The covers and editorials from weeklies of the Left and Right for the work-week ending Friday, November 02, 2018.
Mladina: Slovenia should follow Iceland’s example on NATO
STA - The left-leaning weekly Mladina compares the stances of Slovenia and Iceland towards NATO in its latest editorial, commenting that while Slovenia is servile and wants to cosy up to the alliance by buying armament, Iceland is sovereign and does not pretend it could have a serious army.
Iceland is a founding member of NATO, it has been in the alliance since 1949, but it does not have a standing army. Instead it has a coastal guard with several aircraft and ships.
"This is the country's reach. It does not buy weapons, it simply gives money and staff to NATO. Not only because it is a pacifist country, but because it is rational: small armies have no real military power in relation to the power of all serious armies," editor-in-chief Grega Repovž says on Friday.
Turning to Slovenia, Repovž argues that the violent weather this week again demonstrated that Slovenia would do better to suitably equip its civil protection.
It should buy helicopters rather than "make the biggest armament purchase in the history of Slovenia" and buy new tanks, whose only function will be to cosy up to NATO and US President Donald Trump, and to collect dust.
Does anything happen to Iceland, which refuses to buy weapons, Repovž wonders. No, the country acts autonomously. "It does not whine about being too small to stand up to such a big organisation. And there are only 330,000 [Icelanders]."
"The sovereignty of a country does not depend on the number of ageing tanks in the barracks and the speed of its nodding, but on its stance," Repovž concludes under Not State, Stance.
Reporter: Judiciary a "cancerous tissue" in society
STA - After the rejection of an ECHR ruling by the Slovenian Supreme Court, the right-leaning weekly Reporter says in its latest commentary that the judiciary is a "cancerous tissue" in the Slovenian society.
Under the headline Junta from the Supreme Court, editor-in-chief Silvester Šurla says that whoever had to deal with Slovenian courts could witness how dysfunctional the third branch of power in the country is.
Not only lengthy proceedings are the problem. The problem is in judges themselves (not all of them), who perform their job poorly and with bias and don't even care a straw about the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
"In the safe haven of life tenure, some of them are obviously allowed to do everything they please. Almost no judge is held accountable for unjust rulings, which eventually get annulled at higher instances," Šurla adds.
He notes that "something unheard-of" happened last week, as the Supreme Court said that it would simply not honour the ruling of the ECHR in the case Pro Plus against Slovenia, as it had not been convinced by its arguments.
Reporter notes that a group of respectable law experts, both liberal and conservative, had labelled such an act as completely arbitrary and contravening the fundamental values of the European constitutional space and the Slovenian Constitution.
They added that it was also jeopardising the regional system of the protection of human rights following the model of authoritarian countries such as Turkey and Russia.
"How could ordinary citizens be expected to respect the decisions of courts if the Supreme Court does not?! This is a world upside down," concludes the commentary.
