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In George Orwell’s 1984, there’s a memorable exchange between Winston Smith and his interrogator, O’Brien. It goes like this:
Winston: “Does Big Brother exist?”
O’Brien: “Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.”
Winston: “Does he exist in the same way as I exist?”
O’Brien: “You do not exist.”
Yesterday, in a nationwide referendum, Slovenians voted that roughly 20,000 of its residents do not exist. These people, known as izbrisani (”the erased”) were residents of Slovenia (generally Croatians, Bosnians and Serbs) who failed to apply for Slovenian citizenship after independence and were promptly removed from the national registry. With their removal from the registry they lost their pensions, health benefits, and in some cases, employment.
Many of them were longtime residents who either had no idea that they had to apply for citizenship or who simply put their faith in their old Yugoslav passports. In retrospect, deciding in favor of Yugoslavia was a mistake, but keep in mind that even the United States initially refused to acknowledge Slovenia’s independence. But while the U.S. has been forgiven, the “erased” continue to linger in legal limbo.
Until last year, that is, when the constitutional court (Slovenia’s highest court) ruled that the rights of the “erased” should be restored. What should have been the end of the story turned out to be the beginning. Some analysts estimate that compensating the “erased” could run up to €2.5 billion. For a small country like Slovenia, that’s almost 7% of GDP.
Naturally, the idea (hyped by the conservative parties) that foreign residents will be richly rewarded for not declaring their loyalty to Slovenia early on, has enraged a significant segment of the population. In the referendum yesterday, over 94% voted against the law to restore rights to the izbrisani.
However, it’s unclear what effect (if any) the referendum will have, since the court has already ruled that the erased should have their rights returned — and they remain the highest legal authority.
See also: Slovenians Vote on the Erased by the Associated Press
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OK, but you forgot to mention that only 31% of those who can vote actualy voted. And that this referendum is not obligatory for the government to obey. This was just 620 Million Tolars shoveled out the window.
bnf, I regret that I didn’t mention the low voter outcome — I should have. But from what I understood, it was still enough to strike the law down. Of course, like you said, it won’t make a difference at all because the court has ordered the restoration to go ahead. I suppose it was more of a show of strength for the opposition party than anything else?
It’s definitely a messy issue, and I freely admit that I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around it. (Which is one of the reasons why I decided to post something about it…)
Many of the articles I’ve read on the subject suggest that there’s a strong correlation between non-Slovene ethnicity and being erased (though only a minority of non-Slovenes are included in the category). Maybe the erased are being assimilated to anti-immigrant sentiment?
Mike, well the oposition realy wanted to show-off, but any intelligent slovene who followed the subject from the start, and knows how to “read” the referendum outcome, would know that opposition just shuts their eyes to the fact they realy spent another pile of tax-payer’s money for the referendum’s costs, and put everything on position’s shoulders.
And i’m not into politics or even worse, for the position as one might think. They are as guilty as the oposition for this refebullshitum.