In the latest issue of the Demokracija magazine (“Democracy”), we took a closer look at the recent promotional “coffee meet-up” of Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković, Prime Minister Robert Golob, and the last leader of the Communist Party of Slovenia and first President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kučan at the Ljubljana market. By meeting up like this, they are publicly signalling that they are connected to each other and that they have each other’s backs, if necessary. In the style of “we are untouchable.”
As Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković bluntly replied on the Croatian television HTV in June 2014, when asked by the presenter whether he was not afraid that one day he would be convicted by the Slovenian courts and sent to prison, “Not at all, I have been the biggest opponent of Janez Janša‘s policies all these years, so to speak, in this area of executive power.”
His prediction quickly came true, and the trials against him started to fall like clockwork. It is interesting to note that after Janković and Golob met with the last party boss, they immediately met again, in a bar owned by the notorious “Balkan warrior” Dragan Tošić. Quite inappropriate, no doubt. The whole thing is rather reminiscent of the kind of meetings and activities seen in American films depicting the Sicilian mafia in the USA. Here, Janković’s great influence on Golob is evident. Only time will tell how much influence Kučan actually holds. In any case, this sends a clear message that they can do whatever they want.
Thus, under the rule of the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) coalition, or the transitional left, the Republic of Slovenia is turning into a country where the ruling class does whatever it wants. If, by chance, anyone tries to hold a mirror up to them or draw their attention to their controversial, illegal methods of operation, retaliation follows. The latest example is the revenge of the ruling Golob coalition against the Court of Audit of the Republic of Slovenia for “daring” (in mid-September) to point out irregularities in its report on the audit of the final state budget and the regularity of its implementation for 2023. The purchase of the building at 51 Litijska Street in Ljubljana stands out in this respect. The Minister of Finance, Klemen Boštjančič, violated the Public Finance Act by reallocating millions from the state budget reserve for what was supposed to become a court building. Auditors also found irregularities in the purchase of 13,000 computers by the Ministry for Digital Transformation. Similarly, the Court of Audit was critical of the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, because the Ministry had paid Svetlana Makarovič more than 8,000 euros as part of the Prešeren Prize, even though Makarovič had publicly renounced it in 2000, when she won it.
Government retaliation followed. A few weeks ago, in a letter of protest addressed to the government and the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, as well as at a press conference, the Court of Audit expressed its dissatisfaction with the adopted amendments to the 2025 budget. Namely, the National Assembly adopted an amendment by the ruling coalition, which reduced the proposed agreed funding for the Court of Auditors by 3.86 million euros to just under 9.39 million, and for the Council of State from the originally foreseen 3.87 million euros to 3.38 million euros. Last year’s budget for 2025 foresaw 9.11 million euros for the Court of Audit, while the amendments originally proposed by the government and sent to the National Assembly earlier this year would have increased the Court of Audit’s budget by 4.14 million euros to 13.25 million euros in 2025, but the amendment will therefore result in a significantly smaller increase. At the same time, the new salary system in the case of the Court of Audit, without taking into account their arguments, has devalued the Court of Audit as one of the key institutions in the country. “How can a body be independent if it is not financially independent?” the President of the Court of Audit, Jana Ahčin, asked publicly in her recent appearance. When asked by the press whether she might see the budget cuts as a response to the Court of Audit’s findings in some high-profile cases, such as the Litijska Street dilapidated building case, she expressed the hope that the government was not doing that. “I hope that our government does not work in such a way that the findings of the Court of Audit, which is the supreme state auditor, would affect its financial independence,” she replied. But she then added: “There may be a little bit of a bitter taste left and a doubt that perhaps this does represent some kind of revanchism by the government.” She acknowledged that in its 30 years of existence, the Court of Audit has never been subjected to the kind of pressures that the current government has exerted on it.
There is no doubt that the revanchism of the ruling coalition can be seen at every turn. It began right from the start with the Golob government, which set itself the goal of cleaning up the legacy of the previous, Janša government, whatever the consequences. To purge the state institutions of the “Janšaists” – supporters of Janez Janša. This was particularly evident in the case of the police and the public media outlet Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS). They even ordered the drawing up of a list of all the new public sector employees recruited under the previous government. They abolished the Office for Demography, the Museum of Slovenian Independence, the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communist Violence, and the list goes on. With the help of law enforcement agencies and a carefully selected judiciary, they are constantly and shamelessly attacking the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) champion Janez Janša. Since the beginning of this mandate, they have been abusing a parliamentary commission of inquiry set up for the purpose of investigating the media, which was first headed by MP Mojca Šetinc Pašek and is now headed by MP Tamara Vonta (both from the Freedom Movement quota), for political purposes and to settle scores with the media they do not like (including the Demokracija magazine). We are thus sliding into a new-age left-wing totalitarianism, which is taking increasingly tangible forms. This must be resolutely resisted, because, according to Article 1 of the Slovenian Constitution, the Republic of Slovenia is a “democratic republic”.
Dr. Metod Berlec
