The Republic of Slovenia is formally a government of laws. This is specifically declared in its Constitution adopted in 1992. The Constitution contains a comprehensive article which precisely spells out the human rights and basic liberties. These are guaranteed to "everybody," not only to the citizens or residents of Slovenia. They are the same for all and all are equal before the law. Realization of human rights and liberties proceeds directly from the Constitution. They can only be limited by the rights of others in situations provided for by the Constitution. Protection of rights and basic liberties applies equally to everyone. Everybody has the right to the protection of an independent and lawfully constituted court, to a public trial and to legal recourse against the decisions of courts and other authorities which decide on his rights and obligations. The Constitution spells out the individual human rights and basic liberties with specificity while any limitations of these are recognized only as exceptions required by a most urgent necessity.

However, to understand the present state of affairs in Slovenia, it is not sufficient only to know the constitution, law, and decisions of courts and other authorities. Slovenia is a new state and a society in transition from fifty years of a communist totalitarian system to a new democratic order. As an independent state it has been in existence for only eight years, its Constitution only for seven. Slovenia did not come into being in a new, empty space with entirely new people. It came into being in an extremely warped social environment, in abnormal cultural, economic and social circumstances. And it is being built by a generation that has by and large been born in that same warped society. Many of today's Slovenian leaders had been responsible for the establishment and continued existence of the earlier warped society be it as "soldiers of the revolution" or by docile acquiescence. Therefore it is important to know at least a general outline of the former totalitarian system and the communist methods, their beginning, development and end -- if indeed there has been an end. It is important to know the recent history which to a large extent still has its hold on the present, the present laws and the functioning of the government. This is the past which in many people still lives as the present and which others find difficult to tell apart from the present.

The communist party, assisted by the Yugoslav army, Slovenian communist brigades and secret political police, seized all power and introduced the totalitarian communist system. In mass executions it murdered several ten thousand of its political and ideological adversaries, condemned several thousands in staged political trials and deprived countless citizens of their property either by decree or without it. The slightest resistance, even if only verbal, was brutally suppressed and the era of Tito's "people's democracy," a system of lies and repression began. The farmers and the Catholic church were a constant and steadfast opposition to the communist depredations but among the intellectuals the opponents of the regime were rare. The greater part of the intelligentsia cooperated more or less loyally with the totalitarian regime, the lawyers and particularly the judges being no exception. Indeed it was the latter who ensured that the judiciary became the executive arm, the "smashing fist," of the politics and provided the communist terrorism and crimes with the semblance legality. This released the casual world opinion and its politicians from the responsibility for the criminal regime of Tito and Kardelj which they were shamelessly supporting with such enthusiasm. Accordingly, it is the Slovenian jurisprudence that bears a great part of the responsibility for the endurance and persistence of the former totalitarian system.

In Slovenia there never has been a break with communism or a confrontation of the totalitarian system. That is why there is no rapid advance of democracy or the economy. Slovenians would like to be led to heaven by Lucifer who has donned illustrious white robes that just conceal his horns.

In such political and sociological circumstances the state of rule of law is rather miserable. Slovenia never repealed certain most offensive statutes of the former Yugoslavia which it continues to keep on its books as her own. Slovenia did not remove a single judge or public prosecutor of the former totalitarian jurisprudence which was the "striking arm" of communism. They simply continued to carry on as officials of the new government although they did not even swear allegiance to it for many years. Not a single operative of the former criminal system has been prosecuted. Not one of the thousand war crimes committed by the communist partisans and communist secret service during and after the World War II has been investigated nor prosecuted: mass murders of political and ideological adversaries, other civilians and prisoners of war, extirpation and deportation of entire families, torching of entire villages, plunder, staged penal prosecutions and unlawful confiscations of property. Of more than two hundred places of execution and mass graves scattered throughout Slovenia not a single one has been opened, investigated and publicly designated. Even the graves found by accident are rapidly engulfed by the official silence.

Notwithstanding all this, Slovenia poses as a co-signatory of the international agreement on the establishment of a permanent international war crimes court and had sent her judge to the war crimes court in Rwanda. Slovenia is concerned for the rule of law in Rwanda, in Kosovo, in Bosnia and elsewhere but not at home. At home numerous war criminals, some of them even drawing privileged government pensions, are free to walk about and give talks on democracy and the rule of law. The government decorates them and gives them recognition as meritorious and outstanding citizens, highly paid professors and writers, and the like. When they pass away they are buried with the highest military and civic honors. No one has ever called any of them to account.

Of the countless injustices wrought by the totalitarian regime only few have been corrected. In the process of property restitution, which should have been completed several years ago, only one third of all claims have been resolved, favorably or unfavorably for the claimants. Many the people who would be entitled to restitution did not even put forth their claims. Of the several thousand unjustly convicted only some 1500 have been partially or totally exonerated. An unjust conviction can only be set aside by taking up each individual case. None of the judgments have been vacated by general law on grounds that the legislative branch may not interfere with the judiciary. On the other hand, the government, either casually or deliberately, overlooks the fact that in the communist system where these judgments were meted out neither a judiciary nor a legislature existed as an independent branch of the government. At that time the monolithic soviet-type system was formally in force in which all authorities, society, as well as the state were under the total control of the communist party and its Central Committee. The judiciary was only a faithful servant of the totalitarian dictatorship. The acts of that judiciary, of which a government of laws should be ashamed, were adopted as values of Slovenia's democratic system, shameful values which are zealously guarded by the new Public Prosecutor General Zdenka Cerar, herself an old collaborator of the communist judiciary.

With silence the Parliament declined to enact legislation extending the statute of limitation for the prosecution of outrageous crimes committed by the officials of the totalitarian regime which could not be prosecuted during the time they were in power. It allowed only two years for the victims of unjust prosecution to request protection of legality in their respective cases. The Parliament does not want to extend this time. In this way the victims are again dependent on the public prosecutor who has sole discretion for initiating their rehabilitation. How this discretion is or will be exercised has been brutally demonstrated by the new Public Prosecutor General Zdenka Cerar, a well-known advocate of totalitarian persecutions in which she actively took part, who on the day when she assumed the office publicly announced the withdrawal of the already filed demand for the protection of legality in the most notorious political trial of the former totalitarian judiciary which in a staged and illegal proceeding formally not only condemned Dr. Gregorij Ro man, Bishop of Ljubljana, and leaders of the Slovenian wartime anti-communist resistance, but in fact criminalized the catholic Church, Slovenian democratic politics and the wartime resistance against the criminal communist deception and terrorism. One may add that the appropriate court has been delaying the requested action for the reopening of the case of Dr. Gregorij Rozman by advancing truly Bolshevik arguments for its delay while promptly granting the request for reopening of a case concerning lese majeste of a communist ruler. Clearly, the chances for overturning the unjust convictions in Slovenia are ever diminishing, and respect for the Resolution [1096] of the Council of Europe on Measures to Dismantle the heritage of Former Communist Totalitarian Systems is negligible. This does not only violate the European Resolution -- Slovenian judges and prosecutors are also in serious violation of the Slovenian Constitution which, in its Article 30, specifically includes the right of unjustly condemned persons to rehabilitation and compensation. In a state where neither the courts nor the Public Prosecutor General respect constitutionally guaranteed human rights one cannot say that the rule of law exists.

Such a deplorable state of the rule of law in Slovenia is not surprising in view of the above described background. In the elation over its independence Slovenians overlooked the fact that they did not severe their ties with the totalitarian communist system. Moreover, in their naive good nature they elected as president of the state a "soldier of the revolution," the last communist dictator in Slovenia who with all his conduct clearly shows that he is primarily the president of the protagonists and defenders of the former totalitarian system. Slovenians entrusted the presidency of their government to the president of the former totalitarian Yugoslavia to whom the righting of wrongs, prosecution of war criminals and the rule of law are the least of all concerns. Under this kind of a president the Minister of Justice could become a person who has himself assisted in the violations of human rights and whose method for reforming the judiciary and its drawbacks consists of transferring all new obligations, strictures, and burdens on the citizenry while the judges, who are protected by tenure and cannot be disciplined, were given still more leeway and extensions in processing their casework.

An old communist official became the highest public prosecutor, the new principal public prosecutors are all former communists. The situation is not much different at the Supreme Court or at the Constitutional Court. The government did nothing at all to institute a positive selection in the nomination process for the highest judicial bench and prosecutorial positions, it did nothing to facilitate the appointment of persons who do not have a communist past to these positions thereby somewhat diluting the present solid network of former communists in the judiciary. Nothing has been done for a democratic reeducation of its judicial appointees, no one was reminded of his extralegal activity and support of the former totalitarian system. Even the Constitutional Court holds the acts of unconstitutional communist terrorism during World War II as legally valid government acts.

That is why some prosecutors and judges can continue to carry on as they have in the past: being the striking arm of politics. The rule of law does not stop them, the fact that they are blocking the rule of law is not their concern. By constitutional declaration the rule of law and Slovenian judiciary are synonymous, but in reality they are two totally different things. After half a century of lies, the abnormal subservience of the Slovenian judiciary to politics is still considered quite normal.