Photo taken in Paris, France by dr. Fil

Having just watched the Frost/Nixon movie I couldn’t help drawing lines between its subject matter and some actions or omissions in current politics.

The movie’s tagline is “400 million people were waiting for the truth.” Actually, for an apology after Gerald Ford granted a pardon for “for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”

Many were surprised by the not only polite but rather kind attitude of Barack Obama towards George W. Bush. In his NYT column entitled “Forgive and Forget?“, Paul Krugman, for example, states that failure to investigate what happened during the Bush years would mean “that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power”.

Ever since coming into power, Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor has been going out on a limb to make a point that his Government was going to act differently than the one defeated in the elections.

There are of course big differences between the action of Gerald Ford and the anticipated inaction of Barack Obama and Borut Pahor, one of them being the fact that Ford was never elected, not even to the position of the Vice President, while both Obama and Pahor won elections in clear opposition to their predecessors.

Just at the end of last week, the party of the former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, which still holds that it should have (or even actually has) won the elections, obstructed the work of the Parliamentary session that was to vote on the ratification of Albania’s and Croatia’s NATO accession protocols. Taking the country’s international relations and repute as hostage, the party stated it would continue to obstruct the ratification process until the Parliament verifies the state budget report drafted by Janša’s cabinet for 2007, which was refused due to irregularities found by the state revision revealing a deficit instead of an alleged surplus.

It will be interesting to watch how this move will affect the Pahor’s benevolence in the future. And how last week’s Republican display of zero support will influence Obama’s.