Jansa of Slovenia follows Hungary on the path of autocracy

During the pandemic, Slovenian institutions began to intimidate Slovenian chief auditors shortly after they began studying protective equipment purchased by the government.

Auditor General Tomaz Vesel told the Financial Times: “This is a sudden change.” “Attack on the courts.” [of auditors]And began to launch very personal attacks on me. . . Explicitly aims to relativize possible discoveries. “

Vesel’s audit found procurement irregularities, but also admitted that there was a frantic competition for masks and gowns in the early stages of the crisis. However, even then, the destruction movement continued-the pro-government news media was enthusiastically sought after, tweet Prime Minister Janetz Jansa questioned Vesel’s integrity.

Vesel said that after the report was published, the police began to investigate the audit office. “This is the first time-in my entire career, I have never encountered it, nor have I encountered an institution. I hope there is substantial meaning behind it. If not, it is a political pressure.”

Vesel’s treatment shows that as Slovenia prepares to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union in July, the country’s concerns about Slovenia’s democratic norms and the rule of law are growing day by day.

Jansa is known for her active Twitter intervention. But critics worry that his government is also trying to reduce democratic checks and balances. Just like in neighboring Hungary.

Vesel said: “You can really feel the culture of not accepting the control mechanisms in our society.” “The Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman and the Court of Audit are like an immune system. If you attack your own immune system, there will be multiple disease.”

Jansa and his ally, Minister of the Interior, Ales Hojs, criticized recent court rulings, including a constitutional court ruling that determined that the pandemic restrictions imposed by the government improperly violated personal freedom.

“In democratic countries, there should be a narrow line of acceptable criticism of judges, but in Slovenia, our government does not respect any of these lines,” said court judge Rock Seferin. “Whenever we make a decision that the government, the prime minister, and in some cases his close partners do not like, we are humiliated, humiliated and insulted.”

Jansa’s political career is similar to that of his close ally Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. They are all anti-communist liberals, hardliners who have become hardline Euroskeptics.

Jansa was a young communist leader and later became a political dissident in the late 1980s, when Yugoslavia (Slovenia was a part of it) began to disintegrate. He wrote an article for the now-published youth magazine Mladina, and was arrested in 1988 for an article he co-authored which, according to the authorities, betrayed military secrets.

His arrest triggered large-scale demonstrations, and many demonstrators were satisfied with the speeding up of democratic reforms in Slovenia.

But in 2013, during his second consecutive tenure as prime minister, he was convicted of taking bribes in arms procurement transactions. The Constitutional Court overturned this decision in 2015. But Jansa has long accused the media of shirking him.

After taking office for the third time in March last year, the left-leaning alliance collapsed, he saidThe war against the media It will be welcomed in Slovenia.”

He wrote in an article: “A small group of female editors are creating an atmosphere of intolerance and hatred. They have both family and capital connections with the pillars of the deep state.”

He launched a campaign to publicly attack media organizations and journalists on Twitter, earning him the nickname “Marshall Tweetto”.

Although most of the pressure comes from social media, in what Vesel calls “a well-designed and crafted campaign with an attack mode”, some Slovenians are worried that it will cause significant losses.

In March, the National Prosecutors’ Association of Slovenia complain A letter was sent to the European Commission (the region’s democratic oversight agency), saying that it is putting “enormous unbearable pressure” on the judiciary. It noted the public criticism of Yansa and his allies and the obstruction of several key judicial appointments.

It also pointed out that the government has postponed the appointment of two representatives of Slovenia to the new European Public Prosecutor’s Office to examine the abuse of EU funds. EPPO is scheduled to open on June 1, but it must be done without a Slovenian prosecutor.

The association said this was because the nominee was “not favored by SDS.” [the Slovenian Democratic party] And its president Janez Jansa”.

The government did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

The Prime Minister also launched a campaign against the state-owned Slovenian News Agency (STA). Petra Lesjak Tusek, president of the Slovenian Association of Journalists, stated that this started shortly after the meeting between Jansa and Orban in October 2020. She said that the government complained that the institutional report of the meeting was too short. Soon thereafter, it ceased public funding.

“The agency is on the verge of bankruptcy,” said its editor-in-chief Barbara Strukelj.

Jansa accused STA, the national broadcaster RTV and the largest private television station POP and other media of spreading “lie.” Marko Milosavljevic, a professor of journalism at the University of Ljubljana, said that the government has proposed a comprehensive reform of media legislation that “has the common purpose of punishing the media.”

He said Jansa followed Orban’s script by shutting down the voice of key media and ensuring that allies control other media.

He added that the Slovenian government is following all “strategies, all forms of censorship and control over public media” of Hungary.

Jansa has retorted that his government is putting pressure on the media.

In March, he clashed with Sophie in t’Veld (Member of the European Parliament) during a hearing on democratic standards on a video conference.When she refused to let him play one video Yansa claimed that the reporter was biased and therefore accused her of censorship-and Disconnect phone.