ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 32, No. 1 (Sl)

September 2020

Slovenia political briefing: Vote of no confidence against the Minister of Interior Helena Motoh

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Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

Vote of no confidence against the Minister of Interior

Summary

After it was postponed for summer months due to his attempted resignation, Minister of Interior, Aleš Hojs, passed a vote of no confidence on September 19. Although the initial accusations were focused on his alleged misconduct in the case of a concert of a highly controversial Croatian singer, a number of other criticisms followed. Most of them were directed at his interventions in the work of the Police force and National Investigation Bureau. Predictably, due to the coalition voting discipline, he passed the vote with a tight majority of 43 votes against and 38 for the no confidence motion. Shortly after the vote, Prime Minister Janša also closed the open issue of Hojs’ attempted resignation and prolonged the Minister’s mandate.

Background: Hojs’ political career and his role in the initial period of Janša’s government

Current Minister of Interior, Aleš Hojs, has a long political career. While working in several infrastructure institutions and state companies, he has already been a member of right- wing Slovenian Christian Democrats since its beginnings in 1989 and became more politically active in the party after is split with People’s Party , when it was renamed New (NSi). In the second Janša’s government (2012–2013) he became the Minister of Defence. As a president of the Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence he strongly advocates against alleged remnants of the communist regime. In 2014 he ran against for the presidency of the Party, what was generally seen as an attempt to move New Slovenia closer to Slovenian Democratic Party of Janša, who Hojs was openly supporting in his criticisms towards Novak as president of New Slovenia. In 2016 he got into a conflict with , a prominent former Christian Democrats’ leader, who left the Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence after they filed a lawsuit against the first president of independent Slovenia, Milan Kučan. When organizing the celebration of the Statehood day in 2016, Hojs prevented Peterle from being a speaker and the conflict escalated within the New Slovenia Party. The split in the New Slovenia escalated and in July 2016 Hojs was expelled

1 from the part, only to join Slovenian Democrats the following year. He became a close collaborator with Janša, becoming the CEO and a co-owner of Nova24 TV company which is the strongest media supporter of Slovenian Democratic Party.

It was therefore no surprise that in Janša’s third government term he was given the position of the Minister of Interior. As part of the government that was sworn in at the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic, Hojs became one of the protagonists of the crisis response and widely criticized for several measures that were taken. Most criticized of these was the decision to limit the movement to the municipalities, which was adopted on March 30 and stayed in place for one month. During that time he was suspected to have violated the regulation himself, having visited his mother-in-law in another municipality. One of the main points in his agenda during the epidemic was to promote the activation of the Article 37a of the Defence Act. This would give the military police powers to control border areas. The vote in the parliamentary Defence Committee in the beginning of April did not reach the necessary two-thirds majority, so the proposal was rejected. Upon starting his mandate, Hojs also actively started replacing people at the key positions within the police and security forces. At the first government meeting, first replacements were already made: Director General of the Police Tatjana Bobnar was replaced by Anton Travner. This move was criticized in media for Travner's past of being allegedly involved in a irregular practices at the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance. Travner himself continued the changes at top positions by replacing the head of the Criminal Police Directorate, Boštjan Lindav, with Vojko Urbas, who in 2016 was accused of sexual harassment and mobbing practices. Swift changes were also happening in other ministries, most prominently in the Ministry of Defence, where Chief of the General Staff and head of the Intelligence and Security Service were replaced.

Hojs' attempted resignation and the vote of no confidence

On June 30, following the disclosure of the corruptive practice of the government members in the purchasing of the medical equipment and personal protective gear, the Minister of the Interior, Aleš Hojs, announced his resignation. He specified that he submitted his resignation to the Prime Minister Janez Janša, who accepted it, while Hojs himself accepted the resignation of the Director General of the Police, Anton Travner. Among the suspects in the investigations that took place on June 30 was the Minister of Economic Development and a coalition SMC party leader Zdravko Počivalšek. The reason for his resignation according to Hojs was his inability to prevent the National Bureau of Investigation to start what he claimed

2 were politically motivated investigations. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the actions of National Bureau of Investigation and elaborated on the alleged influence of the old-regime structures in the police forces. Despite his claims that the resignation was submitted to the Prime Minister, a week later it became clear that the Prime Minister Janša does not intend to accept his resignation. On July 8, the deadline passed until which Janša was supposed to inform the Parliament of Hojs’ resignation. Although he was bound to do so by the parliamentary protocol, Prime Minister refused to inform the Parliament of the resignation, allegedly due to the Covid- 19 crisis, and Hojs remained a minister despite his allegedly “irrevocable” resignation. Lots of media criticism followed and many interpreted the move as an attempt to postpone the announced vote of no confidence until the end of summer.

On June 9 a group of Members of the Parliament with the prime mover Matjaž Nemec filed the proposal for the vote of no confidence against the Minister of Interior. The argumentation was based on a very controversial Hojs’ decision to revoke a prohibition of a concert by Croatian singer Mark Petrović – Thompson that was planned to take place in Maribor. The concerts of Thompson, an open advocate of the genocide policies of the WWII Ustaši fascist regime in Croatia, are forbidden in a number of neighbouring countries, not only for the fascist propaganda he makes in his lyrics and performances, but also because they attract numbers of extreme right-wing fascist supporters from the region. The decision of the Ministry of Interior to go against the previous decision and allow the concert to take place, was listed in the proposal for the vote of no confidence as essentially un-constitutional and going against the basic civilisational principles that Slovenia as a state stands for. Hojs replied to the accusations at the end of June by an argumentation that the previous prohibition of the concert was revoked due to it being based on non-verifiable claims and that in order to prohibit the concert a proof should be given that the singer has clear intentions to promote fascist ideas and genocide actions at that exact concert, which wasn’t successfully done by the organ that issued the prohibition.

The vote only took place on September 18, after the summer holidays, due to the unclear status of Hojs’ resignation. The accusations against the Minister of Interior went much wider than the proposed document. Most prominently, Hojs was accused of applying pressure to the police and investigation bureau to suit the interests of his political party – especially after a recent revision he arbitrarily ordered of the already finished investigations. He was accused of replacing and sanctioning all critical voices within the police force and the Investigation Bureau and of using the police force to actively suppress the anti-government protests in the last few months. The vote, however, only came to 38 votes for the motion of no confidence and 43 were against, while a number of Members of Parliament – especially from the coalition parties –

3 abstained from vote. The vote of no confidence was supported by Social Democrats, Marjan Šarec List and , while the coalition parties were mostly voting against the proposal, with the few critical voices abstaining from the vote, in accordance with the coalition agreement, which prevents the coalition MPs from supporting a vote of no confidence against the government or its ministries. The only exception was the DeSUS MP, Robert Polnar, who voted in support of the motion.

Conclusion

Although with an expected result, the vote of no confidence against the Minister of Interior, Aleš Hojs, exposed many critical points of the current government, especially the political pressure of the leading political party, Slovenian Democrats, on the state structures, in Hojs’ case on the Police and the National Bureau of Investigation. Along with the Minister’s cancelled resignation, the image of the government’s attitude towards the rule of law and the basic principles of the democratic state was put under opposition scrutiny, opening a debate in media and the general public of the limits of political intervention in the security sphere.

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