“As the President of the Republic, she is walking on thin ice. Of course, she has certain influence for what she has done, but what impression does this make on the public … With the recent pardons and rewards, she has clearly shown us what the priorities of this political elite are,” commentator Miran Videtič said of President Pirc Musar’s behaviour.
The President of the Republic, Nataša Pirc Musar, has caused quite a stir in public in the last few weeks with some controversial moves and statements. Among other things, she pardoned three people smugglers, while at the same time she honoured an opponent of free media and a person who, as a member of a non-governmental organisation, helped illegal migrants on their way across the green border, and threatened the police with criminal charges, saying that they should not return illegal migrants back to Croatia. The President also upset the public by saying that in the future, as a society, we will have to learn to “have less”, which is clearly not the case when it comes to her specifically. She recently stated that she is not satisfied with her salary, which is around three thousand euros net, or 5,663.42 euros gross.
Political analyst Miran Videtič commented on Pirc Musar’s controversial behaviour and scandalous statements for our media outlet: “As the President of the Republic, she is walking on thin ice. Of course, she has certain influence for what she has done, but what impression does this make on the public … With the recent pardons and rewards, she has clearly shown us what the priorities of this political elite are.” Anyone who has followed her work, or who knows her even a little bit of her character, or who has got some impression of her after these months of her presidency, is not surprised. She will devote her entire political career, which Videtič hopes will last only one term, to controversies of the kind she has shown in these two cases.
Videtič made a particular reference to the controversial award given by the President to Katarina Bervar Sternad. While Videtič gives Bervar Sternad some credit for “some work that may be socially useful”, she is certainly on the “completely wrong side” with her organisation on the issue of illegal migrants. The commentator hopes that at some point in the future, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian media will look into this issue and perhaps investigate what is happening in the migrant camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where activists (including ones from Slovenia) are appearing, but this does not mean that Bervar Sternad personally was one of them. “I don’t know that!”
What Pirc Musar is doing is making a mockery of the people
He also pointed out that activists used to come to these camps and educate the illegal migrants on how to bypass the official procedures as much as possible and reach their desired destination. “And that honestly seems perverse to me! I hope that some kind of investigation from the Bosnian media will follow soon, because this is not to be expected from the Slovenian media!” The commentator went on to refer to Pirc Musar’s statement that citizens should get used to “having less”, while at the same time she expects a higher salary. “This is actually just an extension of what I am talking about. As I said on the show Ura moči (The Hour of Power), it is actually making a mockery of the people. But when it was time to heed the warnings (before the elections), we people behaved like sheep.”
These are the people whose perversion knows no bounds
People did not heed the said warnings or perceive such “deviations”, which is surely also a consequence of the “powerful media machine” that supported Pirc Musar. “Today, it is too late; today, we have to watch and suffer!” In Videtič’s opinion, these people, in their belief that something belongs to them, have actually lost touch with reality to such an extent that it is quite unbelievable. And yet they are unwilling to give up even “one gram” of what is rightfully theirs in their positions. What is more, by calling for higher salaries, they are showing a tendency to want more. These are the people whose perversion apparently knows no bounds.
Domen Mezeg
