WE ARE CELEBRATING A DECISION
The main celebration of the National day

Ljubljana, 24 June 2000



Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
Slovenes at home and abroad, esteemed citizens,

We had to fight to be able to celebrate here tonight. To be able to speak here, too. However, tonight we are celebrating neither a battle nor a victory, but a decision. We are celebrating because we made the right decision. Do we still remember? Do we remember correctly?

We did not yet celebrate National Day ten years ago. We did not yet have an independent State. We had not yet held the plebiscite for an independent Slovenia. We had not yet defended it against military aggression. We were not yet internationally recognized as a nation and as a State.

However, we expected a lot – and our achievements may have even exceeded our expectations. We carried out enormous social changes in a peaceful and organised manner. As so many times before, it transpired that major shifts are possible only through the common efforts of all people who are not blindly obedient soldiers of an imposed idea, but rather free and creative individuals united in a common cause. People who appreciate knowledge and never cease to seek it, who have the courage to face new challenges, together with others. This is a fundamental and crucial experience Slovenia gained at the time that it was fighting for its independence. Our actions were well considered. We made the right decision. Slovenia appreciated contributions from everybody. It did not exclude anybody. For this reason, in those days and months in the early nineties, it was a moral superpower.

The decision for an independent state was a rebellion – but we were rebels with a cause. This was a rebellion against closed horizons, since we wanted to enter contemporary, creative civilisation currents. This was also a rebellion against political indifference, against blindness and deafness, against the policy of creating enemies. We demanded that the clock of the future should run for us in the same way as it does in democratic Europe.

The decision for an independent Slovenia was a decision for a common path on which we will respect every human being, consider the minority and the majority, and respect each other in our search for the best solutions to development dilemmas. We chose openness and respect, tolerance, human rights, respect for differences, peace, freedom, solidarity. These are great values and they are not disposable. They are a permanent yardstick for our acts. Including running the country for the people. They were our guide when the State was born. Let them remain our guide today.

We worked together, with each other, for an independent Slovenia. Each of us remained independent, some even non-conformist – but it was precisely with this stance that they could contribute useful warnings and sharps criticisms to our common project of independence. Had we worked against each other, everybody their own way, we would not have succeeded. As we shall not succeed now, in the face of the challenges of modern integrative processes, if we play round one another or even try to double cross each other.

Democratic and responsible politics is capable of creating opportunities for cooperation and networking. It is capable of reaching beyond divisions and grudges, capable of distinguishing between fruitless and fruitful social frictions. It is capable of seeking paths on which none of us will be pushed to the edge, on which everybody will feel welcome. It is capable of weaving threads of belonging and webs of common opportunities. It is capable of reflecting on the image in the mirror people set before it without, if the image is less than beautiful, trying to replace the people.

Citizens are fully entitled themselves to select the criteria with which to judge politics. The State is not the property of political parties and their interests. It belongs to all of us who have created it and who, day after day, contribute a breath or two to its being and pulse. However, not everything that Slovenian politics is capable of giving today is necessarily good enough, although it may be sufficient from the point of view of legality and legitimacy. Nobody has the right to divide people, to appropriate the State, its institutions, to use these institutions to support their truth, against those who think differently. Nobody has the right, in the name of one truth, to distort Slovenian liberation movements. Such behaviour merely betrays the will and values of the plebiscite and independence. They would jeopardise the common decision we made ten years ago.

It should be repeatedly recalled that we were united at the plebiscite in favour of a common state, because at the same time we voted for lasting common values, for the high standards that we set for organising our life together and managing the State. For precisely this reason, our expectations then are still part of the present, a yardstick for measuring our decisions today.

During the government crisis, the State could test the rules of its democracy. The crisis is over; all institutions of the State are functioning again with full authority. What remains is the lost time and the clear message to the parliamentary parties that managing the State is a demanding and responsible task, which must also anticipate efficient crisis solution mechanisms. The experience reminds us that it is worthwhile to rethink all mechanisms that safeguard the basic principles of democracy. Democracy cannot depend on the willingness of the political elite to use these mechanisms or not. Power is for the people. Because of the common values we chose and which should also serve us as criteria in elections. Power is from the people. The decision this autumn in the elections will be left to the people and the popular will. The politicians' obligation is to ensure that the electoral rules are known in advance. This is a fundamental right of citizens which nobody is may remove or restrict with lack of clarity and with uncertainty.

Slovenia has been a successful State in the last decade. We are striving to live according to the highest standards of democratic traditions. Membership of the European Union is approaching, and with it a more realistic hope that state borders with good neighbours will no longer be dividing lines between parts of the Slovenian nation. Slovenia's experience makes it a bright spot on the map of this part of the world – which, however, between the recently ended war in the South and the not always kind North is not necessarily a sufficient criterion. Last but not least, there are still people here, with us and among us, who live in the shadow, half forgotten, in poverty and helplessness. They too, are entitled to light. They are our common concern. They should be the real concern of managers of any country, they represent an opportunity for new, correct decisions.

Esteemed friends, dear contemporaries,.

The children of the information age are entering their adults lives far removed from the divisions and acts, the sins and merits, of their fathers and grandfathers. Their dilemmas are different. They wish to live in a world promising a pleasant future, in which nobody will present them with a reckoning for the deeds of their forefathers. These have been done and cannot be undone. Let us not burden these children with them. They will be grateful. Their imaginative and working world needs an open Slovenia of free and confident people, with high standards and demands, a stable and democratic State, good schools, free enterprise and an efficient social system, creative freedom and solidarity. Such a Slovenia will give them a feeling of security in the global world. It will give them hope for development and a guarantee of the future. They will be proud of it. Let this be the Slovenia of the 21st century, the State of all Slovenes, of all its citizens. Only in such a Slovenia shall we be able to preserve our national identity, fidelity to ourselves, we, all together, whatever we are and wherever we are. So let us wish her, on the occasion of her birthday and our holiday, a safe journey into the future and all the best.

Good luck, Slovenia.



Photo: BOBO