Nov zapis novinarja Reutersa se je znašel na nekaj mestih, med drugim tudi v današnjem International Herald Tribune, v Washington Post ali na strani Yahoo News. Objavljamo del, ki zadeva medije in peticijo.
CRACKS IN THE GLOSS
“After that, we saw the incompetence of its administration in fighting inflation, shameful conflicts with the president and central bank governor, attempts to control the media, slow privatization,” Gjenero said.
Generous welfare, a rigid labour market, a high level of protectionism and state control of business helped push headline inflation to 5.8 percent in November, the highest in the euro zone.
“The latest figures, particularly inflation, show that Slovenia is losing some of the advantage it had over other EU newcomers,” said political analyst Meta Roglic at daily Dnevnik.
Media freedom and human rights, issues that never undermined Slovenia’s EU membership campaign, also came to the fore in the past year.
Almost 600 journalists signed a petition in October accusing conservative Prime Minister Janez Jansa, a leading anti-communist journalist in the last days of Yugoslavia, of stifling media freedom and imposing censorship.
“In 2006 this government replaced the editors of 80 percent of Slovenia’s media through direct or indirect ownership. It changed media laws to gain control over most of the media,” Blaz Zgaga, one of the two authors of the petition, told Reuters.
Jansa said journalists were tarnishing Slovenia’s image abroad by hyping marginal issues.
He used the same words a year ago when media reported the plight of a large Roma family expelled from its home in central Slovenia after a spat with angry villagers which prompted the EU to condemn “racist behaviour”.
Also last year, dozens of human rights campaigners made a bus trip to Brussels to plead the cause of some 18,000 non-Slovenes who could not obtain Slovene documents after independence. About 4,000 still have no passports.
Jansa’s row with popular leftist President Janez Drnovsek left Slovenia without a central bank governor for two months earlier this year, tainting the smooth adoption of the euro.