“Panic has now set in, and what the government is doing now is putting out the fire after it had already started blazing, even though there were countless warnings before that pyromaniacs were walking around with matches,” said the President of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), Janez Janša, about the coalition’s decision to halt the implementation of the new network charges.
On a recent episode of the show Conversation (Pogovor) with host Alen Salihović, the SDS party leader Janez Janša commented on current political affairs, including the dispute between the offices of Prime Minister Robert Golob and the office of the President of the Republic Nataša Pirc Musar, the reform of the wage system and possible cooperation with new parties.
The dispute between the Prime Minister’s Office and the President’s Office has, as we know, also extended to the area of official visits, or the forwarding of invitations to official visits to foreign statesmen. Prime Minister Golob’s Office was very bothered by the fact that it had not been informed of Pirc Musar’s invitation to the Chinese President to visit Slovenia and requested further clarifications from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which formally dispatched the invitation. There was also a complication with Golob’s invitation to the Algerian President in May. In light of this, Janša stressed the importance of regular communication between all the representatives of the state, but in this case, he had to agree with the government, as foreign policy is primarily its responsibility.
You are either risking defeat, or you know something we don’t
Regarding the appointment of the Governor of the Bank of Slovenia, President Nataša Pirc Musar is said to have bypassed the Prime Minister’s wishes when she appointed Anton Rop to the said position. Janša reiterated that this is technically possible, but in his long experience, it is quite surprising, because “if you nominate someone who is not supported by the government coalition, which has 53 votes in the National Assembly, you either have to deliberately risk a conflict, the defeat of this candidate in the National Assembly, or you know something that we or the rest of the public do not know yet”.
They have repeatedly warned about pyromaniacs
The SDS President was, among other things, critical of the new electricity network charges. The three parties of the coalition have now proposed to freeze the new network charging, as the new system has been criticised on several occasions. When asked whether he thought the coalition parties even knew what they were putting on the table and what they were now withdrawing, Janša replied, “I think that oftentimes, they don’t know what they are doing, or rather, I think that happens too often.” He recalled the purchase of what was supposed to be the new court building on Litijska Street in Ljubljana – which was supposedly something they decided on twice, and then they admitted that they didn’t know what it was all about.
Janša said: “There have been thousands of public warnings about the new system of charging network charges, especially from the business community. […] And now, the panic has set in, and what the government is doing now is putting out the fire after it had already started blazing, even though there were countless warnings before that pyromaniacs were walking around with matches.”
The main problem is yet to come
The two interlocutors on the show also touched on a long-standing topical subject, namely the government’s wage negotiations with the trade unions. The most publicly resonant issue is the increase in salaries for public officials, including the judges. Given that this is something that Janša also dealt with during his term as Prime Minister, he explained that what was different then was that “above all, they are extremely benevolent towards left-wing governments, even this negotiation on the so-called reform of the wage system or its adjustments has shown to a large extent that the government sits mainly with those trade unions that think very similarly to it,” while it does not even want to talk to some of the other unions.
Janša believes that the main problem is yet to come, and in a double sense. Firstly, when it comes to finances for the wages, the government is talking about a billion or a few hundred million euros, which, according to the experience so far, would bring another billion and a half of financial burdens that the government would like to carry over into the next mandate. This would jeopardise public finances, especially as the economy is cooling down, according to Janša, who sees the second problem as the wage differences under the new wage system and the uproar over it. And regarding the increase in judges’ salaries, he recalled a similar situation from the past: “During the Covid-19 epidemic, we officials gave up a third of our salaries in solidarity. Judges were an exception at that time, according to the court’s decision. This time, with the Constitutional Court’s decision, they have raised their own salaries, which only proves how this caste perceives itself, ” he was critical. He also believes that Slovenia does not have a judiciary, only a few individual judges who are honest.
“If anything, the new coalition has been innovative in its ideas on how to tighten the screw: first, they went ahead and scrapped the mini-wage reform we adopted in our mandate, which would have seen net wages for all employees rise by one net wage a year by the end of this year, without putting employers at further risk. […] And now we keep hearing about how burdened the wages are,” he said, pointing to the uneconomic use of public money.
New parties – project material, instant parties
The President of the largest opposition party also spoke about the falling support for the government. He pointed out that in some other governments, when support was so low, new candidates for the mandate kept coming up again and again, but this is not the case today. On the establishment of new parties and cooperation with them, he said that the SDS party had never excluded anyone. “When forming the government, we always invited everyone to the talks, and we formed the coalition with those who were willing to cooperate and with whom we agreed on a programme, ” he said.
“As for these new so-called offers – do you know of any example of a new party that has emerged in the last 20 years and has managed to stick around? I don’t know of any,” he was critical of the new emerging parties, which he did not expect to show much promise. He was also critical of the moves of his former party colleague Anže Logar and his new party. He was not surprised by Logar’s departure and believes that differences among members of the same party are normal, but that everything that came after could have been done “in a more decent way”.
The court only reacted when threats were made against them
Regarding the compensation he has to pay to the prosecutor and the judges, and regarding the public auction of his items that started on Wednesday, Janša said: “I did not want the burden of compensation for the unjust judgment in the Patria case to be shifted to the citizens, but to those who were responsible for this unjust judgment. We expected a fair trial, but we got a hearing that lasted less than three hours, and they were awarded 30,000 euros in court costs.” He also pointed out that his lawyer was awarded significantly less compensation.
Any threats of violence are reprehensible, Janša stressed. “Threats of violence are unacceptable, but for the left-wing transitional quasi-elite, the problem only arises if someone threatens them, and if someone threatens us, it’s all right – or even encouraged,” Janša pointed out.
SDS party President also commented on the work of NGOs, which he said were “an attempt to establish the rule of the unelected” and their excessive funding, which somebody should put an end to, and in the last part of his conversation with the radio show host, he and the host also commented on the recent Presidential elections in the USA and the election of Donald Trump. Janša expressed his delight that three Slovenians were on stage on the night of the victory. He also noted that he believes that if the world and Slovenia had listened to Trump in his first term, the situation would have been better today.
He also commented on the composition of the new European Commission. “The fact that someone with as much baggage as Marta Kos is confirmed for the position of European Commissioner is no guarantee that such a person will actually manage to finish their mandate, too. All it takes is for one document to come out proving that she was part of the secret political police, and her mandate will be over,” he said.
T. B.
