While Robert Golob kept emphasising throughout the election campaign how we need to help young people, the government’s actions show that they actually have completely different priorities. Namely, the Members of Parliament from Golob’s party voted against the proposed amendment to the School Meals Act, which would have provided free lunch for pupils and students. The opposition is rightly critical of this because instead of helping small children, the government has apparently decided it would rather take care of the “big children” from Metelkova Street. “The millionaire left-wing non-governmental organisations will continue to stay in the premises in the centre of Ljubljana for free,” political analyst Mitja Iršič pointed out. Meanwhile, Slovenian Democratic Party MP Andrej Hoivik critically warned the government that it has not proposed a single law so far.
The government of Robert Golob does not agree with the proposal of the amendments to the School Meals Act, which would make school lunch free for all pupils and students, as it would be covered by the state budget, and the school mid-day snack would be financed by the state in the amount of 50 percent. The coalition clearly does not care about its pre-election promises, as it rejected the proposed amendment on school meals with 51 votes against and three abstentions.
The coalition will, however, obviously rather take care of the non-governmental organisations that reside in Metelkova street, who will continue to stay there for free, at the expense of the taxpayers. The Left party (Levica) recently announced with great satisfaction that the meeting of the users of the premises at Metelkova 6 with the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, was more than productive. Namely, the NGOs will be able to continue to stay in the centre of our beautiful capital at the expense of the state.
It is more than obvious that the NGOs are a priority of Golob’s government, as the coalition MPs voted against the free school lunches, even though in the coalition agreement, they advocated for free school meals for all schoolchildren. “The millionaire left-wing non-governmental organisations will continue to stay in the premises in the centre of Ljubljana for free. The building will continue falling apart and endanger pedestrians. We will not round up the museum quarter with a natural history museum like they have in Vienna. The space around the building will continue to be a gathering place for drug addicts. Thank you, the Left party!” the former consultant for public relations at the Ministry of Culture, Mitja Iršič, wrote.
Before the elections, Golob promised that he would help young people, but the coalition MPs also voted against the amendments to the Personal Income Tax Act, which would have made it so all young people up to and including the age of 26 would not have to pay income tax. With the legislative proposal of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and its youth wing, the Slovenian Democratic Youth, young people could get the much-needed financial resources much faster in times of high prices and have a better starting point for entering the labour market and, thanks to the recently adopted law on the housing guarantee scheme for young people, be creditworthy, and thus they could solve their first housing issue much more easily. But obviously, the coalition is not concerned about any of that, even though it is always talking about how the welfare of all citizens should be the priority. It also seems that the MPs of the coalition have no shame whatsoever. They did not change their mind about the vote, even after the New Slovenia (Nova Slovenija – NSi) MP Andrej Reberšek showed them a video clip of Prime Minister Golob explaining at length how we need to help young people and saying that taxes and income tax for young people should be zero. The opposition MP then told the coalition to “close up the shop and let’s just leave.”
And even though more than 30 days have already passed since the swearing-in of the new government, it has not yet sent a single law to confirmation to the National Assembly. It seems that they are taking their sweet time doing anything, even though hard times are fast approaching. Meanwhile, things were completely different during the term of the Janša government, when, in the first 30 days of being in office, the extensive first anti-corona legislative package already came into effect, which helped the Slovenian economy and citizens during the first wave of the epidemic, and with all of the subsequent anti-corona legislative packages, Janša’s government maintained and improved the condition of the Slovenian economy, thus preserving hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The opposition is worried about the upcoming months
Among other things, MP Andrej Hoivik recently pointed out that lately, we have been hearing a lot about how the opposition is supposedly “making things difficult” for the new government because it submitted several laws on the first day of the new government term. “We want to emphasise that all of these legal bases were proposed in light of the busy months that await us – especially in the fields of the rising prices, the scholarship policy and in light of the de-bureaucratisation of Slovenia. Some laws have already been approved by the government coalition as appropriate, which our party welcomes,” Hoivik pointed out. He also added that the SDS party is disappointed and, above all, surprised that the government coalition assessed the law on value-added tax and the law on scholarships as inappropriate. With the first law, the VAT rate for the supply of natural gas, electricity and district heating would be lowered from the current 22 percent to 5 percent. This would make it easier for citizens to financially survive the upcoming autumn and winter months, which will be a big challenge, especially from the point of view of rising electricity prices. And the rejection of the scholarship law means that the government coalition does not want young athletes and chess players to be able to obtain the Zois scholarship for their outstanding sports achievements.
“And thus, the actual European funds that the government of Janez Janša allocated for the new mechanical engineering faculty in Ljubljana were now re-allocated to support soft content. The ‘good deeds’ of Luka Mesec. Those who started their professional careers in parliament are now leading our country. They are destroying the brains in this country; they want to destroy families… And Slovenia is dancing,” the former Cohesion Minister, Zvone Černač, critically pointed out the government’s recent actions just a few days ago.
The non-governmental organisations can rightly be happy that there has been a change of power because now they will be able to latch on to the state budget again. At this point, it is important to point out that no one is saying that all NGOs are bad. But it is a fact that they are rightly expected to work for the welfare of society and be apolitical. Of course, this cannot be said for the NGOs that reside on Metelkova. However, since it is actually these NGOs that helped the ruling coalition come to power, it is not surprising that now the time for payback to those who devotedly served as a tool for left-wing political propaganda has come. So much for the fact that children are our greatest wealth.
Sara Kovač
