We spoke to Dr Miro Haček about three topical issues in domestic politics – the proposed amendment to the media law, the Prime Minister’s “ideas” on property taxation, and the incompetence and influence of criminal structures in the police.
Our interviewee, Dr Miro Haček, a political scientist and professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences (Fakulteta za Družbene Vede – FDV), was highly critical of the planned overhaul of media legislation. He does not yet take the announced taxation of real estate quite seriously, while his assessment of developments in the police suggests that the fate of Interior Minister Boštjan Poklukar is uncertain.
The Minister of Culture has described the proposed amendment to the media law as one of the best media laws in Europe. However, Dr Miro Haček warns that the bill was met with reactions of heavy criticism from both sides of the political spectrum: “Political history teaches us that in such cases, there is something very seriously wrong with the proposed legislation. Based on the public debate so far, there is a sense that there is a desire for budgetary funding of certain media, which is what I find most objectionable in the proposed legislation. It needs to be pointed out who would be funded here – millionaires are the ones who would be funded. Media owners are not ‘poor wretches’ who are barely surviving. It could be said that these are the richest Slovenians. So, are we going to finance the richest Slovenians from the state budget?”
The Left is supposed to advocate for workers, but instead, it wants to fund the richest
Haček pointed out an additional interesting fact, namely that the law comes from the Ministry of Culture, which is controlled by the Left party (Levica), with Minister Asta Vrečko, who, at least at the declaratory level, fights for workers. “The Left party, which is supposed to advocate for workers, is proposing budget funding for the richest Slovenians. This is not aligned with what they are saying in public,” he assessed.
He also finds the criterion according to which each successive government will distribute budget funds to the media to be problematic. It could very well happen that the government would only fund government-friendly media, and when the government changes, this way of working would continue, with only a change in the set of budget-funded media.
“This is problematic because media funding would become a political category. This does not put us in the category of, to put it nicely, developed democracies. By that criterion, we are a kind of semi-democracy, or maybe not even that. Developed democracies do not fund private media. If anything, they fund the public media, but certainly not the private media. In Germany or in the United Kingdom, no one would think of funding private media. We, on the other hand, in addition to not knowing how to regulate the financing and functioning of the public media, would now like to finance the private media, according to criteria that are probably known only to a few individuals from the Left party,” Dr Haček believes.
Inspection of online influencers?
On the other hand, the proposed amendment to the media law has also been heavily criticised by online influencers. Many believe that the provisions of the new media law will be used to restrict constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech.
“This part is probably very problematic and legally, probably constitutionally controversial. It is very difficult to restrict any action of an individual by using the executive branch of government; it should be the judicial branch of government that does that. That is why there is a separation of powers,” says Dr Haček.
The Prime Minister’s “ideas” on the way to the airport
From attempts to control the information space to heightening the fiscal pressure. Unlike the amendment to the media law, which is now under public debate, citizens do not yet know for sure which properties will be taxed, to what extent, or if they will be taxed at all. “We have not yet seen the draft law, and we may not even see it. I put these announcements in the category of statements or “flashes of insight” by the Prime Minister. He has said a lot of things on this subject, including that there will be no property tax. Therefore, I do not yet take the property tax entirely seriously. A serious conversation on this topic will only be possible when we have a draft law,” Dr Haček noted.
However, the information has recently circulated in the public that the tax on a second property owned by an individual will be 1.45 percent of the generalised value of the property, according to the valuation of the Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia (GURS). “The tax rate seems to me to be extremely high. It seems to have been incurred somewhere between Ljubljana and the airport. So, it is not the result of any serious consideration, least of all any international comparative analysis,” Haček remarked. He added that the introduction of such measures would have the opposite effect to what is expected – namely, housing affordability would be further reduced, which is also contrary to the coalition agreement.
Incompetence and criminal connections in the police
Before the Christmas and New Year holidays, Slovenia was shocked by a brazen mafia murder on the outskirts of Ljubljana. Speculation about the infiltration of organised crime into the police structures quickly started to emerge. This was eventually confirmed in the media by the public prosecutor and the Prime Minister himself. Apparently, this was also the reason why the Prime Minister had organised his own security. At the same time, the police were also shaken by the affair related to the appointment of the Director-General of Police. The Administrative Court ruled that the decision to appoint Senad Jušić was illegal. An interpellation against the Minister of the Interior, Boštjan Poklukar, was tabled in the National Assembly.
Haček believes that it would have been more prudent for the Prime Minister not to comment so publicly on the issue of the influence of organised crime in the police force, but to focus on the preparation of measures to eliminate this influence. “The Prime Minister has the power to intervene in the Ministry of the Interior, and I am, of course, referring directly to the Minister who is objectively responsible in this case,” he said.
As he explained, there are two major issues related to the police at the moment, besides the legality of Jušić’s appointment. The first issue is related to how deep the networks of criminal gangs reach into the police, and how far, simply put, incompetence extends.
“This story is far from over. An interpellation against the Interior Minister has been announced, and, as we know, there is no unanimity of opinion within the coalition. It will probably be very difficult for both coalition partners to support the Minister. This increases the pressure on the Prime Minister to replace the Minister and, consequently, the Director-General of Police,” concluded Dr Haček.
Žiga Korsika
