The television show “Politically with Tanja Gobec” (“Politično s Tanjo Gobec”) has once again illustrated how the “depoliticised” management of the national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS), imagines balanced reporting. On the show, the hottest affair of the moment, the “dilapidated building” affair, was commented on by two opinion leaders of the left, namely Grega Repovž, editor-in-chief of the leftist magazine Mladina, and Janez Markeš, journalist and commentator at the newspaper Delo.
The panel with the presenter therefore confronted the opinions of people with the same political beliefs, but not fundamentally different views. Does anyone else wonder why she and her guests were looking for a phantom coalition between the Social Democrats party (Socialni demokrati – SD) and the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) during the whole show?
All this so that she would not have to mention the real actors of the ruling troika that gave the green light to the controversial purchase of the building: firstly, the Minister of Justice, Dominika Švarc Pipan, who signed the purchase contract, the Minister of Finance, who provided the funds from the budgetary reserve, and the Prime Minister, without whom the purchase would not have gone ahead.
As former Prime Minister and SDS President Janez Janša commented, “Either Prime Minister Robert Golob has been involved in the controversial business with the tacit consent of the Ministry of Finance from the very beginning, or he is so incompetent that millions from the state reserve are being spent before his eyes by secretaries of government parties. And in the latter case, the matter would be even worse. Because then the question arises of how many more Litijska Street affairs are hidden under the carpet.”
The beatification of Švarc Pipan on RTV
What followed was the “beatification” of the minister. Markeš tried to present Švarc Pipan as Slovenia’s version of Joan of Arc, who is fighting against the persons from the background that govern Slovenia, first against her own party, to which she owes the post of minister, and then looking for secret coalitions between the SD and SDS parties, again trying to cover up the facts of the affair, which clearly put the blame for the controversial purchase in the lap of the ruling troika that approved it.
The editor of Mladina magazine also failed to point out the obvious culprits of the affair in his performances, but instead ranted about Borut Pahor, the Slovenian Business Club, Anže Logar and the “networks”. But not the people who are legally and morally responsible for signing the contract.
Dr. Žiga Turk: They are playing us all for fools
“The journalists and/or propagandists of the left and the Left party (Levica) are very capable. And they have a monopoly on the truth.
The Litijska case was, and in fact, still is, a scandal that demonstrates (1) the predatory practices of the transitional left, (2) the notorious incompetence of yet another minister, and (3) the sloppiness of the government as a whole – and the Prime Minister in particular. The deal was carried out after a series of mistakes and lapses in due diligence by many of the players, including, ultimately, the Prime Minister, who apparently has no control over what the ministers do.
But none of that is being talked about in the mainstream media anymore. Instead of talking about everything that has gone wrong and seems to have gone wrong systemically and as a rule, and the list is long, the shepherds of opinion have found a bright spot in all of this. They paint the Minister of Justice as a penitent, if not virginal, Joan of Arc-like fighter against corruption, and the Prime Minister as selflessly helping her in this heroic struggle.
They are speculating that, after his personal stumbles, he might even earn a political comeback after all of this is over. With what, exactly? By helping to get the deal done in a day? By not reading the material? Due to the fact that his quartet of secretaries of state did not notice anything special? Not here, not in the computers affair, not anywhere.
When the left is caught with its hand in the cookie jar, the left-wing media makes a positive story of how well they know how to wash their hands. And we should just decide whether it is Tanja or Dominika who is better at washing her hands.
We are being played for a fool.”
Ž. K.
