BELGRADE – The right-wing, according to its well-tried recipe, creates its own parallel truth with lies and turns to the media for help in countries with similar regimes, said Tanja Fajon, MEP (S&D) for daily Danas about the accusations against her, which were also reported by some media in Serbia.
Fajon is once again the target of smear campaigns by pro-government tabloids and portals in Serbia.
This time, an article entitled “Two faces of Tanja Fajon: Brussels’ millionaire and antisemite in the villa of people killed in Auschwitz” was published yesterday by many tabloid portals. The article claims that even though Fajon, as an MEP, is proposing a Resolution on the Suppression of Anti-Semitism, in Ljubljana she works in the house of a Jewish family who died in Auschwitz, which is now the seat of the Slovenian Socialist and Democrats.
However, is it also stated that “this is not the first time that Tanja Fajon shows two faces”, alluding to the fact that she was a journalist before she started being a politician.
At the end, she is accused of earning two million euros during two mandates as an MEP and that she is “currently working on the third one”.
The mentioned article was also on the cover of daily Politika yesterday.
Fajon: Good and truth always win
Fajon wrote on her Twitter account that the attempt to discredit draws attention to the importance of the fight for media freedom.
“Those who attacked know that advanced, free-minded people are the greatest danger to their authority. However, that will not stop the path of truth, the only right path!” said Fajon.
Pokušaj diskreditacije skreće pažnju na važnost borbe za slobodu medija. Oni koji su napali znaju da su napredni, slobodoumni ljudi najveća opasnost po njihov autoritet. Medjutim, to neće zaustaviti put istine, jedini pravi put! https://t.co/nXnRnInQCj
— Tanja Fajon (@tfajon) July 31, 2020
Asked how he assesses the fact that Tanja Fajon has been the target of harsh accusations, Nemanja Todorović Štiplija, editor-in-chief of the European Western Balkans portal, told Danas that this is a “synergy of undemocratic regimes”.
“Fajon is being attacked according to a practice that is well known in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia… which means that a critic of the regime is attacked in the media in a certain country, and this is then reported by the pro-regime media in other countries. It is no coincidence that she was the target of criticism, because since she took the helm of the Social Democrats, she has become the biggest opposition to the current Prime Minister, right-wing Janez Janša. Although the Social Democrats are not the leading opposition party, Tanja Fajon, due to her influence both in her home country and in the EU, is the main opposition to Janša,” said Štiplija.
On je istakao da su po sličnoj metodi napadi na Igora Jurića najpre došli iz pojedinih hrvatskih medija, uz napomenu: „Nije Tanja Fajon kriva što slovenačke socijaldemokrate dugi niz godina koriste pomenutu vilu“.
He added that it is not Tanja Fajon’s fault that the Slovenian Social Democrats have been using the mentioned villa for many years.
“It is certain that some of the facilities used by the parties from the ruling coalition in Serbia are also subject to restitution, so I wonder why the pro-regime media in Serbia are dealing with the case of the party led by Fajon, and not with similar examples in our country,” he stressed.
Štiplija also mentioned that Tanja Fajon is still among the leading members of the European Parliament – certainly among the top five when it comes to knowledge and interest in topics from foreign policy and enlargement of the Union.
Smear campaigns, tabloid attacks, but also insults coming from the representatives of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party against Tanja Fajon, began with her taking over the position of the Chair of the EP Delegation to EU-Serbia Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee in September 2019, and after she pointed out that the situation was not ideal when it came to election conditions and media freedom in Serbia. As her criticism of Serbia grew, so did the insults.