“In no normal democracy could there be a government with which the absolute majority of the population is dissatisfied,” Tea Jarc told the German reporter Andreas Schmid, adding that about 70 percent of Slovenians support the protests. In addition, she also simply made up the claim that Prime Minister Janez Janša wanted to privatise water. She believes that the Prime Minister might even jeopardise European values during Slovenia’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and according to her, Janša is considered politically unpredictable: “At some point, he completely changed his mind and became a right-wing populist dictator,” she told the Germa journalist.
We have previously already reported on various ways in which Friday’s protesters get the attention they need from the foreign media. Namely, it turned out that Tea Jarc had coffee with the journalist Andreas Schmid and told him lots of lies, which the latter completely uncritically decided to include in his articles. Recently, two of his articles about Slovenia were published in Munich’s Merkur – and Jarc appeared in both. Franci Kindlhofer pointed out that the journalist, among other things, accepted Jarc’s claim that Prime Minister Janez Janša is a convicted criminal without any hesitation, and he also fell for her statement that she is not interested in political parties. In the first article, entitled “Worrying about Slovenia: How the “Mini-Trump” Janša is creating Hungary 2.0,” Schmid discusses one of the most controversial heads of government in the European Union, and also cites the critical views of Marjan Šarec, Alenka Bratušek, and Tanja Fajon in his article. It would be really hard to convince anyone that this is balanced journalism.
In the second article entitled “The Protest Movement in Slovenia: What Do We Even Have Left, if We No Longer Have Democracy,” Schmid wrote about how the demonstrations against Janez Janša are growing bigger and bigger. The “government critic” Tea Jarc also spoke about the protests in her interview. Schmid wrote that the right-wing conservative politician was accused, among other things, of violating freedom of the press, suppressing unpleasant opinions with an increasingly authoritarian leadership style and that Janša was increasingly oriented towards Hungary and Viktor Orban in his policy. In addition, the number of allegations of corruption in the country is also growing – and all of this, of course, was dictated to Schmid by Jarc.
Jarc then also spoke about how at one of the protests, they played golf and badminton in front of the parliament building, which they were later punished for, as this was interpreted as a political statement. This, of course, is not true – no one has been punished for making political statements, but rather because they violated ordinances during an epidemic. She boasted that at one point, there were more than 15,000 protesters gathered in the middle of Ljubljana and that traffic had to be stopped because of them. The latter is true; however, as far as counting is concerned, we all know how this goes with the left. She said that Janša often flies to the top of Mount Triglav with a helicopter. On the day of the incident at Kredarica, they heard that the Prime Minister was also going to Triglav, which they could hardly believe, but then he actually showed up.
Jarc then said that in no normal democracy could there be a government with which the absolute majority of the population is dissatisfied. Apparently, she has never heard of the elections before. According to Jarc, the protest movement is very important, and the referendum on nature conservation was also very successful. “Janša wanted to privatise water,” she simply made up a claim. She explained that many people voted against the law not only to preserve nature but also to show the government that they do not support it. In her opinion, the referendum was a clear sign of distrust towards Janša. In short, she told the German journalist all sorts of fabrications, with the help of a few representatives of the opposition – from whom we will certainly soon hear accusations about how the foreign media are writing badly about the situation in Slovenia.
Sara Bertoncelj
