 | ||
The 2012–2013 Slovenian protests were an ongoing series of protests against the Slovenian political elite members, including the mayor Franc Kangler, the leader of right-wing government Janez Janša, and the leader of opposition Zoran Janković, all three of them in 2013 officially accused of corruption by Commission for the Prevention of Corruption. They began on 2 November 2012 as the 2012–2013 Maribor protests against the mayor Franc Kangler. The protests spread from Maribor to other cities and towns throughout the country, demanding resignations and prosecutions of politicians and other members of the elite, accused of corruption.
Contents
Political situation in Slovenia
Government under the right-wing leader Janez Janša responded to the weakening of Slovenian economy during the global economic crisis and European sovereign-debt crisis with opening up old ideological fronts against liberal media, and against public sector - especially educational and cultural sectors, accusing them of being under influence of members of old regime (called Udbomafia and "Uncles from Behind the Scenes" (In Slovene: "strici iz ozadja")) and against everyone who doubted that austerity measures forced upon Slovenia are right ones.
In relation to the allegations made by official Commission for the Prevention of Corruption, Janša's party sent letters to the right-wing European Parliament members, discrediting the Commission's report as part of "the communist campaign that begun in 1983 with the aim to remove Janša from politics". Since Janša was ignoring the report and his party didn't offer any replacement for him, all three coalition parties and their leaders left the government within weeks and were subjected to ad hominem attacks by Janez Janša who accused the SLS's leader Radovan Žerjav of being "the worst (economics) minister in history of Slovenia", while the leader of the Civic List Gregor Virant has been mocked by Janša as engaging in "virantovanje" (a word game on kurentovanje, a Slovenian carnival festival).
Reception by public intellectuals
The cause for demonstrations has been attributed by some public intellectuals to misunderstanding of post-socialist political elite who rejected "collectivism as socialist pattern" while, according to notable Slovene anthropologist Vesna V. Godina it is in fact a "pre-socialist pattern", originating from the way the traditional Slovene rural community was functioning much longer than in other – mainly Protestant and to much lesser degree in the mainly Catholic – modern nations, who have replaced traditional political culture earlier in history by the modern representative democracy and individualism.