Dear Madam President

Dear President-elect of the Republic of Slovenia, first of all I would like to congratulate you wholeheartedly on your election. With your victory, Slovenia has reached an important milestone: the first woman in the highest office of the state. I hope that with your election we have taken an important step toward real equality between women and men in Slovenia. But a long road still lies ahead of us. I believe that a radical shift along that road will be one of your priorities.

I welcome your victory because in the past, and during the election campaign, you clearly and firmly stood up for human rights, political freedoms, democracy and the democratic rule of law. You have shown that you understand this is not a matter of ideological or political alignment, but of championing and safeguarding the constitutional foundations of our democracy and its pluralism. These are civilizational values that all decent political parties in a functioning democracy should stand up for, whichever side of the political spectrum they come from. This is the constitutional framework within which lively political battles and political divisions are not a weakness but a reflection of political pluralism and political maturity. On condition, of course, of a considerably higher political culture. The times when we built the future on the compulsion that everyone think and feel the same are, I hope, behind us once and for all.

If I may, I would suggest that you add social rights to the above set of political freedoms and human rights. Here, too, it is of course not a matter of left or right. Different political platforms will always have different emphases and different paths, but for all those who are genuinely committed to a functioning democracy it should be clear that it is not possible without social justice. A society based on the neoliberal structural economic, social and political marginalization of part of its citizens will never be truly democratic and will always be in danger of falling prey to the political hucksters of populist and authoritarian alternatives.

You have promised to work to overcome differences and divisions among citizens. Good. But I hope you will go about it differently from your predecessor. I hope you will look for the point of unity in consistent respect for democratic values, not at the arithmetic midpoint between those who stand up for those values and those who can’t stand them. I am glad that in a month you will become President, because you have promised not to keep quiet. That you will use the authority that comes from winning the election clearly and firmly in cases where the democratic and civilizational values we wrote into the Constitution at independence are violated and threatened. These values are not violated in the abstract and therefore cannot be defended merely with abstract platitudes that evaporate on contact with concrete attacks on human rights and human dignity. Of which there have unfortunately been ever more in Slovenia in recent years. Partly because of the silence of those who should have spoken up but didn’t.

In honoring your commitment to speak up, things will not always be easy and comfortable for you. It is a responsibility that requires wise judgment and a great deal of knowledge. I am convinced you lack neither, and for those areas in which, despite your rich career, you have less experience, I recommend a wise choice of advisers. On the domestic as well as the international stage, as you have already experienced, it is easy to slip.

The fact is that silent politicians enjoy no small support among Slovenians. Given what some people allow themselves to say in the political arena, this is understandable in a way. If you take no position on anything, at least you won’t offend anyone. After all, your predecessor won two terms this way, and your direct rival also profited from playing the ostrich on pressing social problems. But that is not the right way. When democracy is in crisis, false even-handedness and silence are objectively the allies of its enemies. In the times we live in, we cannot defend and preserve democracy by sticking our heads in the sand, even if, supposedly, with the best of intentions. So as not to anger and divide people. If we followed your predecessor’s wisdom to the end, after your term we would no longer need to elect your successor but could simply draw lots. “Jože, the die is cast, until now it was Nataša, now it’s your turn. What am I supposed to do? Nothing, just post photos and keep quiet.” I hope you won’t hold my bad joke against me; you of course did not come to the highest office in the land by lot, but through the trust that a majority of voters placed in you because of your positions. With that you have gained moral authority, but also a moral obligation to all who gave you their vote. Being the president of all citizens is a noble ambition, but it cannot be an alibi for “overcoming differences” at the lowest common denominator of attitudes toward democratic values.

Finally, allow me to respond to your statement that now is the time to forget the past and build the future. It is of course possible that you simply wanted to bury past grudges and start afresh, and that is fine. But if, in a rather widespread manner, you happen to be suggesting that we solve unresolved problems from the past by simply forgetting about them, I would nevertheless suggest that you think about it carefully once more. The recent history not only of Slovenia but of all of Europe was dramatic, hard and also bloody. Deliberate forgetting may be an understandable human reflex, but it carries the risk that the future we are supposed to build will be dangerously similar to the past we want to forget. Many are evidently convinced that still-smoldering traumas can be resolved by pushing them even deeper into the collective subconscious and placing a white marble slab over them. On which, in the name of a reconciliation that is not one, we ritually lay carnations and wreaths.

A critical understanding of history is essential to understanding the present and to understanding the importance of democracy and democratic values. This is especially true for generations who have no direct memory of times when there was no democracy, no respect for human rights and human dignity. Who do not know what happened in those times to people like them, and what could happen to them too in the future. Out of reverence for the victims, but also for the sake of our own security and future, we must preserve the memory of the times in which Europe, first gradually and then ever faster, sank into a whirlpool of incomprehensible inhumanity that culminated in the gas chambers and crematoria of the concentration camps. Without memory and a critical understanding of Europe’s past, it is impossible to understand the challenges of today’s Europe and to recognize and respond in time to warnings that history may have begun to repeat itself.

Dear Madam President. I know you are familiar with, and agree with, the words of Primo Levi: “It happened, therefore it can happen again.” To prevent that, it is not enough merely to repeat these words; they must also be put into practice in everyday life, every time humanist values are denied, every time there is stigmatization and dehumanization of certain social groups, intolerance and hatred. In your presidential campaign you promised that you would respond to such phenomena, of which, unfortunately, there are more and more here too. I do not doubt that you will keep your promises. You need not try too hard to acquire anyone else’s wisdom in this regard; follow your own, thanks to which you won the election convincingly. I wish you much courage and success in this.

I hope you won’t take my letter amiss. I have neither the intention nor the right to lecture patronizingly someone who has received a mandate in democratic elections, but I believe that in today’s times no one who cares about a safe, free future that is kind to all people can afford to stay silent. In the end, the duty to speak up critically applies not only to politicians but also to engaged citizens, such as I would like to be myself.