NEW YEAR’S 2000 MISSIVE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA
(video in slovenian language)

Ljubljana, 3 January 2000




Dear Slovenes,
Citizens of Slovenia,

We are at the eve of a new year. This year we are also at the eve of a new decade, a new century, a new millennium.

We are facing new hope. New, great challenges lie ahead, as do new and great decisions. They will define our lives in the future, the lives of future generations of Slovenes; and of humanity.

We are prepared for these times. We have matured through a past that has put us through tough trials. Fortunately, we always had wholehearted and wise people. In this nation’s hours of fate they were able to bring together the will of individuals into the nation’s common and victorious endeavour. That is why we carry a good record of the past into the future.

Our history is no longer just a part of the history of others. We decide ourselves how we are to live at home and how we are to be recognised in the world. We stand firmly on our native soil that has marked us with our language, culture and history. However, we wish to meet and work with all other people at the wellsprings of economic and technological development, knowledge, culture, decision-making and spirit of humanity’s new civilisation.

We have our own country. Let us be respectful and proud of it. Let us do what is needed at home in order for our country to fit confidently with the coming times, with a world of different borders, to open up to cooperation and creative competition. Let us become a learning society with good schools open to all. Let us set high ambitions of excellence in our work, of support to enterprise, and of equilibrium between man and nature, between labour and capital. Let us become a society that is strong within. Let us be a society of solidarity, leaving no one stranded and helpless in distress and despair. Let us be a world of kind challenges for young people.

Current generations are destined to live between the old world and the new. The dawn of this century was still very much a world of submission, war and violence. Slowly, this world is fading into our common memory. The end of the century is already reaching for the world to be. The tragedy of our experiences can safeguard future generations from dehumanising the world, from living a life without values.

We have created and secured our land of freedom. Ever more of us believe that the time has come to bid farewell to old resentments, hatred and strife, not to carry that dismal legacy into our future. This is a good omen. Let us not allow people’s fates to be treated irresponsibly. Let us respond to intolerance and harsh, insulting words so as to make living together possible; in spite of our differences, there must be space for each of us. All of us must respond, not only through words, but through actions as well. This includes the President, the Government, the Members of Parliament, political parties, civil society, and churches - all of us – because of the ever same, although different responsibility for a kind life for the people of Slovenia and because of the commitment to their future which was decided at the plebiscite.

The path leading to coexistence and solidarity, tolerance and a creative life together that has respect for the different is the safe and the sound path for our lives and for our future. Let us go down this path, with perseverance and conscience, in words and in action. All together and each man for himself. Such will be a world in which young people will again happily bear wanted and happy children. Their shouting and joy will be a confirmation of this path. Sooner or later all of mankind will be walking down this path, perhaps a path to worlds which today still lie beyond the horizons of the human spirit.

We have enough courage, will, tried wisdom, knowledge and reputation in the world for all of this. Slovenia is a country of hard-working, able, knowledge-hungry, inventive and responsible people. This is the safest guarantee for mature decisions in the times dawning before us.

Two thousand years of our calendar are now expiring. Our years are undoubtedly the best of these years. Because they belong to us, because we lived them with love, confidence and responsibility. Because we rejoiced in them and because they remain our firm support and a dear and beloved memory in spite of bitter experiences.

I wish all of you the year to come to be that way, too. Kind and happy. And peaceful.