The covers and editorials from leading weeklies of the Left and Right for the work-week ending Friday, 18 September 2020. All our stories about coronavirus and Slovenia are here
Mladina: SDS driven by greed not ideology
STA, 18 September 2020 - The left-wing weekly Mladina argues in the latest editorial that the government's actions and decisions are driven by the ruling party's desire for money rather than by ideology.
"It is all about money (...) this is why the Slovenian government is one of the few that, at the time when the country is paralysed and hysterical with the epidemic, are busy with changes in the very system and makeup of the state," writes editor-in-chief Grega Repovž.
As one example he offers the creation of a demographic fund where he says the coalition are admitting they are redistributing the state silverware and the power of its management based on party formula.
Another is the tax reform where Repovž says the tax burden on top earners will be reduced, and the plan to annul tax on luxury vehicles.
He finds it paradoxical that "the government is mostly supported by voters who will never have those luxury cars, who will never be in top tax brackets, and they still believe those in power are some kind of fighters for social justice."
Instead, Repovž says that PM Janez Janša, Interior Minister Aleš Hojs and other members of the government are those rich people that they are fighting for, so they do not see what is wrong with leveraging power to adapt tenders, legislation and business ways to make money.
He refers to an article in the latest edition of Mladina about how Hojs was sold an elite plot of land by the Koper municipality under Mayor Boris Popovič to the local community's detriment.
"We have people in power who are involved in suspicious dealings, do business with suspicious people, meet people who are in criminal procedures, work with people who propagate publicly they do tax evasion, they interfere in criminal procedures to help people in procedures over human trafficking and prostitution (...). None of them has denied any of that."
In conclusion of the piece headlined In Plain Sight, Repovž says that the hardest thing to understand is how none of deputies or other ministers of the junior coalition partners are bothered even though they know exactly what is going on.
Demokracija: Charges against Hojs ludicrous
STA, 17 September 2020 - The right-wing magazine Demokracija defends Interior Minister Aleš Hojs against accusations in the opposition-sponsored motion against him and the criminal complaint targeting him, which it finds absurd.
In the latest edition, Jože Biščak, the editor-in-chief, calls the charge over the reversal of the ban on concert of Croatian singer Marko Perković Thompson "the most stupid accusation on the planet" after the US Democrats' attempt to impeach President Donald Trump.
He says the accusation is based on disagreement with the ideological views of a Croatian singer the majority would never even heard about had the leftists not banned his concert in 2017, a ban that the Interior Ministry lifted after a series of complaints.
Biščak supports Hojs's view that the ministry's decision is based on human rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, including freedom of speech, arguing that a Thompson concert is one such freedom, while being offended by such a concert is not a basic freedom.
He argues that back in 2017 the Miro Cerar government should have provided security to Thompson and his fans against a mass of people who planned to prevent the concert.
Meanwhile, he says it "would not be worth wasting one's breath over the criminal complaint against Hojs for ordering a revision of the most controversial corruption cases that have never seen a closure if it did not make obvious the political motivation of those who filed it".
The fact that they signed the complaint as 'honest police officers' should send alarm bells ringing as it is, writes Biščak under the headline The Heartbeat of Guerilla Politics, adding that the anonymous complaint is likely to be taken seriously by prosecutors even though it should end up in a bin.
"Experience of the justice system, which instead of guaranteeing equal and fair treatment of all by law dwells behind the door to hell, teaches us that we will witness a new farce. You know the way it goes: leftists adapt and change rules in guerrilla fashion so they suit the conduct of deep state evil doers."
All our posts in this series are here
