Due to the harsh tones of the Speaker of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič of the ruling Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda), who threatened MP Andrej Hoivik of the opposition Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) when she announced that she would call the police for him and warned him that he was unaware of the seriousness of what he was doing, the National Assembly suspended its latest sitting for a while, when discussing the 8,346 euros, which the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, had awarded Svetlana Makarovič last year for irrevocably renouncing the Prešeren Award in 2000 for ideologically political reasons. Even before the unusual conflict with MP Hoivik, Speaker Klakočar Zupančič had already surprised everyone with her assessment that the court would have ruled that the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, should have paid the prize to Svetlana Makarovič, which the latter had irrevocably renounced in 2000. Here is how the former judge, who ended her judicial career before running for Parliament, prejudged the court’s decision:
“The Court of Audit found only that the Ministry of Culture was not obliged to pay the prize because of the refusal by the prize-winner, because it judged everything from the point of view of its own field of work, but never that there was no legal basis for the payment. As I said, the Court of Audit looked at the matter from the point of view of the Public Finance Act, but the Court of Audit did not and cannot judge the validity of the legal basis for the payment to the prize-winner, which, as I said, only the Court of Justice is competent to do, and I will tell you one thing: the court would – and I am very firmly convinced of this – find that there is a legal basis and that the obligation to pay the prize, notwithstanding her refusal in 2000, exists, and any action by the prize-winner against the State for payment of the prize would be won, and that would be a great disgrace for our country. “
Writer Svetlana Makarovič irrevocably refused the Prešeren Award for which she was chosen in the year 2000, because she did not want to be on stage with priest Marko Rupnik, who also won the prize that year, for the mosaic he created for the Pope’s Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Vatican. Makarovič, a prominent left-wing artist and political activist, is known for her glorification of communist symbols and her hatred of the Catholic community, especially the priestly hierarchy. Last year, she changed her mind and demanded the award from the current Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, because it was revealed that priest Rupnik had “fornicated” with nuns in the past, which he should not have done according to Church rules. Why this would be the basis for her suddenly preferring to receive an award together with him is not entirely clear. The Prešeren Award Fund was not prepared to award her the prize again and to invite her to the award ceremony. But she invited herself and performed, which was also broadcast live on national television, although it was not part of the programme. Several months later, Minister Vrečko also paid Makarović the 8,346 euros of the prize money.
The sitting of the National Assembly where this was being discussed was briefly interrupted in the evening when MP Andrej Hoivik asked the Minister of Culture, Asta Vrečko, several times in succession to explain how she had reacted to an official report about pressure from a representative of a non-governmental organisation on an employee of the Ministry of Culture to act illegally in a public tender procedure in his favour. This official report was also published in the media. Klakočar Zupančič’s response to this was: “I have had enough of this. There has been enough of this in this Parliament. That is to say, I expect that when we are finished, you will give it to me, and I will call the police, I will, and I will hand over to them everything that you have, and at the same time say that you, as a person, a public official, have not reported this to the police. I have had enough of this. We are not going to joke about this sort of thing in Parliament any more …”
MP Hoivik thanked Klakočar Zupančič for the fact that she would also help get to the bottom of the content of the official report, which has also been made public, and help get an answer as to what was the result of this official report on the pressure on the employee. However, the Speaker of the National Assembly quickly continued: “Did you not understand me, Mr Hoivik? You have given it to me now. You did not report this to the police. Do you understand the seriousness of what is happening? Do you all understand the seriousness of what is happening? You do not understand the seriousness of this. This is not a joke any more. This is no longer a political game. These are crimes. And this is no longer a joke, what we are doing here …”
When Hoivik accused her of threatening him as a Member of Parliament, Klakočar Zupančič denied it and then interrupted the session. When the session was already paused, the vice-president of the coalition Left party (Levica), Nataša Sukič, continued to shout at Hoivik across the tables for quite some time.
Peter Jančič
