Mesec showed the pot. Half the country sees apple juice in it.

Luka Mesec, co-coordinator of the Left party (Levica), published on Sunday a report from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana. Negative. On everything.

Not on one substance, but on ten groups: amphetamines, benzodiazepines, opiates, methadone and metabolites, THC and metabolites, cocaine and metabolites, barbiturates, methamphetamines, PCP and tricyclic antidepressants. The urine sample was taken on 18 September at 18:55, and the toxicology analysis was completed on 21 September.

"The same afternoon I went to take a drug test at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, which I am publishing." (translated)

The time of collection matters because it shows how quickly the man got into the car. The accusation landed on Friday afternoon. By 18:55 he was in the laboratory.

What the report proves, and what it does not

It proves this: the sample taken on 18 September at 18:55 contained none of the tested substances.

It does not prove that he never used them. And above all it proves nothing about the New Year's party at the end of 2021, which is the subject of the accusation. Urine does not keep for five years. That is not our remark: even 24ur, the news outlet that drove the story, honestly wrote it: "A negative urine test cannot prove that a person never used drugs, or that they did not use them at some party in 2021."

So: Mesec took a test the accusation did not demand, about a period the accusation does not concern, and got a result that cannot refute the accusation. That is not his fault. That is the nature of the accusation.

Apple juice

Under the article, well over a hundred comments piled up within three hours. In substance they were a single sentence, written in fifteen ways: yes, but.

Yes, but urine only shows a few days. Yes, but hair should have been tested. Yes, but "basic tests do not even check the temperature." Yes, but, and this is the winner, "he could have brought someone else's urine with him."

This is an important finding about the nature of evidence in Slovenian public debate. Such a pot always has exactly two possible contents. If the report is positive, it contains urine. If the report is negative, it contains apple juice. The content is determined retroactively, from the result, and never from the pot.

From this follows the only reliable advice we can give public officials: save yourself the drive to Korytkova Street. You have apple juice at home, it looks exactly the same, costs eighty cents and saves you an afternoon. They will believe you exactly as much, which is not at all.

Who made the accusation

Dušan Josip Smodej. In August this year he sat in the dock over charges of sexual violence, enabling the use of illegal drugs and causing bodily harm. For four years he stayed silent and lived abroad. Now he has spoken, for the portal Info360.

Four years ago, on Tarča, a current affairs show on RTV Slovenija (the public broadcaster), he said that he did know Mesec, but that they did not socialise and never used illegal drugs together. Now he says the opposite: that they "socialised quite a lot," that it is an "open secret" that Mesec uses cocaine, and that he himself took the drug with him.

For the first, denying version, he now has an explanation:

"a request or pressure reached him via a third person not to mention Luka, or to leave him out of the whole story" (translated)

Translated: he himself says he has already lied once. The question left is: which time?

Mesec's explanation

Mesec called the accusation "fantasies and deliberate lies" and attributed it to the start of the mayoral campaign in Ljubljana. He pointed the finger at Janez Janša and Zoran Stevanović, who he says stand behind the media network that published the interview.

"My question is why he is changing these statements today. Perhaps because he is running out of money and is about to be convicted in court, perhaps because of some deals with the right-wing authorities or some pressure?" (translated)

Levica described the portal as "a mouthpiece owned by the wealthy right-wing propagandist Aleš Štrancar" and claims this is not the first attempt to put Smodej in the same photo or event as party representatives.

Mesec made the statement in the National Assembly (DZ) and did not answer journalists' questions afterwards.

What remains

An accusation about an event from five years ago, with no document, no third witness, from a man who has already told both versions of the same thing. A denial backed by a report covering the last few days, not the last five years. And an election campaign in which this is now a topic.

None of the participants can win with proof, because there is none, neither for nor against. They can only repeat themselves until it sticks. Mesec himself described it more precisely than we could: politics as a swamp, where a lie repeated a hundred times becomes truth.

The only concrete thing in the whole affair is therefore a sheet of paper from the Institute of Forensic Medicine that says negative ten times.

And half the country will still see juice.