Asta Vrečko, the Minister of Culture and the President of the Left party (Levica), paid 8,346 euros to Svetlana Makarovič last June, in breach of the law and regulations, the Court of Audit has officially found in its audit of the government’s operations in 2023, which was published on Wednesday. Makarovič had already requested the money from the Prešeren Fund in February, but her request was denied, because the members of the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund were unwilling to break the law. I already pointed out the fact that, in breach of the law, Vrečko had given the money to Makarovič in July last year, and that in a normal country, she would have been visited by law enforcement authorities for this as early as last year, when the transfer came to light.
Before the 2022 elections, Svetlana Makarovič, as a political activist, together with another state-funded political activist, Zlatan Čordić – Zlatko and a few others like him, actively participated in political protests co-organised by the now-ruling parties and attended by their leaders. The Minister’s unusual transfer probably reimbursed her for these pre-election propaganda favours.
The Court of Audit, having found that the law and regulations had not been complied with, summarised in its audit that on the 27th of December 1999, the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund decided that Makarovič should receive the Prešeren Award in the amount of SIT 2,000,000 in the year 2000. On the 20th of January 2000, the Ministry received a letter from the prize winner, in which she stated that she did not want to be paid the money that came with the Prešeren award. She also refused to accept the award in its entirety at the central celebration to mark the Slovenian Cultural Day – Prešeren’s Day on the 7th of February 2000, which had been set as the place and time for the awarding ceremony. For these reasons, the Ministry of Culture did not hand over the award to the prize winner in 2000, which means that it also did not pay the cash part of the prize and indicated in the list of prize winners that Makarovič had renounced the cash prize. The decision to award the prize to Makarovič was not remedied. The law in force at the time did not provide for a situation in the event of a refusal of the prize, and the Ministry has no document showing that any other action was taken or a legal act adopted to regulate the situation in the event of a refusal of the prize.
However, on the 20th of March 2023, the prize winner’s legal representative sent a letter to the Ministry of Culture and the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund, in which called on the institutions to award the prize and stated that the awarding of the prize in the legal sense constituted a unilateral declaration of will by the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund, which was authorised by the State to do so, or a public promise of the prize to the laureate, which, on the basis of the first paragraph of Article 1 of the Code of Obligations, bound the person who chose the award-winner to fulfil the obligations, since the laureate had not yet received a diploma or a monetary prize. On the 16th of June 2023, within three months of receiving the
request to fulfil the promise, the Ministry of Culture paid the prize to the prize winner in the amount of 8,346 euros, which was fixed in the decision of the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund of the 27th of December 1999. The funds for the payment of this prize were provided by a transfer under budget item 131131 – Prešeren Awards from account 4021 – Special materials and services to the account 4119 – Other transfers to individuals. After receiving the request to fulfil the promise to the prize winner in 2023, the Ministry of Culture checked whether the decision of the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund of the 27th of December 1999 had been amended or supplemented at any time after the refusal of the prize in 2000. However, until 2023, when the letter of formal notice was received, the Ministry did not foresee that the creditor would subsequently demand fulfilment of this obligation and, therefore, did not budget for this. In making the payment, it also referred to the Promissory Note, which stated that the State was obliged under Article 207 of the Code of Obligations to fulfil its promise to pay the monetary award.
The Ministry of Culture paid the award on the basis of a promissory note without, prior to payment, having carried out sufficient due diligence to ascertain all the legal facts and circumstances of the case relating to the termination of the obligation under the award in terms of the promise made, or the effect on the debtor’s obligation to perform. The Prešeren Award Act, then and now in force, does not provide for situations in which the prize winner refuses the prize. There is no basis in the provisions of the Obligations Act, as well as in the Public Finance Act and other regulations, for the Ministry to be obliged to settle an obligation that the prize winner has renounced after more than 20 years. The Ministry of Culture’s conduct in approving the commitment and paying the award of 8,346 euros is contrary to paragraph 3 of Article 2 of the Public Finance Act, which stipulates that the principles of efficiency and economy must be respected in the preparation and implementation of the budget, the Court of Auditors said of the conduct of Asta Vrečko.
As I pointed out in the Online Journal (Spletni časopis) last year, it is a grossly embarrassing image that the authorities are paying artists and NGOs from the state budget to participate in election campaigns for them, in defiance of the law. Such behaviour is corrupt. The form of election campaigning before the last elections was political bike protests attended by artists and members of NGOs, which receive state money, and politicians have a say in how it is allocated. In recent years, this has included Asta Vrečko.
Makarovič had already requested that the money and the award be awarded to her again in February last year, but things got complicated because the Management Board of the Prešeren Fund was unwilling to grant her the award and pay her the money after two decades, because she had refused the money the first time. Her request was refused because there was no legal basis for the payment. In her correspondence, Makarovič explained that she believed that in a state governed by the rule of law, anything that was not prohibited was permissible, and that she was therefore entitled to both the plaque and, above all, the 8,346 euros to be paid to her by Minister Vrečko.
And the latter did just that.
In 2000, Makarovič refused the award because she was not willing to be on stage with the painter and priest Marko Rupnik, who had won the prize for the mosaic in the Pope’s Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Vatican. Today, the simultaneous award to Rupnik no longer bothers her because it has come to light that the priest was very sexually promiscuous, even with nuns, with whom he did things that were completely illicit. The women accused him of seducing and abusing them. This got him into trouble within the Catholic hierarchy, where he had taken a vow of celibacy.
Last February, after a state celebration with centre-left street protester Jaša Jenull and similar leftist cultural activist Boris A. Novak, Svetlana Makarovič even came on stage wearing a large communist red star, and state television continued to broadcast the event live, even though it was already over, so that the whole country could watch the glorification of communism.
Peter Jančič, Spletni časopis
