Assembly then “showed its true colours” when the leader of the SDS parliamentary group finally received the opinion of the Legislative and Legal Service, which states, among other things: “In light of all the above, the Legislative and Legal Service concludes that the Draft Decisions on the dismissal and termination of the work of the members of the Programme Council of RTVS are inconsistent with the principle of trust in law, the principle of legal certainty and the principle of the rule of law, inconsistent with the principle of the separation of powers, inconsistent with the freedom of expression, inconsistent with the law, and inconsistent with the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly”.
The fact that the government parties – the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD), the Left party (Levica) and, above all, the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda), the members of which are also Janja Sluga and Urška Klakočar Zupančič, claim that the rule of law is the priority in their activities, we in the SDS parliamentary group believe that their actions, and, after all, the actions of all the deputies who are members of the Commission for Public Office and Elections, who participated in the abuse of power and the encroachment on the competence of the judicial branch of power, acted arbitrarily and in contravention of the Constitution, the law and the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly, cannot and must not be overlooked.
