Paper tries to understand Janša’s controversial statements

Koper – Instead of taking some time to meet the European Parliament’s fact-finding mission, Prime Minister Janez Janša took to Twitter to yet again bring shame on the country, himself and Slovenian diplomats abroad, the newspaper Primorske Novice says on Saturday, suggesting that the media should perhaps start ignoring his provocations.

“The man has increasingly proved that he has confused the freedom of speech with lack of good manners. The freedom of speech of course also applies to him. But so does the obligation of basic respect for the interlocutor, the need to observe standard codes of communication and making an effort to be decent.”

Janša has however failed on all these points in recent days, and has been publicly criticised by the Dutch prime minister, the presidents of the European Parliament and European Council and by MEPs – people who are usually diplomatically reserved, but were not this time.

Janša has been persistently pushing the bar of what is acceptable lower, and his actions are hard to understand given that they harm his personal and the country’s reputations as well as the state of mind in the society.

So one wonders whether endless media reports and commentaries about how very wrong the prime minister’s actions are make any sense, the paper says, adding there are two possible explanations for these actions.

Firstly, just like some [pop singer and entertainer] Damjan Murko, Janša thrives when the public frowns on his actions. Every time the media rush to report on his new escapade, he is convinced that the whole world is against him.

The paper says under the headline DamJJan Murko that the media should ignore his provocations, just as they ignore Murko with no harm being done. “Irrelevance can be a strong cure.”

And secondly, Janša’s actions could well be a result of “the impact of retrograde Mercury”, the paper says, adding that in this case, foreign missions should be advised to check the position of stars in Slovenia when planning a visit.

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