Slovenian Jansa follows Hungary’s authoritarian path

The fear of the Slovenian inspector general began shortly after, when his organization began to acquire government protective equipment during the pandemic.

“There was a sudden change,” Tomaz Vesel, the chief auditor, told the Financial Times. “Attacks on the court [of auditors], and very personal attacks against me began. . . with the clear aim of relativizing possible discoveries “.

Vesel’s audit identified hiring irregularities, but also approved a huge race to buy masks and dresses in the early days of the crisis. However, even then the campaign of condemnation continued – they were very successful in pro-government news tweets Questioning the integrity of Vesel from Prime Minister Janez Jansa.

After the report was released, Vesel said he began investigating the police inspection office. “It was the first time – I’ve never dealt with it in my entire career, not even the institutions. I hope there’s something remarkable behind it. Otherwise, it’s political pressure.”

Vesel’s treatment shows growing concerns about Slovenia’s democratic rules and the rule of law as the country prepares to take over the rotating EU presidency in July.

Jansa is known for her aggressive interventions on Twitter. Critics fear that his government will try to overthrow its democratic control and balance, like the adjacent Hungarian.

“You can really feel the culture of not accepting control mechanisms in our society,” Vesel said. “The Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman and the Court of Auditors are like the immune system. If you attack your immune system, there are many diseases on the horizon. “

Jansa and his ally, Interior Minister Ales Hojs, have criticized recent court rulings, including a ruling by the constitutional court, which ruled that pandemic restrictions imposed by the government violate personal freedoms.

“In democracies, there should be narrow limits on acceptable criticism of judges but in Slovenia our government does not respect any of these limits,” said Judge Rok Ceferin. “We are discredited, humiliated and insulted every time we make a decision that the government, the prime minister and, in some cases, his loved ones do not like.”

Jansa’s political career is reflected in that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Both were anti-communist liberals, they became tough Eurosceptics.

Jansa was a young communist leader before gaining political prominence as a dissident when he began to disintegrate Yugoslavia (which was part of Slovenia) in the late 1980s. He wrote articles about Mladina, a youth publication that is now publicly reprimanded, and was arrested in 1988, according to the author, for an article that betrayed military secrets.

His arrest sparked mass demonstrations by many to speed up the pace of Slovenian democratic reform.

In 2013, in a first term, he was convicted of bribery in an arms deal. The constitutional court overturned the ruling in 2015. But Jansa has long accused the media of removing him from office.

After returning to power in the third term in March last year, when a left-wing coalition fell, he said, “war on the media it would be more than welcome in Slovenia ”.

“A small circle of women editors creates an atmosphere of intolerance and hatred, with family and capital ties to the pillars of the deep state,” she wrote in an essay.

The media organization and journalist have made the sport of public attack on Twitter, calling it “Marshall Tweeto”.

While much of the pressure is exerted through social media, which Vesel describes as a “well-designed and well-produced campaign” with an “attack model,” some Slovenians are concerned that they are doing great damage.

March, Association of Slovenian Fiscal States he complained He called on the Council of Europe, the guardian of regional democracy, to call for “a lot of unacceptable pressure” on the judiciary. He highlighted the public criticism made by Jansa and his allies and the blocking of several key judicial appointments.

He also noted that the government has delayed the appointment of two Slovenian delegates to the new European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which was set up to investigate the misuse of EU funds. The EPPO is set to open on June 1, but will have to deal without a Slovenian prosecutor.

The association said the candidates “have sided with the SDS” [the Slovenian Democratic party] and its president Janez Jansa ”.

The government has not responded to requests for comment on this article.

The Prime Minister has also launched a campaign against the Slovenian State Press Agency (STA). Petra Lesja, president of the Slovenian Association of Journalists, said that the meeting between Jansa and Orban in October 2020 began shortly after. The government has complained that the report of the meeting agency is too short. Shortly afterwards, he stopped public funding.

“The agency is insolvent,” said CEO Barbara Strukelj.

Jansa has been accused of spreading “lies” by STA, the national RTV media and the largest private television station POP and other media outlets. The government has proposed renewing media legislation “with the common goal of punishing the media,” said Marko Milosavljevic, a professor of journalism at the University of Ljubljana.

According to him, Jansa Orban is following the playbook by closing the critical voices of the media and making sure that the allies take control of other outlets.

The Slovenian government is following Hungary’s “all strategies, all censorship models and control over the public media,” he added.

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

In March, she clashed with MEP Sophie in t ‘Veld at a video conference on democratic standards. When he refused to stop playing video claiming that journalists are sidelined, Jansa censors – and disconnected he called.