A few days ago, we witnessed the second pensioners’ protest, where, according to Pavel Rupar, the initiator of the Voice of Pensioners initiative, 28,000 people gathered. The streets of Ljubljana were packed, and the protest was attended by people from all over Slovenia. However, the left-wing media and their supporters did everything in their power to discredit the seriousness of the pensioners’ protest and their intentions, while at the same time trying to mislead the public with false photographs, saying that “there weren’t even that many people gathered there.” The things they are willing to do to get what they want – even if that means publishing a fake photo, which was also shared by the loyal leftist Franci Kek. Well, he did apologise in the end.
“You really have to be ‘great’ at what you do to use a picture from the times of Covid-19 to prove that the number of “the Voice of Pensioners” protesters was not all that high. No flags, and green trees on the 1st of March 2023… Hahaha,” Pavel Rupar wrote on Twitter, referring to fake photos posted on the social network by left-wing supporters. They wanted to discredit the pensioners’ protest in any way they could, even if it meant lying and misleading. Of course, Franci Kek did not think twice before sharing the same photo, but he later apologised, saying that it was a “mistake”.
Although it was clear that the pensioners’ protest would be attended in huge numbers, because we are all witnessing the collapse of the system under Golob’s government, and people’s hardship is growing, the left-wing media and their mouthpieces nevertheless wanted to present a different picture by any means necessary. Instead of questioning the motives of the pensioners, which are known to all, they preferred to deal with conspiracy theories, from who brought them to the rally and what is behind it all – as if it were not completely clear that we are facing the rising prices in all areas of life and that people are barely getting through the month.
The photo is from the time of the pandemic
But what is even more pathetic is this – to show the number of participants, they used a photo from one of the protests that happened during the pandemic, when only a few hundred people gathered. Also, there were no flags or other banners at that protest, but the pensioners’ protest was full of them. And there was something else that Rupar also pointed out in his article – the trees in the photograph were green, even though they were nowhere near green at the latest protest of the pensioners.
Franci Kek also posted the photo in question, which was forwarded to him by a Twitter user, claiming that it was taken from the air, and he also wrote the time when the shot was supposedly taken, so that people would actually believe that it was a genuine photo. And, of course, since it was in line with his preferences, he shared it – without questioning it or even thinking that it was fake. Well, when Rupar confronted him with the facts, Kek finally admitted that the photo was not taken at the pensioners’ protest and called his post a “mistake”. “Then it was pointed out that the leaves of the trees in the photo were already a bit green, but in reality, they were not green yet. I went there and saw that the leaves were indeed not green yet, which means that the photo is not from this rally. Since Janez Janša doesn’t like me very much and judges everyone by the standards he sets for himself, he called my mistake a bitter lie,” Kek wrote.
And what else was this, if not a lie? The only other thing it can be called is deliberate misleading and spreading of false information. Kek published unverified information from an unreliable source, which just happened to be in line with his own preferences. We doubt that he would have published such a “random” piece of information if it had been favourable to the other side. It was not a “mistake”, he was just hoping that no one would “catch” him in his deception. Well, in believing that, he actually did make a mistake.
Tanja Brkić
