I’m writing you for the 26th time. I know that sometime around 15 years ago you forgave me for not having believed in you but in Grandfather Frost until 1991. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that we’ve been friends for many years now and that you’re fulfilling my wishes. Like every year, I’ve been a good boy, so I hope that you’ll once again bring me a pile of presents and fulfil all my wishes.
I’ll be humble this year, as you were already so generous in the last three years that I don’t dare ask too much:
- First, I wish for nice weather in Dražgoše. The soldiers of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation deserve a blue sky and sun. This includes their youngest member, a 22-year-old veteran, a reincarnation of a soldier from the battle at Prevalje. Like every year, I must thank them for continuing the tradition of symbolic popular militarisation and silent class struggle.
- I wish for many new parties in the election year of 2018. You never know where the new Modern Centre Party might be hiding. I don’t care whether the victor is Homosexual Slovenia, the United Pork Half, the Democratic Association of the Friendship between Slovenia and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Party of Marjan Šarc … Whoever it’ll be, they just need to be loyal to the ideals of the revolution. Nevertheless, let me whisper in your ear, dear Santa, that the Left is the only party into which I’m putting all my social democratic hopes … So that you’ll know where to direct the political barometers.
- I wish for the second track to start being built immediately after 2 January. My colleagues from a forum are already eagerly calling me every day since they want to build and contribute to the future of Slovenia. You, Santa, also know that the future is paved with (two-way) rail tracks. If we don’t start building today, we might already all talk German by tomorrow, and you know that socialists aren’t talented for foreign languages.
- I wish for Palestine to be recognised next year. It’s true that I didn’t want Slovenia to get its own country in 1991, but only because we’d been happy in the South Slavic self-governing brotherhood. Every day of their existence, the Palestinians are being crushed by the imperialistic Jewish boot. Considering this suffering, it’s no wonder that they’re marrying 12-year-old girls and hiding behind women and children. The martyrs of the Hamas movement are like some kind of Arab manifestation of the Liberation Front. Santa, I know you’ll help them, even though they don’t believe in you.
- I wish for RTV Slovenia to invite me to many of their shows. It’s nice to see me on the TV-screen. The only man that’s sexier in front of a camera is Luka Mesec.
- I wish for Slovenia to finally leave the NATO alliance, which ignites global conflicts and spreads American imperialism. A while ago, they wanted to create a rift between our eastern brothers and sisters in Ukraine and Russia, and we only watched and nodded. Santa, do something to put Slovenia on the path towards international sovereignty.
- I wish for my friend Zoran Janković to lead Ljubljana, the most beautiful city in the world, for the rest of his life and, in the spirit of the former country that was taken from us, lure dozens of suspicious Serbian businessmen and Wahhabis from Qatar to the Slovenian capital, because their money will always find fertile ground in socialist countries like Slovenia. Together with the taxpayers’ euros, it’ll ensure that the city will keep prospering and be known internationally as the Paris of the east and the Novi Sad of the north.
- I wish for the NLB bank to remain in Slovenian hands. No foreign financial institution could understand the Slovenian talent for making money out of nothing. The rest of the world simply isn’t familiar with our progressive financial instruments. I know that you’ll be able to persuade Margrethe Vestager, since she’s also a socialist, though not as passionate as we.
- I wish for Slovenians to keep buying Slovenian. Even when the products are more expensive and worse than foreign ones. Because by buying a terrible Slovenian product, Slovenians show that they’re true patriots. I also ask you, Santa, even though you’re not Slovenian, to buy Slovenian toys, and if you buy Chinese ones, at least make sure to take them from Slovenian shelves when they’ve already been covered with Slovenian taxes and tariffs.
- I wish for at least five labour strikes in public administration in the coming year. Only with a strike and a union diktat can we truly carry out a class struggle and ensure that no one from the middle class becomes too wealthy. Believe me, Santa, if the middle class had too much money, you’d have more work too as their spoiled children would demand new computers, phones and other decadent things each year. Now that you only have to take care of our little bourgeoisie, you have it good.
- I wish for Russia to finally recognise us as their satellite in order to correct that mistake from 1950 which catapulted us into the arms of western imperialist after 1991. I hope that next year comrade Putin and me will be able to celebrate the holidays at a Russian chapel as statesmen of a single country and that comrade Lukašenko and some other autocrat from former Soviet States will also stand at our side.
- Since it relates to the previous wish, I must not forget that I’ve always wanted a log cabin somewhere in the Belarus countryside. My friend Janez has been promising it to me for an eternity, but nothing has come of it. Santa, I know that you can build it for me, since you have so many elves working for you for free. Just tell them that the average salary there’s €350 a month so that they won’t be too greedy with regards to the payment.
- I wish that in 2018 Slovenians waited in even longer lines, since that’s the only way we’ll be able to tell foreigners that our healthcare system, which was inspired by the USSR, is so good that it’s worth waiting for its services like for the imperialistic iPhones.
- I wish for Article 133 of the Yugoslav Criminal Code, which sanctioned verbal offences, to be returned to the Criminal Code, or even better, to the Slovenian constitution. I want to once more feel those lovely butterflies in my stomach upon hearing people on the street whisper fearfully to each other: “Shh, you mustn’t say that out loud, it’s worth 10 years in jail!”
- My most intimate wish is for the imperialistic, neoliberal formation that is the European Union to fall apart, because despite the efforts of socialist parties in the European parliament and left-wing ministers in the European commission, it’s sliding into the embrace of capitalists instead of focusing on taking care of the poor and disadvantaged. If you fulfil this wish, then I promise that I’ll do everything I can to fulfil the other one, connected to the first one, of having all southern Slavs in the Balkans (except for the Bulgarians, whom no one likes anyway) join together in brotherhood and unity and again live in the self-governing abundance that we used to enjoy until we were lured from it through the trickery of the NATO criminals.
- Do you remember that I’d already asked you last year for more young people to become revolutionary fighters and activists? You never disappoint. Throughout the year, I’ve proudly watched how our young people threatened foreign multinational corporations with the seizure of property, hung pictures of Tito on walls, talked about the importance of solidarity and fought for the renationalisation of stolen property … You really came through, and in this respect, I can now only devoutly whisper the silent wish that such a party of post-teen revolutionaries reaches the parliament and together with the complementary Left directs the future coalition towards equitable egalitarianism.
- Finally, I wish for a woollen red sweater with a yellow pattern of a hammer and sickle in the middle and with two lovely Yugoslav flags on each shoulder (as you know, my favourite material is cashmere, and my size is XXS).
But because you’re my friend and on top of it all red, I don’t want to just ask for favours. I’d also like to give something back. I think it’s unfair that you only get work once a year and even then with impossible working hours. And you also don’t have a union in which someone could fight for you. So just tell us what you’re interested in and we’ll find you something in Slovenia. Even if you’re not a citizen, don’t worry too much – anyone can stay here, as long as they’re red. Perhaps we can even grant you citizenship on the basis of extraordinary naturalisation. Do you want to be a mayor? Prime minister? President? Economic advisor at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva? Just say the word, and I’ll whisper something to the right people. “Reds” must help each other as meritocracy is not our virtue.
Thank you for listening to my wishes.
Yours with cordial comradely greetings,
Milan
Mitja Iršič