Students in Serbia have defeated Vučić’s political machine. The student list won more than 52 per cent of the vote and an outright parliamentary majority. After many long years, Serbia has a chance of a different future. So what did Janez Janša do? Did he congratulate the students? Did he welcome democracy’s victory? Did he express hope that Serbia might finally take a different path? No. Janez dusted off the UDBA.
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“We will not give our consent to any progress until Serbia hands over to Slovenia all the archives of the UDBA, SDV, JLA, ZSNZ and other former SFRY services relating to Slovenia,” he wrote on X.
How convenient. While Vučić’s political machine was firmly in power, Janez spoke of the importance of European Union enlargement. As recently as November 2023, he backed Serbia’s EU membership in an interview. They even boasted about it on the SDS website. There was no talk then of any UDBA archives ultimatum.
Now that Vučić has suffered an electoral defeat, Janez has suddenly discovered conditions without which Serbia must not be allowed to take a single step forward. A coincidence? Of course. With Janez, things like that are always merely coincidences. Let’s be clear. The archives of the former Yugoslav secret services must be opened. All of them. To historians, researchers and the public, not merely to those who would piece together their own political truth from individual documents. Under the SFRY succession agreement, Slovenia already has the right to access certain archives, while access to the records of the former intelligence services remains a problem.
But why has this suddenly become a condition for Serbia’s European future? Why was there no such ultimatum while Vučić was in power? More interesting still, Janša attached to his post a piece by Igor Omerza, who immediately linked the story of the Serbian archives to European Commissioner Marta Kos.
This is where we get to the heart of it. Apparently, not even historical archives can escape domestic political score-settling. What exactly is Janez afraid of? What might the documents of the former services reveal? Who might appear in them, and in what roles? Perhaps it would be interesting to read the whole history, rather than only the few pages that suit the current political agenda. Or would Janez like to interpret this part of history in his own way too? So that everything that fits his truth is sacred, while everything else is a communist conspiracy?
The saddest thing about all this is that young people in Serbia spent almost two years fighting for a different country, for those in power to be held accountable and against corruption. When they finally managed to defeat Vučić’s political machine, Slovenia’s prime minister greeted them not with congratulations but with a threat of a blockade.
Janez clearly cannot stomach even democracy’s victory in a neighbouring country without trying to turn it into his own domestic political war. If he is so interested in the UDBA archives, he should work towards opening them completely. Without selection, concealment or politically rewriting history. Perhaps then we will all learn something interesting. Even about those who are loudest in demanding the truth today. The only question is whether Janez will like that truth.