The Cathedral of Freedom (Katedrala svobode) recently organised an event entitled “Consent for a Historical Moment”, based on a book containing contributions from 75 authors. This publication lays the foundations for the so-called Slovenian spring programme and offers a reflection on the future of the country.
“And Slovenians have always done great things when times had gotten tough – in 1918, we became for the first time a constituent nation of a country. In 1945, we set up – admittedly in the wrong direction – a strange system. In 1989, we took advantage of what they call the smile of history to become our own country,” Dr Žiga Turk said in his opening remarks. In his view, today is also a special moment, and he sees great ideas for seizing it in the aforementioned book.
Yet, according to many, Slovenia is losing its original enthusiasm for independence and the characteristics of a normal Western country. The columnist Tomaž Zalaznik points to two key problems: fear and apathy. “Fear of saying something, because something might happen to me, someone will lose their job, someone will lose the possibility of being able to work in any way, to create and so on. And when apathy, fear, the mindsets of nothing can be done, nothing can be achieved start to appear, then we are actually sliding into a state which is a negative state,” he warned.
Former Foreign Minister Dr Dimitrij Rupel, who was the target of a break-in at his apartment last week, insists that now is not the time for fear, but for a clear decision. “We can ask ourselves, do we want everything to be the way it was, or do we want everything to be different? Do we want Slovenia to return to what it was, in the sense of ‘make Slovenia great again’, or do we want a new, different Slovenia? That is the question of this publication of our assembly today,” Rupel said.
According to the editors of the collection of contributions to the Slovenian spring programme, a change in values is crucial, as Slovenia is still dominated by the thought patterns of the former system. “The elites we have are propagating the values of the revolution. The institutions we have in place – the media, the schools, the judiciary – propagate the same values, which is why it is so difficult to reverse the development model,” Turk warned.
Zalaznik has a similar view: “That is to say, we have a system that is self-sustaining. We are somehow going round and round in a circle from which we cannot find any way out. The problem is that we don’t talk about the causes, and even less about the consequences. The consequences are the times we live in.”
Corruption and clientelism, which cost the country billions of euros a year, were highlighted as two of the concrete problems that modern Slovenia is facing. “In Slovenia, we lose 13.5 percent of GDP per year. Yes, that is what Mr Lotrič wrote in his article. The President of the National Council. That is to say, we lose 3.5 billion euros because of corruption and clientelism, meaning, in such and such forms of employment, involvement of people in state apparatuses and so on,” Zalaznik said.
Despite all the challenges, there seems to be a resurgence of a movement based on truthfulness and a change of mindset. Rupel stressed the need for critical reflection: “Instead of a blanket condemnation of autocracy, I am in favour of persistently asking why this has happened so often and why it is still succeeding today. Why do we have to fight without ceasing against prejudices about historical achievements such as an independent state, membership in the European Union, membership in NATO?”
The Cathedral of Freedom event showed that there is a desire for change in Slovenia. The question remains whether society will be ready for a transformation of the mentality and, consequently, of the reality in which we live.
T. B.
