It is rare, but most commendable when a reporter divulges its source. If this happens in the very last sentence it is regrettable. But, better late than never. At least the reader can now tell the spin of the text above it.

This source calibrates the information used by the writer of The Economist. The author of AN ARGENTINE SLOVENE SEEKS ROOTS has either been misled or intended to misinform your readers. Although, when the smoke cleared, the damage did not sink the Argentine Slovene; he is now the Prime Minister of Slovenia. But, substantial corrections are in order to save The Economist's reputation. So, here we go, point by point.

ECONOMIST: Since the collapse of communism a decade ago …

CORRECTION: What collapse? Until yesterday, Slovenia was run by two life-long communists. President Kucan was the President of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Prime Minister Drnovsek was the President of the former Socialist Yugoslavia. The key cabinet posts went to former members of the Communist Party or the Communist Youth.

ECONOMIST: … the new democracies…

CORRECTION: Perhaps neo-democracies would be correct? Democracy cannot function when one political party owns all the wealth. Here is another proof that the former communists, by renaming themselves, have fooled naïve reporters. If one party in Great Britain had owned all the banks, insurances, media, and all the most profitable industries, would The Economist call this a "democracy"?

ECONOMIST: …of Central and Eastern Europe have drawn on their Diaspora for talent. America has provided several ministers and even, for Lithuania, a president. But it was a first for Argentina when this month Andrej Bajuk, a middle-aged Buenos Aires banker…

CORRECTION: Oh, yuck, an aged banker! But this may help: Dr. Bajuk spent twenty years of his career in Washington and Paris. Recently he managed the Inter-american Bank's European office in Paris. While in Argentina, he was a university professor in Mendoza. Before that, he obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California in Berkeley.

ECONOMIST: …who speaks only halting Slovenian …

CORRECTION: Indeed, Dr. Bajuk cannot compete in eloquence with Castro, Hitler or Mussolini. He speaks a clear and understandable literary Slovenian. Does the writer speak Slovenian to be able to judge that it was halting? If this is a handicap to leadership, what handicap would The Economist assign to the proverbial "Oxonian stuttering"?

ECONOMIST: …was asked to head Slovenia's government. So far, Slovenes sound suspicious: an opinion poll suggests that only 17% trust him. And he still needs to win a series of votes in parliament, which could drag on for another month, before he clinches the job. In any event, a general election is due by December -- and his hopes of winning it must be modest. But the puzzle is why is he in contention at all.

CORRECTION: Has it ever occurred to the writer, that during the 50 years of the dictatorship, Slovenia, like most communist countries, lost some of its best people to Diaspora. During this time, Slovenia's universities were teaching Marxist economics and Stalinist law. What is wrong with importing the best talent available, such that has been educated in ethics, moralities, practices and policies the Western World is so proud of?

ECONOMIST: The first reason is that an odd-shaped coalition of left and right led by Janez Drnovsek, collapsed last month when one bit switched sides, and the emerging right-wing coalition poised to replace it could not agree on who should lead it. So up popped Mr. Bajuk, who earlier this year was still in Argentina, as a stop-gap. Mr. Bajuk would be just about plausible as a finance minister, since he helped draft some of the country's privatization laws while still an Argentine banker.

CORRECTION: In 1990, only a handful of business people in Slovenia could tell the difference between stocks and bonds. It was therefore necessary that the Slovenian Diaspora helped formulate Slovenian privatization laws.

ECONOMIST: But he knows virtually nothing of Slovenia's messy politics.

CORRECTION: Slovenia's politics are not messy. But they contain a paradox: Slovenians keep voting for the very same people who have consistently been proven wrong for decades. Why? Because the President of Slovenia, Kucan, controls the Left parties with a fine-tuned apparatus, retained from his days as the member of Central Committee and with the wealth, which has not been privatized or denationalized and bank assets which are still a secret. It is difficult to lose the elections with such assets. However, The Economist is partially right; politics of the opposition parties who must operate on the funds collected from the grassroots would appear messy and divergent. No elections have ever been won on a shoestring budget. The question for The Economist to pose is: are such elections indeed "democratic".

ECONOMIST: Moreover, his Argentine background makes many Slovenes feel rather queasy. Most of the 50,000 or so ethnic Slovenes in Argentina descend from members of the pro-fascist…

CORRECTION: Not pro-fascist, but anti-Communist. One must understand here that anyone opposed to communism has always been declared a fascist by the communists.

ECONOMIST: …home guard, known as the Domobranci, who fled when the communists took over after the second world war.

CORRECTION: Only some succeeded in fleeing. Some 20,000 were returned to the communists from their asylum in Austria by the British and executed en-masse in accordance with a well-prepared communist plan.

ECONOMIST: Many Slovenes still consider them quislings and assume that anyone connected to them will hold rigidly conservative and virulently nationalist views.

CORRECTION: The Spring parties do not hold virulently nationalist view. Such views are held by the Nationalist party head Zmago Jelincic, a member of parliament who often votes with the Left. He reportedly has a record of run-ins with the police.

ECONOMIST: Mr. Bajuk himself shows no signs of extremism, but liberals guess that the country's Roman Catholic archbishop, Franc Rode, may have had a hand in his nomination.

CORRECTION: The Church officially denied this lie. If the writer does not know about it, it simply re-confirms some more sloppy journalism. And, the Catholic archbishop, who for years was one of the high Vatican officials, is now an extremist! This could have only originated in the mind that thinks that the biggest Italian invention to-date is cappuccino.

ECONOMIST: The prelate who has Argentine connections and strong sympathy for the Domobranci has been arguing for the church to play a bigger part in public life. In any event, government policy, whoever is in charge is unlikely to change much. It's hard to pinpoint our differences with the parties of the left," says a spokesman for Coalition Slovenia", as the new group of parties on the right is called. "We're for traditional values," he offers hopefully. That tends to mean as "for more cash for farmers, a clear-out of ex-communists from public office…

CORRECTION: Some collapse of communism if the ex-communists have to be cleared-out from public office!

ECONOMIST: … and tax breaks for families." So why import an Argentine to take charge? It makes us look like a banana republic, says a girl, sipping cappucino in a café in Ljubljana, the capital.

CORRECTION -- For Slovenia this would be an improvement. The Index of Economic Freedom, (see www.prah.net/slovenia/economics), published annually by The Wall Street Journal, shows at least twelve banana republics (El Salvador, Jamaica, Tobago, etc.) way ahead of Slovenia, the country whose economy was close to par with Austria, Switzerland and Northern Italy only three generations ago.