Goran Forbici, the chairman of the Council of the national media outlet Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS), who was appointed by the ruling Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda), the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD) and the Left party (Levica) for the biggest purge in the history of RTV Slovenia, has once again been completely disgraced in the Labour and Social Court. Namely, the court ruled that the early dismissal of former Director-General of RTVS, Andrej Grah Whatmough, was illegal – and it annulled it. The fact that his employment contract was terminated as well was also illegal, according to the judgment signed by the president of the chamber, District Court Judge Goranka Franz Ravbar. Whatmough was prematurely dismissed by the government parties through a change in the law, but Forbici was in such a terrible hurry to carry out an even broader purge that he dismissed him even more summarily – and he did it while Whatmough was on annual leave.
The RTVS top brass can now appeal against the second partial judgment, which has not yet ruled on the amount of compensation, as they lost the case. They can appeal to the higher labour and legal court within two weeks of receiving the judgment.
For the second time, the court ruled in substantially the same way, that Whatmough was illegally suspended and dismissed from his post. The appeal against the first judgment was partially upheld by the Higher Court, which remitted the judgment for reconsideration in the annulled part. This again ended ingloriously for Goran Forbici, the chairman of the RTVS Council, who had committed an illegal act in order to be able to install Zvezdan Martić, who has since resigned, along with his entire management. However, Matrić and the others who were appointed with him, in a short mandate, achieved the early replacement of the two most important editors in charge of Television Slovenia, namely, Jadranka Rebernik and Rajko Gerič. These premature political replacements of editors were the main goal of the government parties, as this allowed them to appoint their own editors.
Gerič was even removed from his position as Editor-in-Chief of Television Slovenia’s second and third programmes by amending the statutes, before being sent to wait for work with his colleagues while he was still Editor-in-Chief. This is the first time in the history of the country that this has happened at RTVS. There is no similar case of an editor being banned from working while remaining formally responsible for programmes in similar public services around the world. Not even in Russia. When the changes were made, Martić became useless to the government parties and had to say goodbye.
The damages, if the verdict stands, are likely to be high. In a case where Nataša Pirc Musar was elected Director-General in the past, but the decision did not stand because the RTVS Council decided that the vote had not been carried out properly, and she did not get the post in the end, Igor Kadunc, who became Director because Musar failed to do so, paid 70,000 euros in damages to the current President of the Republic in a settlement. Kadunc argues that if he had not settled, Pirc Musar’s damages, who was working as a lawyer at the time, and the costs would have been much higher after the court case, and that it was a wise decision to settle for RTVS, after the Programme Council’s mistake that was made five years earlier.
The court overturned the suspension and the dismissal because the procedure was flawed. However, the failure to serve the wrong summons was also made into a story in the media by the new politically-configured top brass of RTVS to discredit Grah Whatmough. A section of the media, however, helped in this propaganda slandering. The unusual propaganda influence of the media is also evident in this judgment. The media’s unusual writings even influenced the detective who was looking for Grah Whatmough. An employee is not obliged to be at home when he or she is on annual leave, the court noted. It can even be expected that an employee will not be at home during leave, they warned. Failure to collect the mail at home during leave does not mean that he or she has avoided collecting it.
It is unlikely that journalists in the media who have acted unethically by collaborating with the authorities in purging and slandering the illegally dismissed would apologise to the public.
Spletni časopis
