Overview of the week's top stories
since 6 May 2002

Doctors’ strike deferred to the fall

On 9 May, the Strike Committee of the national healthcare union Fides decided that it is not prepared to call off the doctors’ strike, which was put on hold at the end of March. They did, however, decide to put it on hold for the summer.

At the same meeting, the committee analyzed the agreement which Fides and the government had signed at the end of March. This agreement led Fides to temporarily call off the strike. However, it found that the government has not held up its end of the deal.

Among other things, an analysis of the state of health institutions was not ordered, no new doctors were hired and a new collective agreement was not signed, as called for in the agreement.

“The Minister prepared us for a long war against the health authorities, and for the defense of our interests and the interests of patients. By presenting doctors as wealthy people in comparison to the poor workers and spitting on the strikers, the Minister succeeded in turning patients against the doctors. The damage has yet to manifest itself, since trust is the basic foundation for relations between doctors and their patients,” Fides president Konrad Kuštrin told Dnevnik.

The primary sticking points relate to salaries, overtime and bonuses. Most importantly, Fides representatives want all hours doctors are on call to be paid as overtime, while the government is only agreeing to pay overtime for more than ten on-call hours per week.

"If Fides would withdraw its financial demands, the negotiations on the new collective agreement for doctors could be ended very quickly," State Secretary at the Ministry of Health Simon Vrhunec told Finance this week.

However, Kuštrin maintains that the cost of those financial demands is not nearly has high as the government estimates.

In March, Fides had called a so-called "soft" strike, which means that doctors only worked a forty-hour week, and only agreed to ten additional hours of overtime. The strike was not intend to shut down the country's healthcare system, simply to call attention to the problems doctors are facing.

For the summer, Fides has decided to direct its attention to the thousands of individual and collective complaints doctors have issued to the courts in an effort to ensure that the current collective agreement is being properly executed.

Minorities meet in Maribor

A conference called “New-age National and Religious Groups in Slovenia: Between Assimilation and Cultural Pluralism” was held in Maribor on Wednesday and Thursday. Nearly 40 attended.

The first day was dedicated to the situation of national groups in Slovenia. Representatives of the country’s Serbian, Croatia, Bosnian, Macedonian, Albanian, Koèevar Germans and Roma all expressed similar experiences – the Slovene state does not assist them in maintaining their communities’ national identities in any way, and at times even actively hinders them.

Even representatives of the Croatian community, which is highly organized with 15 cultural societies, two Catholic missions and two Slovene-Croatian Friendship Societies, complained that the terminology (new-age minority, immigrant community, non-Slovene community, etc.) used by the government is not suitable for a democracy.

Fahir Gutiæ of the Bosnian Cultural Union, pointed out that even while Slovenes in Bosnia publish periodicals in their language and have Slovene-language radio and television broadcasts, Bosnians in Slovenia are not nearly so lucky. Worse of all is the fact that the status of many Bosnians who initially came to Slovenia a decade ago as refugees remains unregulated. 

The country’s Albanians have been luckier, and Martin Berishaj said the key to his community’s success has been the fact that they have not sought special rights; rather, they have demanded the government execute existing legislation. In this way, they have received some Albanian-language classes in schools and a lectureship seat for the Albanian language at the University of Ljubljana.

On Thursday, the focus shifted to religious groups in the country. The situations of the Catholic and Evangelical Churches, Slovenia’s Muslim community and the Macedonian Orthodox Church were presented.

The Muslims have had the worst experiences. The biggest grievance is that the decades-old plan to build a Muslim cultural center in Ljubljana continues to be blocked at the city council. Osman Ðogiæ told the conference that this was “pure discrimination” and a violation of human rights.

The representative of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Trajèe Andonov, said that his group’s primary problem is the fact that it has no formal houses of worship in the country even though it has been officially registered since 1994.

Ombudsman for Human Rights Matjaž Hanžek attended on Thursday and pointed out that the constitution only allows for special rights for autochthonous minorities. This refers to groups which are indigenous to Slovenia: Italians and Hungarians, and to an extent Roma and Germans.

Members of groups from the former Yugoslavia in particular are considered recent immigrants who came to Slovenia for  economic reasons or as refugees and are not awarded any rights as national minorities. This distinction is not made elsewhere in the world, and Hanžek suggested that it will have to be changed before Slovenia joins the EU.

The conference was organized by ISCOMET, the International Scientific Conference of Minorities for the Europe of Tomorrow.

Gay and Lesbian groups visit parliament

Speaker of Parliament Borut Pahor met with Tatjana Greif of ŠKUC-LL and Miha Lobnik of Legebitre on Thursday. The two presented him with the results of research on discrimination against gays and lesbians in Slovenia, and a dossier about homophobia in Slovenia in the past 11 years.

ŠKUC-LL is an NGO oriented to lesbian issues, while Legebitre is an NGO which takes up issues facing gay and lesbian young people.

The two informed him of five demands by gay and lesbian NGOs. First on the list is that they “expect and demand a clear and decisive condemnation of homophobia in Slovene society from the highest representatives of the state in all cases, whether it appears in the form of hate speech, violence, violations of human rights or discrimination.”

They also suggest that the problems facing gay and lesbian Slovenes be the subject of a public debate in parliament, and urge the adoption of legislation which would correct the unequal position of gays and lesbians in Slovene society, such as legalization of same-sex unions.

Gay- and lesbian-oriented NGOs would like to see topics like respect for human rights and the equality of gays and lesbians to be introduced to school curricula to teach tolerance from an early age.

Finally, they call on parliament to respect human rights and directives from Brussels required as part of the process of EU accession.

This was the highest level meeting any gay- and lesbian-oriented NGO has ever had with a politician.

Architectural Guide to Ljubljana published

The Architectural Guide to Ljubljana hit bookstores this week, and an exhibit of photos from the book opened at Ljubljana’s town hall to mark the occasion. The book was prepared by architects Andrej Hrausky in Janez Koželj, who chose the buildings and wrote the text; and Miran Kambiè, who shot the photos.

The book is set up like a classical tourist guide, but with additional materials which make it almost an architectural textbook. The forward presents the city’s history, from the Roman town of Emona up to the present day. Hrausky and Koželj also give general information about architecture and architecture appreciation.

What follows is a guide to one hundred buildings in Ljubljana. Aside from historical information and a description of the buildings’ architectural significance, information about visiting the building is also presented.

The buildings are presented chronologically, beginning with the Ljubljana Castle which dates from the 12^th century and ending with the Arcadia building by architects Sadar and Vuga which was completed in 2000. The book pays particular attention to baroque, secession and the work of Jože Pleènik.

The book includes 273 full-color photos, as well as a map of the city center and another map with public transportation routes to buildings in the guide outside of the center. It also has a glossary of lesser-known architectural terms.

The sexual habits of Slovenes

This week’s Mladina included the results of the magazine’s survey, Sexual Habits of Slovenes. The only other significant survey of sexual opinions was conducted in the late 1980s by Varianta. It was also published in Mladina. However, little more than 300 people agreed to participate in that survey. In the present survey, almost 2000 participated (450 by mail, 1530 over the internet). The genders were relatively balanced: 41 percent of respondents were women, 59 percent were men.

While Slovenes may be more open about discussing sex, parents remain reticent. Only about 4 percent of men and 6 percent of women learnt about sex from their parents, while almost 35 percent of men and 27 percent of women learnt about it from their friends. Books (12.3 percent men/20.4 percent women) and magazines (21.5 /13.1) were also important sources of information.

Slovenes are on the whole satisfied with their first time. More than 72 percent of men and 61 percent of women said they would like their children to have a similar first time. While 55.2 percent of women said their first sexual experience was the result of love, 39.1 percent of men said the reason was lust.

Among the problems men and women agreed upon were the fact that sex is too quick (30.3/25.5) and there is not enough emotion (33.8/41.7). However, the biggest problems were gender-specific: almost 38 percent of women said they did not get enough foreplay and more than 44 percent of men said their partners were not active enough during sex.

The majority of respondents had two to five sexual partners (34.5/47.6). However, 25.9 percent of men (compared to 9.3 percent of women) have had more than ten. Most Slovenes have sex as an expression of love for their partner (40.5/44).

Slovenes seem quite open to pornography, but more so to films rather than magazines. More than 80 percent of men and 69 percent of women said that they watch pornographic videos, but at the same time almost 84 percent of men and 92 percent of women have not bought a pornographic magazine in the last six months. More than 71 percent of men and almost 65 percent of women believe that pornography does not lead to violence against women.

Given the homophobia allegedly rampant in society, it is interesting that only 86.2 percent of men said they have only ever been attracted to women; 10.7 percent said they have “primarily” been attracted to women. Similarly, 65.9 percent of women said they have only ever been attracted to men while 27.2 percent said they have at times been attracted to other women.

And in other news…

·         The world congress of the International Press Institute was held this week at the new congress center of the Grand Hotel Union in Ljubljana.  Speaker of Parliament Borut Pahor addressed the congress, as President Kuèan was unable to attend. The presidents of Croatia and Montenegro, and a member of the presidency of Bosnia also addressed the forum. More than 450 people attended the congress, from 64 countries.

·         The first step in the privatization of the country’s insurance sector was taken this week with the passage of the new Law on the Transformation of Insurance Firms. The law sets limits on the amount of “social capital,” i.e., state money, insurance firms can have. Only those firms which had five percent social capital as of 1 January 1991 will be effected. There are only two: Triglav and Pozavarovalnica Sava.

·         Sava D.D. sold half of its shares, 20 percent, in Kranj’s Sava Tires this week to the American tire company Goodyear for USD 38 million. There is a year moratorium before Sava can sell its other 20 percent, but it is considering selling it to Goodyear as well, which would leave 80 percent of Sava Tires in Goodyear’s hands. 

·         Magdalena, Maribor’s international festival of visual communication for young people, opened this week. Nearly 600 works are included in competition from ten countries including all of the states of the former Yugoslavia as well as from Australia, Romania, Poland, Russia and the UK. The festival’s schedule includes lectures on advertising, design, media and activism, as well as musical and other events. The festival ends on Saturday with an awards ceremony for achievement by young creators. More information can be found here.

·         The World Music festival Druga Godba will take place from 23 May to 5 June in Ljubljana and Maribor. Eight evenings of concerts will feature performers from 15 countries, including  Algeria, Armenia, Benin, Congo, Finland, Canada, Cuba, India, Mali, Mexico and Slovenia. The venues will be Križanka and Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana and Satchmo, a jazz club in Maribor.

·         The second New Balkan Festival of Student Film will take place at Maribor’s Štuk hall from 20 to 25 May. Seven film schools – from Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Skopje, Banja Luka and Novi Sad – are participating. More than 40 student films will be shown, and the festival’s schedule is rounded out by seminars, lectures and round tables prepared by the film schools’ professors.