A Ninamedia poll has been circulating that spreads provable lies about the actions of Janez Janša’s previous governments. Not only that — it is clearly running a negative campaign against the SDS president ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Given how it is designed, the poll serves as a tool for crafting pre-election propaganda for the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda). The questions reveal that the Freedom Movement is primarily interested in figuring out how to construct a negative campaign against the former prime minister and SDS president with which they will compete for first place in the upcoming national elections.
The poll was evidently commissioned by the Freedom Movement itself — this becomes obvious from the questions in the lower part, where people are asked which of Golob’s and his supporters’ repeated slogans they like best. For example: that he is a capable manager, that he has strengthened democracy, that he handles crises well… In short, everything that Prime Minister Robert Golob has personally disproved with his own actions.
Polls are rapidly losing credibility
Some of the possible answers are downright bizarre. For instance, that he “focuses on the real priorities, such as healthcare.” The truth about the government’s interventions in healthcare is that their attempts to shorten waiting lists have completely failed — the queues have only grown longer. It is equally bizarre to list long-term care as one of their achievements when it is perfectly clear that they only worsened the long-term care act passed by the previous government. Long-term care is still not being implemented, even though they are already collecting money for it. The crowning absurdity is the claim that he “understands how the economy and the labour market work.” Under his leadership, social dialogue with business has collapsed, and the business community has never been so critical of government interventions. Robert Golob’s government has repeatedly raised taxes against all advice from employer representatives, and the recent introduction of the Christmas bonus tax is the ultimate proof of his lack of understanding of the economy.
Lies about Janez Janša
While one part of the questionnaire spreads lies about Robert Golob’s supposed successes, another part spreads lies about Janez Janša’s alleged failures.The questionnaire contains blatant falsehoods, such as the claim that Janša’s governments damaged the economy (the exact opposite is true), that he was incapable in crisis situations (again, the opposite is true), and claims about how privatisation of state assets was carried out in the past.
The SDS president himself responded to the lies about privatisation: “This rubbish below is being spread around in some ‘poll’ by the regime’s Ninamedia. Pure lies. NLB was sold to foreigners — KBC — by Anton Rop’s government. Mercator was sold to Agrokor in 2014 by Alenka Bratušek’s government. Nikola Damjanić knows all this perfectly well, yet he still spreads lies,” Janša wrote. For example, Anton Rop himself said about the privatisation of NLB in an interview with Delo’s supplement: “After the rehabilitation, NLB was considered the most successful bank in Central and Eastern Europe. I think the privatisation we carried out was also successful. It brought in a strategic partner, enabled the bank cheaper loans and broader expertise.”
The claim that Janez Janša’s government sold Pivovarna Laško and Pivovarna Union to foreigners is also completely false. Heineken bought Pivovarna Laško (and with it Pivovarna Union) in 2017 — during Miro Cerar’s government.
The Freedom Movement is running out of time
Robert Golob’s government has performed disastrously in almost every area it has touched during its outgoing term. Current pre-election polls show they will be decisively defeated. This is also indicated by the latest European elections and the referendums on assisted dying and extra pension supplements for the retired artistic elite.That does not mean, however, that a catastrophic scenario is impossible — one in which, despite an SDS victory, the Freedom Movement again puts together a government with other left-wing parties and continues implementing its harmful policies and incompetent management of the country.
Ž. K.
