“When the Slovenian Democratic Party was being viciously attacked, and when it was even stabbed in the back and forced to defend itself at all ends, it was able to not only defend itself but also create an alternative. It created proposals for the greater prosperity of Slovenia – instead of those who had the power in their hands but whose goal was not common prosperity, but instead only obtaining power at any cost. Even in the midst of the greatest abuses of state institutions against the SDS party and in light of media murders, we were able to come together for a sober debate, to testify to the truth and to look to the future,” said the SDS party President Janez Janša at Saturday’s celebration. The SDS party, he said, is not a movement with a name from Austria, which is everywhere today and will be gone tomorrow, which is loading its MPs on a bus today and will have none left tomorrow.
On Saturday, the presidents of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), Janez Janša, and the New People’s Party (Nova ljudska stranka – NLS), Franc Kangler, signed an agreement in Maribor on the NLS party joining the SDS party. The party will officially become part of the SDS party once the NLS congress also confirms this decision.
On this occasion, the President of the SDS party, Janša, also gave a speech.
You can read the speech in its entirety below:
Thank you, everyone, for attending our celebration. We are especially happy to see all of you who were there at the time of the creation of our two predecessors and at the time when the foundations of an independent and European Slovenia were being laid. Sadly, many of the people who were part of these important events are no longer with us today, but we always think of them, especially on our anniversaries, with great gratitude.
Not only the SDS party but also an independent Slovenia would not exist without the courage of the founding members of the Slovenian Democratic Union (Slovenska demokratična zveza – SDZ) and the Social-democratic Party of Slovenian (Socialdemokratska stranka Slovenije – SDSS). Some people tried to prevent even the formation of the two predecessors of the SDS party through political, administrative and criminal pressure. They also orchestrated media assassinations of Jože Pučnik, France Tomšič, Dimitrij Rupel, Rudi Šeligo, Marjan Vidmar, Dimitrij Kovačič, and many other founding members. These men had to deal with criminal charges, tax inspectors and many other members of the State Security Administration of the former Yugoslavia [known in Slovenia as UDBA]. Today, it is difficult for someone who did not live through those times to imagine the situation as we knew it back then. On the occasion of the 91st anniversary of the birth of Dr Jože Pučnik, a book by the columnist Igor Omerza documenting the State Security Administration’s persecution of Jože Pučnik, will be published (next month). I believe that only after reading this book will many people better understand the suffering, as well as the greatness, of the father of the Slovenian state. Who was not allowed to be buried with military honours, while the head of the State Security Administration, Zemljarič, who persecuted Pučnik, was buried as a statesman by the decision of the Golob government.
The regime that persecuted Dr Pučnik and others first went underground when Slovenia gained its independence, and then restored itself in various forums – in the judiciary and the media corporations and continued its fight against the democrats and the people who fought for Slovenia’s independence. But the people, at least most of them, held out, and today’s SDS party was born, an institution that brought together and reunited most of the state-building power of the former DEMOS party.
Even in the times of the greatest attacks, the SDS party was able to act in ways that allowed it not only to “keep standing and remain strong”, but also to continue on its path. A path of loyalty to itself, to its values, and to Slovenia. When the SDS party was being viciously attacked, and when it was even stabbed in the back and forced to defend itself at all ends, it was able to not only defend itself but also create an alternative. It created proposals for the greater prosperity of Slovenia – instead of those who had the power in their hands but whose goal was not common prosperity, but instead only obtaining power at any cost. Even in the midst of the greatest abuses of state institutions against the SDS party and in light of media murders, we were able to come together for a sober debate, to testify to the truth and to look to the future.
We saved Slovenia during the pandemic with a great deal of responsibility. Thanks to the resilience and vitality of the Slovenian economy and the effective measures adopted by the then-government, we ended up among the economic winners of the Covid-19 crisis. The impact of the results of our measures lasted well into last year and is still partly in effect, as the European Commission recently noted. Last year, we had every possible election except the elections to the European Parliament. The Slovenian Democratic Party increased its number of deputies in the National Assembly and the number of councillors in the National Council. We won local elections convincingly. Our candidate for President of the Republic achieved a good result. Despite the difficult situation and the insidious attacks by the left-wing opposition during the major health crisis, they were unable to destroy or weaken the SDS party, so they focused on our two partners, with whom we formed a coalition after former Prime Minister Šarec gave up on leading the country. The parallel mechanism succeeded first in weakening, then in shrinking and finally in wiping out both the Modern Centre Party (Stranka modernega centra – SMC) and the Democratic Party of Retirees of Slovenia (Demokratska stranka upokojencev Slovenije – DeSUS) from the National Assembly, so that the otherwise successful government coalition did not have a majority after the elections, needed to repeat the mandate. In recent months, we have carried out a series of extensive analyses of the “super election year”, assessments of the situation and also of our own mistakes. After the April elections, many disillusioned voters claimed that they had been cheated or had their votes stolen. The SDS party, through its membership in the electoral committees and through its trustees, was largely in control on polling day, and we believe that no ballots were stolen or forged on polling day.
This does not mean, however, that everything was fine with the elections. The problems are more hidden, some of them systemic. We have been pointing them out for a long time, but the State Election Commission, where the left has always had a majority, both in terms of leadership and directorship, dismisses or simply ignores all of our warnings and suggestions. There are two problems in particular. The first is the systematic abolition of polling stations in rural constituencies, which is significantly reducing voter turnout. In the Šmarje pri Jelšah constituency, where we always achieve excellent results, as many as 28 polling stations have been closed since 2011, and voter turnout has fallen to one of the lowest in the country. In the same period, 20 polling stations were closed in Črnomelj, 18 in Idrija and 17 in Ormož. While voters in Ljubljana have a polling station behind every corner, elsewhere, it costs money to get to one. In addition, there is also a dismissive attitude towards a section of the electorate in rural areas, who are thus treated as second-class citizens and thus discouraged from going to vote.
The second major problem is the control of ballot papers cast in early voting. In Ljubljana, early voting for 11 polling stations all happened in Gospodarsko razstavišče (Ljubljana Exhibition and Convention Centre). Voters were able to vote there on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. When the voting stops before the election Sunday, the boxes with uncounted ballot papers, together with other election materials, are stored somewhere for two days and five nights, guarded by – presumably – Dušan Vučko and Zoran Janković. Proposals for the election commissions to count and certify the result after each day of voting have been persistently rejected. This fact may have been negligible in the past, when early voting turnout was low. Now, however, with over 100,000 voters casting their votes early, this lack of control is a major problem. We will insist, and we will insist very strongly, that by the next elections, the polling stations be returned to the people and that independent oversight of the early voting process is ensured.
Today, Slovenians have a beautiful homeland, which has also been an independent country since 1991. We have Slovenia, which belongs to everyone. Recently, however, we have been hearing the accusation that it is being usurped by the independence fighters. That is a bit like accusing the founder of a company of appropriating it. In reality, it is much worse than if this accusation were true. Because Slovenia and the Slovenian state are being appropriated by those for whom an independent Slovenia has never been the preferred option and who have even said so publicly. And they had actively undermined the independence effort. Both in the open and from behind the scenes. By disarming the Slovenian armed forces, by creating a declaration against the Slovenian army, by voting against all measures to secure and defend independence, by calling on European politicians not to recognise the Slovenian state, by openly publicly opposing independence in many committees of the Associations of the National Liberation Movement of Slovenia, by offering immediate reunification back into the Yugoslav confederation, etc.
It is no coincidence that a few days ago, we could read similar calls, this time aimed at opposing the provision of defence aid to the invaded Ukraine, from the same people who, after the Slovenian plebiscite, treacherously opposed the arming of Slovenia. And it is no coincidence that today, the red star is a symbol of the aggressor – the Russian army in Ukraine, just as it was a symbol of the aggressor Yugoslav army that invaded Slovenia in 1991. It is even less a coincidence that the winners of Putin’s awards, Kučan and Janković, are defending Putin.
The Golob government buried the head of the criminal State Security Administration with military honours and closed down the Museum of Slovenian Independence. This is a symbolic move that does not simply attack a cultural and historical institution, which practically every other independent country has. It is attacking the very result of the independence fight; it is attacking an independent and democratic Slovenia. They are not even trying to cover it up all that much. Members of one of the government parties in the National Assembly are publicly talking about how Slovenian independence had brought down the beautiful socialist Yugoslavia. They publicly boast about how they do not fly the Slovenian flag on Statehood Day. A minister from another government party wrote on her profile that the situation should be restored to pre-1991 times and that they are working on it. The whole of the country’s top echelons enthusiastically applauds the misuse of the Statehood Day celebrations, where hate speech is paraded on two legs with the symbol of a totalitarian ideology and an aggressor army.
Therefore, this is not about the Museum of Independence, but about independence itself, and its result. For an independent and democratic Slovenia. They also want to nullify both with an abject phrase that they parrot at various totalitarian events, claiming that independent Slovenia would not exist without the National Liberation Movement. You could ask them why they have remained silent on this topic for so long. If they had told us this in 1991, we would not have had to become independent again. However, this distortion, however bizarre, is dangerous, because it seeks to blur the boundaries between the socialist republic in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the independent Slovenian state, and the boundaries between the totalitarian rule of one party and the democratic set-up of an independent Slovenia.
But it is one thing to debate what has been, and it is another to face the challenges related to the same subject in the time ahead. If anything, it is clear that there will be no independent Slovenia if there are no Slovenians. And that is their ultimate goal. To dismantle and destroy the nation, the family, religion, quality education, and entrepreneurship. They are making great strides in this direction, also with the help of the Constitutional Court. In a country that has one of the oldest populations in the world, they first abolished the Government Office for Demography. Since it was located here in Maribor, they were particularly hasty, without the municipality raising its voice in any serious way against the impoverishment of Maribor. The money and the people from the Office for Demography were then allocated to the Office for Migrants. The objective is clear. As few indigenous inhabitants as possible and as many migrants from foreign civilisations as possible. The destruction of the family as the basic unit of society is particularly high on their list of Cultural Marxist priorities. They say that these are the demands of modern times and that it is necessary to move forward with the times.
However, this is not the path of progress but the path of decay. It is not the way forward but the way back. Mankind once lived in caves and caverns in disorganised hordes, where the strongest sexual predators chose their victims in their own “cave FotoPub”. Except that back then, there were no radiators, and the cave predecessors of the Ljubljana leftists used dripstones instead. By the way, have you heard of any results of the criminal and prosecutorial investigations into the disgusting abuses committed by the friends of the current Minister of Culture in FotoPub? We are firmly opposed to this disintegration of the foundations of Western, European and Slovenian civilisation, which is being covered up or even supported by the relevant institutions and the mainstream media. A father is a man, and a mother is a woman. Both sexes are equal, but each has its own natural role. The corruption of the fundamental postulates of nature and civilisation is the road to ruin.
Many other measures and announcements by the current authorities are leading us in the same direction. The path of decomposition, the path of cultural Marxism. Higher taxes, more centralisation, more renters, more state-owned properties, more ministries, more procedures, more bureaucracy, more dependants on the state money. Their common denominator is to make as many people dependent on the authorities as possible. As many dependants as possible and as few sovereign individuals as possible. Our approach is completely different. As few bureaucratic obstacles as possible, as little red tape as possible, as short procedures as possible, as favourable an environment as possible for families and children, as good an education as possible, as much innovation as possible, as favourable an environment as possible for the development of entrepreneurship. As many sovereign individuals as possible who know how to separate the wheat from the chaff and who are able to stand on their own two feet and think for themselves.
Isn’t it absurd that a party or movement that is taking up the agenda of the radical socialist left, that is introducing new and new bureaucratic obstacles, that is raising taxes and excise duties, that is destroying the public media, that is openly bribing judges – calls itself the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda)? Their leader is calling us “the dark forces” and fascists. Seriously? The only party that they can be compared to in the European environment, where they have looked for models for their name, is the Austrian Freedom party. And the fact is that they are both anti-Slovenian. The only difference is that the local members of the Freedom Movement do more harm to Slovenia and the Slovenians than those from the neighbouring Freedom party. We have a government coalition made up of three left-wing parties. Two of them are a classic derivative of the deep state or a remnant of the failed transition, the aim of which is essentially negatively pragmatic, that is to say, to preserve power, positions, privileges and protection from the hand of justice. The third, the Left party (Levica), as the original product of modern cultural Marxism, with its ideological radicalism, thus easily dominates the coalition software and determines the colour of the coalition’s measures and its whole conduct.
They have gotten to this point by using the old trick of new faces, which even the challenging times of the pandemic have allowed to be reincarnated. Of course, new faces are also needed in politics. They always happen. But it is one thing to offer something new with new content, and it is another to recycle the old. In Slovenia, the “new faces” are actually mostly just recycling of the old. From the Union of Socialist Youth of Slovenia (Zveza socialistične mladine Slovenije – ZSMS) to the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije – LDS). From the LDS party to the Really – Social Liberals (Zares – Socalno-liberalni). From Zares to the List of Zoran Janković. From this List to the List of Miro Cerar. And to the list of Marjan Šarec. Is there any real difference between what Golobič, Rop, Miro Cerar, Marjan Šarec or the former vice-president of Zoran Janković’s list and the current President of the Freedom Movement, Robert Golob, have been advocating? They advocate for the same conglomerates of arrogance and anti-business politics. There is no difference between them at all.
New parties and refreshing new offers are one thing, but embryos from the bowels of the deep state, carefully planned, nurtured by the media and supported by all kinds of financial and propaganda support, are something else. They are stitched together right before an election, and at first, it all looks and sounds as attractive as a nudist beach. But after a while, and after a closer look, the initial enthusiasm quickly fades. Today, we are well into that fading period, when people look at their payslips and their pension stubs and wonder what they had actually voted for. We are already on day 250 of the 30-day waiting period in which every patient will supposedly be able to see a specialist. In addition, more than 45 days have already passed since, according to the coalition agreement, every pension should be at least 10 percent above the poverty line.
Even last summer, you could hardly meet anyone who did not claim to have voted for Golob. Today, on the other hand, it is hard to find anyone who would admit to having voted for him. The opinion polls try to hide this fact. However, it is worth remembering that until recently, Ljudmila Novak reigned supreme on these lists. This was true when they still hoped that she would run in the presidential elections and thus damage the SDS party.
Finally, the pensioner generation is also waking up. A large part of the pensioner generation has been robbed of the basic dignity of fair pay for their past work. The low pensions of over 300,000 Slovenian pensioners represent by far the greatest collective injustice of modern Slovenia. A pension is not a social category, but a payment for past work. During our government’s term of office, we had corrected this injustice, despite low inflation, through regular pension increases and selective bonuses. Today, without the supplements for the mitigation of rising prices, the government is raising their pensions by just over 5 percent, while we are experiencing a 10-percent inflation, which will exacerbate the backlog or the injustice. Strong, all-around pressure on the authorities is therefore needed to stop this destruction of the dignity of a generation that, among other things, won us independent Slovenia. And the pension system needs to be cleansed of payments for various privileges, of payments to the descendants of 10-year-old fighters, and of various exceptional pensions for people like Kučan and Spomenka.
During the Covid-19 crisis, when we had thousands of Covid patients in Slovenian hospitals, when we were faced with empty warehouses of protective equipment left to us, with closed borders and broken logistics chains, the comrades obstructed our work, protested, and called for our death. They attacked policemen, the people of Ljubljana, journalists, cameramen and media houses, and obstructed foreign statesmen during Slovenia’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. They sowed hatred in the squares and streets, made bombastic promises and lit great fires. And now, the time to pay their dues has come. Today, they are the ones in the spotlight. And it will get worse. According to the Chinese calendar, we have entered the Year of the Rabbit. According to the Slovenian calendar, this will be the year of the rabbit on the grill and the year of boomerangs.
Unfortunately, they will do a lot of damage, and thus, a lot of work is waiting for us. That is also why we need to strengthen Slovenia’s democratic, patriotic, anti-bureaucratic, anti-centralist people’s forces. I am pleased that today, the Council of the SDS party has approved an agreement to strengthen our family with the New Slovenian People’s Party. This is good for everyone; it is good for Slovenia and especially for Maribor. Welcome to our big family, colleagues from the List of Franc Kangler – the New People’s Party.
Decades ago, the Slovenian writer Drago Jančar wrote: “Not every anti-fascist is a democrat, but every democrat is automatically anti-fascist and anti-communist. A democrat is for democracy and against all totalitarianisms.” This is our starting point for integration and cooperation. Anyone who is in favour of a democratic system and rejects totalitarianisms of all colours is welcome. Dear Sirs and Madams! We are Slovenian democrats. We are a serious political force, we were here yesterday, we are here today, and we will be here tomorrow. We are not a movement with a name from Austria, which is everywhere today and will be gone tomorrow, which is loading its MPs on a bus today and will have none left tomorrow.
We have values, which are the values of Slovenian independence. Our values are values from the very value core of the Slovenian nation and Slovenia. That is why we are strong, resilient, and enduring. Just like Slovenia. We are walking down a well-trodden path, but also at the beginning of new opportunities. Because the future has not yet happened, and we are all called to shape it.
Congratulations on the birthday of our great family.
My compliments to all brave democrats; God bless Slovenia!
Sara Kovač
