The opposition parties SD, LMŠ and Levica clearly felt the need to immediately respond to the letter that the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Janez Janša, sent to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. He invited her to check the state of democracy and media freedom in Slovenia with the help of the latest news from the mainstream Slovenian media outlets. “The letter certainly caused quite a stir in Brussels. It seems to me that Brussels is following our situation with great concern; the entire European public is dealing with Slovenia,” the president of the SD party, Tanja Fajon, said. It is a shame that she forgot to mention how her party actively prevented the recording of a press conference for the media outlet, which is mostly critical of them.
Another set of dirty double standards of the left-wing opposition and “our independent” media has recently been revealed. A few days ago, an article by the Politico journalist Lili Bayer caused quite a stir in the Slovenian public. In the article, she wrote about the “alarming cases” in the Slovenian media landscape and described how the journalists are threatened and afraid to do their jobs. She was quickly joined in her opinion by her political friends Tanja Fajon and Irena Joveva, who, as former influential journalists, presented the alarming situation in Slovenia.
The central representatives of the Slovenian government agreed that the European representatives should indeed come to Slovenia and take a closer look at the work of the media. This was publicly stated by Prime Minister Janez Janša, as well as both Deputy Prime Ministers of the Republic of Slovenia, Matej Tonin and Zdravko Počivalšek. The current Prime Minister of Slovenia wrote on Twitter that he hopes that the working group arrives as soon as possible, as they would then be able to see the work of the media in Slovenia from up close and would have the opportunity to check “how the central media in our country operate, who they serve, how the judiciary works, whether academic freedom is being respected, which journalists have actually been persecuted, who laundered money for Iran, and so on.”
The left-wing opposition and its associated media are afraid that the European Commission will see for itself the cover-ups of the dirty work of the past left-wing governments!
Members of the failed project of the Constitutional Arch Coalition (Koalicija ustavnega loka – referred to as KUL) quickly changed their minds after the government and the ruling coalition called on the European Commission to come to Slovenia and check the media landscape by themselves. This was, once again, perfectly shown by Tanja Fajon. You can agree or disagree with the content of our media outlet; that is your choice. However, because we are a media outlet, we have the same rights as the other thousand media outlets in Slovenia – meaning we also have a right to participate in journalistic events, just like the other media outlets. But this did not matter to Tanja Fajon.
LMŠ MP Jerca Korče and the coordinator of the Levica party Luka Mesec said similar things in their speeches. They both wondered how the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Janez Janša, even dared to invite the President of the European Commission to Slovenia because of the media issue. They both stated a similar excuse, saying that the state of the media in Slovenia had already been described in last year’s report of the European Commission. We must not forget that the media reports for Slovenia were prepared by the ideological enemies of the current government: professor of journalist at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Marko Mirosavljević, Ph.D., Sandra Bašić Hrvatin and Brankica Petković. Hrvatin also actively participated in the illegal cycling protests against the current government and fought for “our” RTV Slovenia.
However, they all know perfectly well why both the mainstream media, as well as the left-wing opposition, changed their minds so suddenly. The consequences of many years of them being in power would reveal the full spectre of connectedness of the left-wing politics with the largest media outlets in the country. In the past, they made sure to neatly cover up the most tumultuous scandals of the left-wing governments. And they are afraid that that might actually be revealed.
Luka Perš
