On Saturday, the much-awaited Freedom Festival, organised by the ruling Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) took place at Lake Zbilje; however, it was not actually as free as they made it seem, as only selected pro-government media were invited to the event, and a cameraman from Nova24TV was not allowed to attend, allegedly due to missing accreditation. Apparently, only around 200 people attended the event, and during the festival, the power even went out at one point.
Apparently, the Freedom Movement party is not all that free after all, because they decided by themselves which media outlets could physically cover their event and which ones could not. Our cameraman was denied entry, citing a lack of prior accreditation as the reason for their refusal to allow him in. However, our media company did not receive an invitation to the Freedom Festival, nor the necessary alleged prior accreditation request. This means that only selected media outlets were invited to attend.
Boris Tomašič, Director of Nova24TV, also commented on this on X, writing: “Our Nova24TV cameraman was refused entry to the Festival of Freedom. Apparently, they only invited select (read: obedient) media. So much about media freedom and transparency. ” He later also added that, according to some information, they even experienced a power outage at the event.
Participation was reportedly extremely low
However, according to our information, the turnout at the Freedom Festival was record low, with 200 people in total, mostly government officials and their families. The Freedom Movement had hoped for a high turnout, even several thousand people, as they had rented a tent for a large capacity of people, but on the day of the event, it was practically empty most of the time.
At the event, the Freedom Movement also finally presented its list of candidates for the upcoming elections to the European Parliament.
T. R.
