The covers and editorials from leading weeklies of the Left and Right for the work-week ending Friday, 5 November 2020. All our stories about coronavirus and Slovenia are here
Mladina: Janša a "serious problem" for Slovenia and Europe
STA, 6 November 2020 - The latest editorial of the left-leaning weekly Mladina says that the US election tweets by PM Janez Janša have put Slovenia on the international map, but not in the way that Foreign Minister Anže Logar meant when he said Slovenia was returning to the international arena.
"We are finally recognized as a country with a clearly emotionally unstable and politically unreasonable prime minister. From this week we no longer have to explain to anyone in international politics why we have a problem and that our problem is serious. But it is not only us who have a problem: Europe now knows that it has a problem as well," Mladina says on Friday under the headline Black Week.
It says Janša has demonstrated that he knows little about diplomacy or is not really interested in it and that he does not care about Slovenia's international reputation. It speaks of a selfish modus operandi similar to that of US President Donald Trump, driven by populism and the perception of politics primarily as a business opportunity.
"But we need to wonder about something else that is more important at this moment. How can this person occupy himself with the US election in a week where more than 20 people die every day, when the figures are as bad as they can get," says Mladina. "Does he really not have even a bit of empathy? Are we dealing with a sociopath?"
Mladina argues the US will suffer long lasting consequences after a single Trump term. "The same goes for Slovenia: every additional month under Janša is distorting this society further, deforming its values, the real picture."
Seeing hope in the centre-left coalition formed recently under the leadership of economist Jože P. Damijan, Mladina calls for a vote of no-confidence as soon as possible, saying "this is not only about international reputation or about staffing, it is about health and lives".
Demokracija: Opposition’s needless attacks on Janša
STA, 5 November 2020 - The government is not taking any measures that would actually require street protests, and perhaps this is precisely the reason why the left-leaning opposition wants to create a state of emergency in politics, the right-wing weekly Demokracija says in its latest commentary.
The right-leaning weekly says that the opposition would apparently rather let a hundred people more die than help the government of Janez Janša and admit that it is successfully managing the virus from Wuhan.
"The instigation of fear of Janša has revealed a deep, horrifying chasm between reality and what the media project as reality. And in this vortex of egotistic opposition, there comes the leftist foursome with the idea that the government should be taken down."
It could be said that the idea is surrealist if it was not floated by a "revolutionary coalition of the mainstream media and deep state", where candidates supported by the mafia are being presented as saviours", headlined by Jože P. Damijan (JPD).
Demokracija says that Damijan is a man who had walked the path of classical economic liberalism until he realised that being impressed with socialist ideas is much more profitable for him.
It was then that the media started presenting him as a "candidate for prime minister-designate", or as "possible prime minister-designate" who is starting talks with the leftist political parties, with which he is supposed to form a government.
"This is not funny, this is tragic: in the JPD case, the mainstream media behaves as if elections in Slovenia are just around the corner or as if the centre-right government has resigned. But neither of this happened, and JPD is currently nobody.
"He is not even a useful idiot who has warmed up to the idea of being prime minister-designate without realising why he came into the spotlight in the first place. It has turned out that JPD was an idiot even before he became useful," concludes the commentary People Who Were Idiots Before They Became Useful.
All our posts in this series are here
