“I consider it a great responsibility to go on missions and kill the locals,” the musician and left-wing activist Jadranka Juras said on RTV’s Zadnja beseda (“The Last Word”) show, adding, in a very left-wing manner, that the Army only serves the imperialistic goals and the war industry. Will she have to face legal consequences because of this scandalous and untrue statement? How will the RTV management react?
Every Saturday in the show Zadnja beseda, the host Valentina Smej Novak, who is better known as the former host of cooking shows and the author of cookbooks, and her regular guests Milena Miklavčič, Katarina Kresal and Jadranka Juras, comment on the current social topics.
The show is already politically unbalanced in its composition, as both Kresal and Juras provide an appropriate dose of left-wing ideology in the topics that are being discussed, which mostly have a political connotation. In the end, the whole thing turns out to be just another show on RTV, where they take care of the politically homogeneous positions – of course, in favour of the left.
Juras as the extension of the most radical left
In this year’s last episode of the show Zadnja beseda, they touched on the issue of the provision of funds for investments in the Slovenian Armed Forces in the years 2021 to 2026. Namely, the government has allocated 780 million euros of additional funds for military investments for the next six years. The host of the show, Smej Novak, initially said that these resolutions are basically the fulfilment of commitments made by the previous governments, and Kresal said that this topic always appears when the country is in a financial crisis, as it is a subject of demagoguery and can easily ignite the anger in people, however, in the style that is typical for the radical left, Juras shocked everyone with the following statement: “I consider it a great responsibility to go on missions and kill the locals. It is a great responsibility for our soldiers to go somewhere where they are not defending Slovenia, but are involved in the global war on terrorism, which has been going on since 2001 and has no end in sight.” In addition, she also stated that the U.S. military industry had earned 6 trillion dollars with the wars and that NATO is serving imperialism and the arms industry. She cited Austria as a country to look up to, as it is not a member of NATO and emphasized that Slovenia now has an ideal opportunity to prove that it is a sovereign state with a peaceful policy.
Kresal corrected her and said that the missions in which the Slovenian Army and police cooperated, were of an educational nature for the training of instructors and that so far there have been very few missions where the soldiers would be involved in combat in dangerous war zones.
Will the Slovenian Army and RTV react to the harsh accusations?
In addition to her statement being full of untruths, Juras could also face legal consequences because her statement, as she accused the Slovenian Army of killing the local population on its missions, which could be considered a criminal offence. Juras’s deliberate public misleading can also cost her her personal freedom, if the Slovenian Army decides to use legal means against her and if she is then found guilty of defamation or insulting accusations.
Juras also strongly damaged RTV’s reputation. Therefore, it will be interesting to see whether she will still be welcome as a commentator on the Zadnja beseda show in the future. After this resounding scandal, the RTV management team should thank her for her work and replace her with a more truthful commentator. Her example will therefore be a litmus test of whether the national television will be able to distance itself from the guests who are further tarnishing its already tarnished reputation.
Sara Kovač
