“The judge who violated my human rights supposedly bought himself a 500 m² villa! After about 18 years of work! I bought a 40-year-old tractor with my parliamentary salary! He lives in “freedom” while the rest of us are fighting for freedom!” Former mayor of Maribor and MP Franc Kangler recently pointed out, who believes that district judges do not have bad salaries.
According to Franc Kangler, he was referring to a property owned by Judge Boštjan Polegek, located in Žikarce in the municipality of Duplek. According to him, the same municipality is also home to Judge Aleksander Karakaš, who participated in the Kangler conviction, although he was warned of irregularities and illegalities in the trial beforehand by Dr Marko Bošnjak, who was at that time Kangler’s lawyer, and by the former Constitutional Court judge, Dr Ciril Ribičič.
Regarding Polegek, the 2015 Committee (Odbor 2015) pointed out a few years ago that he had illegally and without evidence sentenced Kangler to seven months in prison. The fact that the allegations in the judgment, which accused Kangler of abuse of official position in the case of the allocation of one of his official flats, did not constitute a criminal offence was later established by the Supreme Court, which also had the judgment overturned.
Despite his parliamentary salary, he was accused of having bought the tractor with assets of unexplained origin
Kangler’s touching post on the social network X drew attention to the absurdity he himself had witnessed, namely that he was being prosecuted because of an old tractor he had bought, which was worth 5,000 euros. The accusation was that he had bought the tractor with assets of unexplained origin, even though he was a Member of Parliament at the time, receiving a salary of 4,000 euros gross per month and had an agricultural business. “I was persecuted for an old tractor, while others were forgiven millions!” he was critical on Radio Ptuj a few years ago. Judging by his post, Kangler does not think that judges have bad salaries. In addition, Prime Minister Golob had announced a “happy ending” for the latter some time ago in the form of a 600 euros gross monthly bonus, but they had to give up that dream because of the widespread resistance from civil servants and the public to his demand for a pay raise for judges.
However, it seems that recently, the government representatives have finally come up with a way to reach out to the judges – to fix the problem of their (too) low salaries. And they will do it by amending the Act Regulating the Implementation of the Budgets of the Republic of Slovenia for 2023 and 2024. The Slovenian Judges’ Association made it known a few days ago that if the unconstitutionality of judges’ salaries is not resolved by the 3rd of January, protest rallies or even a strike are on the cards.
N. Ž.
