According to Janez Janša, people should be aware that no other member of the European Union, no other democratic country in the world has such a law with such benefits. “A ‘no’ vote in the referendum is not a vote against culture. It is a vote to defend Slovenian culture,” he was clear on Wednesday night’s episode of the show Gost tedna (Guest of the Week) on ETV.
According to Janez Janša, the current government is behaving as if it has taken ownership of the country. For the first time in history, we have witnessed a vote on taking away a Member of Parliament’s right to speak at the session, and the rules of procedure of the National Assembly, which are considered to be a small constitution, are being violated. “We are on the verge of an outright autocracy, and I hope that the Slovenian electorate will use the opportunity it has now, as the referendum is approaching, to show a red card here to this behaviour as well.”
It is a double vote
Regarding the referendum, Janša stressed that it is crucial that people realise that this is a double vote. “Firstly, it is about defending the dignity of all those who are already retired and all those who will be retired, because if 99.9 percent have to work and pay contributions to get a pension, then it is extremely unfair for someone to get a thousand- or two-thousand-euro supplement to their pension for a one-off artistic or quasi-artistic creation. The average duration of a pension is 20 years,” which means, according to Janša, that the amount of money we are talking about for a single recipient “is more than half of the Nobel Prize for a single painting. Nowhere else in the world is this possible. People should be aware that no other member of the European Union, no other democratic country in the world has such a law with such benefits,” he said, adding that the Slovenian government has created a truly unique situation here.
“A ‘no’ vote in the referendum is not a vote against culture. It is a vote to defend Slovenian culture,” Janša was clear, noting that there are thousands of cultural associations, theatre groups and choirs all over Slovenia and that some of those who have been leading these groups for decades may only get a municipal award. The Prešeren Prize winners already receive a cash award for their work, but to give half a million euros on top of that for the benefit of pensions seems to Janša to be a mockery of common sense. According to Janša, the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) is the only party in Slovenia that has had a cultural forum for 30 years. “Our party has hundreds of Slovenian cultural activists from all over Slovenia, mostly in the field of amateur culture,” he pointed out, adding that practically all of them are appalled by this law. “It is not true that if this law falls, these pensions will continue to be granted. They were never being granted just like that. The government had to take into account some criteria and take responsibility for giving an award or an allowance, a benefit that was three times smaller than what they are now proposing. This is also not right,” he said, announcing that the SDS party would soon table a bill to repeal the 1974 law in question.
“Slovenian culture often needs to be helped, but there are other ways to do it, not the one they have now taken, which makes a mockery of the vast majority of cultural creators,” he stressed, pointing to the situation we find ourselves in as another reason to vote against. “Things are moving in the wrong direction,” he noted, adding that public opinion polls show that the majority of Slovenians agree with this sentiment. To stop or even shorten the path down the wrong road is still possible, according to Janša, and it can be achieved by voting “against” in the referendum.
As Janša is no stranger to having to fight the judicial mills, he was asked when he had fallen out with the system. He explained that the first military court charge against him was brought in 1988, because he had written an article in the then anti-regime Mladina newspaper about how money for the Yugoslav People’s Party (YPA) was being spent on things that would never work, for example, on building a supersonic aircraft that Yugoslavia was incapable of building, and how some changes were being prepared in the organisation of military service. “In the last 40 years, there have been not only three or five proceedings against me, but there have been three that have had an impact on wider political developments.” This system or regime has brought 163 proceedings against him. As for the Trenta case, he recalled that this farce is not over yet. “The prosecutor, who should have been prosecuted himself for abuse of law, because the law on prosecution says that a prosecutor cannot prosecute for something that is clearly not a crime, has announced an appeal,” he said, adding that they would probably not allow themselves to convict him, given the number of facts that have come to the attention of the Slovenian public in relation to the case. “If no one is held accountable for what has been going on for 15 years, it is only a matter of time before something similar is staged. The word reform, what needs to be done in the Slovenian judiciary, is too weak, things need to be brought back to the point Slovenia promised when it joined the European Union,” he pointed out, recalling that the then left-wing government promised to make the necessary changes in Slovenian justice, which it has not done in the last 20 years.
The world has indeed become the most dangerous it has been since the fall of the Berlin Wall
Janša warned at the recent congress of the European People’s Party (EPP) in Spain that the world is at a turning point, at a turning point in time, that the centre of gravity has shifted from Europe to Asia, and that we should be very worried about this. “We Slovenians are part of a united Europe, where the majority still think that Europe is the centre of the world. But if we look at the map of the world, economically, politically and demographically in particular, we see that the centre has shifted. Although Western civilisation has many advantages, they are becoming fewer and fewer. We are losing out on points that are crucial. The most crucial is demography, because the situation in the Western world is dark in terms of birth rates. 50 years ago, twice as many children were being born as today. In some countries, even more,” Janša pointed out, adding that the problem is not being solved with the rapid import of people from other civilisations, but rather worsened.
“Someone who comes here and assimilates can be an equal part of the community, contributing to progress and so on, but if too many foreigners come here and don’t assimilate, then the world they fled comes to us,” he said, adding that many Western European countries already have these problems. This, he said, is something that cannot be solved either by technological progress, or with the standard, or artificial intelligence. “Once there are no Slovenians, there is no Slovenia, once there are no Europeans, there is no Europe as we know it as a concept,” he pointed out, adding that this is our key problem. The last 20 years have also seen the rise of autocratic regimes that have started to cooperate with each other, and the world has become a dangerous place. He warned of the danger of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. In his view, we in the West are too preoccupied with ourselves and are neglecting some of the real power that we should have to influence even such situations, which will affect us if they escalate. “The world has indeed become the most dangerous it has been since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Janša warned.
On the war in Ukraine, he said that there are different motives for ending the war. “We would like this war to end with the Russian aggressor forces withdrawing, with people no longer dying and with Ukraine continuing on its European path. On the other hand, it is in the interest of the US President to clear the table,” he explained, indicating that Trump is serious when he states that America comes first. “On the global map, the war in Ukraine is a regional conflict. America is heading towards its main rival – China, and towards the Pacific, South Asia, where the real centre of the action is. From Washington’s point of view, the war in Ukraine is a conflict that brings Russia and China closer together. It is in America’s interest to keep them apart,” he explained, adding, with regard to Trump’s remarks on the Panama Canal and Greenland, that these are two points that also determine China’s influence geo-strategically. “From the point of view of a certain geostrategy, this talk is logical, but it sounds brutal, especially if we look at it from the point of view that we are still in charge. However, we are not in charge,” he explained, recalling Europe’s difficulties in producing sufficient weapons, even though we spend nominally considerably more per year on defence than Russia.
“The real question is how we are managing this money and how high is the awareness that sometimes, diplomacy alone does not work and you need to have weapons, too.” Janša stresses that in this cruel world, it is also necessary to have some real power, and the West has all the potential not to jeopardise people’s well-being, but warns that changes cannot be achieved overnight, despite the increase in defence spending. Despite what is being said about Trump and the real mistakes he is making, Janša pointed out that the alliance between Europe and North America is crucial for our security.
Slovenia’s voice in the world is irrelevant, Janša said, but there were times when we led the European Union and were listened to for our ideas. He is not surprised by the current situation, given that the current policy is not even working well within our country. When asked what kind of Pope he would like to succeed Pope Francis, he said that the world needs a Pope like Pope John Paul II. A Pope who understood both the dynamics within the Catholic Church and the world around him.
A coalition with the electorate is needed
Regarding the elections, Janša said that the Slovenian Democratic Party is not concerned with the composition of the future coalition, as that is a matter for the time after the elections. “What is needed now is a coalition with the voters. If this is sufficient, then the result is also such that a government can be formed.” He announced that the SDS party would not form any more weak governments and that the same people who are currently in charge should continue to govern if the people are happy with them. “The voters are always right. This is one of the last chances to turn things around.” He noted that there is no other serious party in Slovenia that has the personnel, the experience, the knowledge, the connections in Europe and the world that would allow it to turn things around. Members of the SDS party are ready to work with anyone who thinks positively for the country, but they will not work in coalition with those who are not ready to vote in favour of the European Parliament resolution condemning all totalitarian regimes, nor with those who are not able to bury all the dead, or with those who swear by the totalitarian practices of the past while saying that the solution to all development problems is higher taxes.
Ž. N.
