Janez Zemljarič, a politician who held several top positions during communist times and was believed to have retained significant power after Slovenia's independence, was laid to rest at Ljubljana Žale cemetery on 6 January. The government's decision to bury him with military honours sparked controversy as Zemljarič also served as the head of secret police.

Zemljarič, who died on his 94th birthday on 30 December, served as first minister of Slovenia's government between 1980 and 1984, when the country was part of Yugoslavia, and then spent five years as deputy prime minister of the federal Yugoslav government.

He also served as interior minister from 1978 to 1980. From 1975 to 1976 he was director of the National Security Service, an intelligence agency that notoriously doubled as a political secret police and is best known by its acronym UDBA.

Described by the newspaper Delo as "one of the most influential men in Slovenia in the last fifty years", he also had a huge impact beyond politics.

He oversaw the construction of the University Medical Centre Ljubljana (UKC), of which he was the first director in 1968-1973, and managed the construction of the Cankarjev Dom, the country's largest arts centre, which opened in 1980.

After the collapse of Yugoslavia Zemljarič spent his time as a lobbyist. He was often mentioned as a power broker with good connections to leftist parties but always remained in the background.

He faced allegations that he knew about murders of the opponents of the communist regime during his time as UDBA director, but never admitted to any wrongdoing linked to UDBA activities.

The government decided to afford him a funeral with military honours at the initiative of members of his cabinet. They argued he deserved the privilege because of his efforts for Slovenia's development and his managing a number of major national projects, including the construction of Cankarjev Dom, UKC Ljubljana, the Tivoli arena and the motorway network.

However, the opposition Democrats (SDS) expressed indignation at the decision, which they see as being fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the Slovenian constitution, which is based on respect for human dignity, human rights and the rule of law.

"The Robert Golob government's decision violates the fundamental right to human dignity and makes a mockery of the suffering of the many victims of UDBA's criminal activities," the party said.

It said the former secret police was an institutionalised antithesis of the fundamental constitutional values of today's Slovenia, and the Slovenian Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court formally recognised UDBA activities as criminal.

"The abuse of military honours to glorify the head of a criminal organisation is, last but not least, an insult to the Slovenian Armed Forces, which were founded on the basis of resistance against the repressive Yugoslav regime, of which UDBA was an integral part for decades," the SDS added.

Senior SDS member France Cukjati, speaking as the head of the conservative group Assembly for the Republic, said Zemljarič "demonstrated a distinctly undemocratic attitude towards opponents of totalitarianism".

Zemljarič's funeral was attended by many public figures, including Slovenia's first President Milan Kučan, Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković, surgeon and businessman Marko Bitenc and Mitja Rotovnik, a former long-serving director of Cankarjev Dom.