Among the few foreign representatives who took part were the then VP Provincial Governors Josef Ratzenbck (Upper Austria) and Christof Zernatto (Krnten).
Zernatto had only been elected governor a few hours earlier with the votes of VP and SP. Shortly before, Jrg Haider had been voted out of “the proper employment policy” in the Third Reich because of his saga.
“There was an unbelievable spirit of optimism, I was personally very familiar with the then-elected Prime Minister Lojze Peterle, he also came from the Christian Democratic environment,” the now 72-year-old Zernatto recently recalled in an interview.
He and his vice-president Peter Ambrozy (SP) were invited to the extraordinary festival in the Slovenian capital on the evening of June 26, 1991. Even during the event, fighter jets were flying over the city, “you could tell that things could go in a completely different direction,” said Zernatto.
“Calming down the population”
In view of the fighting that arose in the wake of Slovenia’s declaration of independence in the area of the former Yugoslavia, Zernatto and the Styrian governor Josef Krainer (VP) requested that Austria also show a military presence: “From today’s perspective, it was more of a symbolic act which rather contributed to calming the population than had an effect, “said Christof Zernatto. “It was mainly about the psychological effect, which was important for the people of Krntn, and they saw that when something happens, the Austrian armed forces are there.”
