This time, the opposition tried to get the Commission of Inquiry to do at least some of its work before the parliamentary recess, but the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) made it impossible by having their MP Tomaž Lah convene the second meeting of the Commission of Inquiry only in September, ignoring the fact that a third of the members of the Commission of Inquiry had already appointed him as a witness in the investigation and that he should therefore not lead or participate in the work of the Commission. And thus not delay it either.
MP LAh was also set up by the Freedom Movement party to chair the Commission in order to delay and obstruct the investigation requested by the Council of State. If Lah were to seriously investigate Golob, he would be thrown out of the party, as Mojca Pašek Šetinc already has been. As the President of the Commission established to investigate the right-wing media (which she herself said was mainly there to tarnish the reputation of the Slovenian Democratic Party – SDS), she allowed Rok Snežič to testify about how he introduced the Prime Minister’s current partner, Tina Gaber, to her ex-partner, Klemen Nicoletti, who is known to the public from the story of the Covid-19 rapid test company Majbert Pharm, and Gaber later also promoted a failed cryptocurrency for him.
Miha Lamut (Freedom Movement), who was dismissed because he did not prove himself in defending Golob in the Commission of Inquiry that is examining Golob’s repeated purges in the police, also tasted the danger of investigating the Freedom Movement party.
The SDS party proposed that Žan Mahnič chair the investigation into the Golob and Freedom Movement party deals, but the ruling party firmly rejected him. Because he is capable and experienced, Mahnič was unacceptable to them. Lah’s convening of the September session is the sixth manoeuvre implemented to obstruct this investigation in this mandate. The investigation was first prevented after the elections by the coalition with the help of the New Slovenia party (Nova Slovenija – NSi), which was not prepared to contribute signatures for the SDS party’s investigation. The reason was probably a tacit agreement between the coalition and the NSi party, that the latter would get the leadership of the Commission for Budgetary and Other Public Finance Control, and the Commission for Supervision of the Intelligence and Security Services, as well as retain the leadership of a few important state enterprises, such as the Motorway Company in the Republic of Slovenia (DARS). Both control commissions, according to the result of the elections and the proposal of the expert services of the National Assembly, should have been run by the much larger opposition party – the SDS party. But because of the fraud, the SDS party is not even part of both control commissions in protest and there is no serious control over the behaviour of the rulers in this mandate. This was likely the aim of the Freedom Movement party all along.
But the NSi party’s blocking of the investigation failed when the Freedom Movement ousted the NSi Director of DARS, Valentin Hajdinjak, and an investigation into Golob’s dealings was then demanded by the Council of State, where councillors close to the NSi were suddenly in favour of it. The Freedom Movement party tried to prevent this, too, with fierce pressure, including a special letter from the management of the Gen-I energy company (which Golob used to head) through the law firm of Mirko Bandelj. But after a broken lectern and a few more complications, the majority of the councillors voted in favour of the request for an investigation, which was the downfall of the Freedom Movement’s second manoeuvre.
The third attempt to stop the investigation was the decision by the Speaker of the National Assembly (and member of the Freedom Movement party), Urška Klakočar Zupančič, who prevented the investigation from being ordered within the time limit set by law, explaining that it contained serious errors. The Council of State insisted that nothing would be corrected, and the investigation was eventually ordered by Parliament in an extraordinary session forced by the SDS party. However, Klakočar Zupančič succeeded in stalling the investigation.
At the time when she was not prepared to convene a parliamentary session to decide on ordering an investigation, Klakočar Zupančič also proposed a hasty amendment to the law on parliamentary investigations, so that an appeal to the Constitutional Court could delay, if not prevent, the start of the investigation into Golob and the Freedom Movement for some time. The amendment has not yet been enacted into law because the opposition has stopped this manoeuvre through referendum and similar procedures, and legal experts have also raised doubts as to whether this could already apply to this case.
The fifth manoeuvre was that the Freedom Movement decided that, with Lah as President, it would make it impossible to investigate Golob, i.e. itself.
And the sixth manoeuvre is that Lah is now actually preventing the investigation from starting and is postponing it, even though he has already been appointed as a witness.
The SDS party responded to the latest way of blocking the investigation as follows:
“At a press conference, SDS MPs Rado Gladek and Žan Mahnič spoke about the work of the Commission of Inquiry for determining the alleged financial exhaustion of the company GEN-I, alleged controversial practices related to the company STAR SOLAR, alleged illegal financing of the political party GIBANJE SVOBODA, and alleged illegal financing of the electoral campaign of GIBANJE SVOBODA for the regular elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia in 2022, and the announcement of a suspected criminal offence committed by MP Tomaž Lah.
In his introductory remarks, MP Gladek outlined the developments. On the 12th of June 2024, the first extraordinary meeting of the Commission of Inquiry was held, with two agenda items on the constitution of the Commission and the agreement on its work. After the first item, the members of the Commission from the Slovenian Democratic Party tabled a motion for a decision on evidence and a motion for a decision to carry out preparatory investigative measures. In the evidence decision, which had been proposed by more than a third of the Members, they had set out lists of witnesses whom they wished to question. Among them was the President of the Commission, Tomaž Lah, who could thus no longer be a member or President of the Commission. Tomaž Lah rejected the proposal, and the SDS members of the Commission therefore did not take part in the remainder of the sitting. On the same day, Rado Gladek, as Vice-President of the Commission, informed the President of the Commission for Public Office and Elections, Janja Sluga, by letter that Tomaž Lah is no longer the President of the Commission. He asked President Sluga to carry out all the formal procedures for the appointment of new members of the Commission of Inquiry and thus enable it to continue with its work unobstructed.
Given that both Tomaž Lah, as well as the President of the Commission for Public Office and Elections ignored all the requests that would allow the Commission of Inquiry to operate normally, on the 9th of July, Gladek, as Vice-President of the Commission, personally handed over the document convening the 2nd extraordinary meeting of the Commission of Inquiry to the Commission’s expert services. On the 10th of July, Tomaž Lah sent over a letter stating that the Vice-President’s call for a convocation was null and void. And on the 11th of July, Lah convened the first ordinary session of the Commission of Inquiry for the 18th of September this year. In light of the above, it is clear that this is a violation of the Act on Parliamentary Inquiries, the Rules of Procedure on Parliamentary Inquiries and the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly, with the aim of delaying and obstructing the work of the Commission of Inquiry. “This is clearly an attack on democracy,” Gladek was critical. Therefore, on Friday, the 12th of July, SDS MPs, who are members of the Commission of Inquiry, filed a report with the District State Prosecutor’s Office in Ljubljana and the police on suspicion that Tomaž Lah had committed a criminal offence of abuse of official position and the offence of negligence in the performance of one’s duties.
MP Mahnič went on to point out that judging by how the Freedom Movement is running the country and the National Assembly, it seems that no laws and no rules of procedure apply anymore. “The main actor in these violations is now the former President of the Commission of Inquiry in question, Tomaž Lah, who is still illegally occupying the position of President, which is illegal and contrary to the law.”
Mahnič stressed that the Slovenian Democratic Party was abiding by the law and the Rules of Procedure, which is why the MPs had submitted a request for a third of the votes. “The Rules of Procedure are clear here. The tabling of the one-third request is equivalent to the result of a vote,” Mahnič pointed out. The law on parliamentary inquiries states that a Member of Parliament may not take part in a commission of inquiry if he or she is a person under investigation or a witness in the matter under investigation. “Tomaž Lah can therefore no longer be the President of the Commission in question, because he is a witness in the relevant investigation.” The District Attorney’s Office and the police will quickly establish that MP Lah has violated all legislation, the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, and the Rules of Procedure of the Parliamentary Inquiry. And, “There is only one goal – to protect the wrongdoings and mafia business of Robert Golob, his clique when he was still with Gen-I, and all those who participated in the misconduct. They want to put the brakes on it, we want to investigate it. I believe that in the end, the court will recognise why this is happening and will rule in accordance with the law,” Mahnič concluded.”
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