Slovenians demand radical change

Dur­ing the clos­ing months of 2012, Slov­e­nia saw a series of mass pop­u­lar protests. Here, the movements in Slovenia explain why they are protesting and the nature of the changes they are fighting for.

Thirty thou­sand demon­strat­ors gathered on Novem­ber 17 for the first protest, organ­ised by trade uni­ons, stu­dents, and organ­isa­tions of retired people and artists. Dozens of protests fol­lowed, large and small, tak­ing place in vir­tu­ally all of the urban set­tle­ments of Slov­e­nia, often organ­ized spon­tan­eously through Face­book and other social media.

We would like to cla­rify to inter­na­tional observ­ers that these demon­stra­tions are not “rebel­lions against aus­ter­ity meas­ures and neces­sary reforms”, as the rul­ing rightwing neo-?liberal auto­cratic gov­ern­ment of Janez Janša has tried to depict them. The demands made by Slov­e­nian cit­izens on the streets of their coun­try are not merely for improved eco­nomic con­di­tions, but for the basic found­a­tions of a just and demo­cratic state: the rule of law, the pre­ser­va­tion of social ser­vices, and a sus­tain­able eco­nomic policy that will serve the interests of the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion rather than the nar­row interests of a few.

To provide some back­ground on the situ­ation, let us first emphas­ize that protest has been an extremely rare event in this tra­di­tion­ally calm nation of two mil­lion people, a coun­try that has enjoyed a healthy eco­nomy and dig­ni­fied liv­ing stand­ards under a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent forms of gov­ern­ment. Even cur­rent stat­ist­ics show Slovenia’s rel­at­ively healthy con­di­tion: 89% of EU GNP, pub­lic debt at 48% of GNP, pub­lic defi­cit at 6.3 % in 2011. As the first and only of the former Yugoslav repub­lics to enter the EU, NATO, OECD and the euro­zone, Slov­e­nia has been jus­ti­fi­ably praised as an exem­plary and suc­cess­ful former-?socialist coun­try. In 2009, the global eco­nomic crisis began to affect Slov­e­nia not only due to shrink­ing European exports, but also because of mis­guided policies taken dur­ing the years of eco­nomic expan­sion (most dur­ing Janez Janša’s first man­date). In 2009, the Slov­e­nian eco­nomy shrunk by 8% and the over­heated con­struc­tion sec­tor dis­in­teg­rated. The Slov­e­nian eco­nomy entered a second reces­sion in the last quarter. Pro­test­ers blame this new reces­sion not only on the auto­cratic, neo­lib­eral, cor­rupt and incom­pet­ent policies of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, but on a recent suc­ces­sion of cor­rupt self-?serving gov­ern­ments. This is why pro­test­ers have recently deman­ded the replace­ment of the entire polit­ical elite.

The gov­ern­ment has respon­ded with arrog­ance to the raised voices of its own cit­izens. The ostens­ibly rep­res­ent­at­ive gov­ern­ment has con­sist­ently refused to enter into dia­logue with pro­test­ers and had instead dis­cred­ited and ridiculed their legit­im­ate demands. This shame­ful response has only helped the protest move­ment to grow. The gov­ern­ment has also respon­ded to the protests by clos­ing down the centre of the cap­ital city of Ljubljana, by using riot police, horses, armoured vehicles, water can­nons, anti­riot fences and heli­copters in what can only be char­ac­ter­ized as a gross over­re­ac­tion to the largely peace­ful gath­er­ings of Slov­e­nian cit­izens. The police has imprisoned large num­ber of young­sters, mis­streat­ing them, hold­ing them host­ages, black­mail­ing their parants to stop protest­ing, if they want to see their kids lib­er­ated. Prime Minister Janez Janša has described the pro­test­ers as “extrem­ist left zom­bies” and char­ac­ter­ized them as rad­ical “neo-?socialists” in an effort to bal­ance out the actual pres­ence of neo-?Nazis (pos­sibly organ­ised by the rul­ing gov­ern­ment itself in an effort to dis­credit the protests at the begin­ning of the move­ment). Again this insult­ing gov­ern­ment response has back­fired, draw­ing more and more angry cit­izens into the streets.

The right-?wing pop­u­list auto­crat Janez Janša, a sup­porter and per­sonal friend of his Hun­garian oppos­ite num­ber Viktor Orban, has, dur­ing his two man­dates, attemp­ted to take over the mass media, many of the country’s most prof­it­able indus­tries, and a host of other insti­tu­tions, pack­ing boards and man­age­ment pos­i­tion with his own party mem­bers. The gov­ern­ment is thus attempt­ing to hinder free speech and a free press and to use pub­lic tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions net­works as a mouth­piece of his own party. Meas­ures have also been taken by an increas­ingly politi­cized Con­sti­tu­tional Court to block the con­sti­tu­tional right for ref­er­enda (plebis­cites). The dys­func­tional legal sys­tem, the privat­iz­a­tion of pub­lic funds, and hasty and extreme aus­ter­ity meas­ures has only aggrav­ated the eco­nomic crisis, starving and des­troy­ing whole sec­tors of Slovenia’s once healthy eco­nomy. To the dis­may of its cit­izens, Slov­e­nia is look­ing more and more like an auto­cratic neo-?liberal banana republic.

The fol­low­ing are other actions that have been taken by the rul­ing gov­ern­ment in the year since it took office with less than 30% of the pop­u­lar vote and 20 % of the present pop­u­lar sup­port : attempts to hamper the free speech of pub­lic media by cram­ming boards with politically-?appointed mem­bers and threat­en­ing media and journ­al­ists for open report­ing about the demon­stra­tions, the eco­nomic star­va­tion of Slovenia’s pub­lic uni­ver­sit­ies in favour of new ideo­lo­gical state-?financed “private” ones, the eco­nomic star­va­tion of pub­lic schools and pre-?schools, a war of attri­tion waged on Slovenia’s research com­munity and cul­tural insti­tu­tions, the increased enrich­ment of an eco­nom­ic­ally cor­rupt and polit­ic­ally extreemly act­ive Roman Cath­olic Church in Slov­e­nia. All of these meas­ures draw a grim pic­ture of the future of Slovenia.

The rul­ing gov­ern­ment pur­sues a policy of divid­ing and con­quer­ing the pop­u­la­tion, attack­ing trade uni­ons as the enemies of pro­gress, attack­ing the pub­lic sec­tor as a para­site of the private sec­tor, attack­ing artists as para­sites of both, attack­ing retired people for spend­ing the future of the younger gen­er­a­tions. The protest­ors’ response to this ugly and divis­ive policy is to call for solid­ar­ity and to sum­mon true Slov­e­nian pat­ri­ot­ism. The protests that are tak­ing place in Slovenia’s urban centres include all seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion: old and young, retir­ees and stu­dents, pro­fes­sional and work­ing class, pub­lic ser­vants and private entre­pren­eurs. Newly pub­lished polls reveal that 16% of the pop­u­la­tion taken act­ive part in the demon­stra­tions, 67% sup­port them, and 85% of pop­u­la­tion expect the protests to continue.

On Decem­ber 22, 2012, cul­tural organ­iz­a­tions in Slov­e­nia organ­ized a “protestival” that drew over 1,000 par­ti­cipants. It was a lively artistic event, offered as an altern­at­ive to the offi­cial state cel­eb­ra­tion of the Inde­pend­ence Day, and suit­ably named Mother Slov­e­nia. The day before that an estim­ated 12,000 people, many of them young, took part in an all Slov­e­nian upris­ing in Ljubljana. Sev­eral thou­sand gathered in Mari­bor and other smal­ler Slov­e­nian towns. It is extremely sig­ni­fic­ant that organ­ized vet­er­ans of the 1991 Slov­e­nian war of inde­pend­ence also took part in the protests, spurn­ing the gov­ern­ment of Janez Janša who coun­ted on the sup­port of these pat­ri­otic cit­izens without whom inde­pend­ent Slov­e­nia might not exist.

New protests have been announced for Janu­ary. New res­ist­ance organ­isa­tions are being foun­ded o a daily basis. A con­gress of protest-?Slovenia is being pre­pared for mid-?January to con­nect all the diverse groups and organ­isa­tions that stand in oppos­i­tion to the cur­rent gov­ern­ment and to the dir­ec­tion it has taken the coun­try. The pur­pose of the con­gress is to define a uni­fied action pro­gram to for­ward com­mon goals of the protest­ing Slov­e­nia. Although the author­it­ies seem not to be aware of that, most observ­ers here agree that nobody can stop the grow­ing protest move­ment now from achiev­ing its goals.

KOKS Coordin­at­ing com­mit­tee for cul­tural Slovenia

DSP Slov­ene Writers Association

ODBOR Com­mit­tee for just and solid­ary society

TRS Move­ment for Sus­tain­able develope­ment of Slovenia