Bashing Luxembourg, Janša Goes Off At The Deep End

You may have missed it, but Luxembourg held its legislatives Sunday last. The politics of the tiny European country are not all that important for this blog (although pengovsky does dabble in Luxembourg over at Luxventures podcast, do check it out), but for some reason the Grand Duchy did catch the attention of the SDS leader Janez Janša the other day and made him fire off this pretty amazing tweet:


Janša bashing Luxembourg (source)

For those not versed in the Slovenian language, the Glorious leader tweeted, verbatim: ‘These people want to lecture us on the “erased”. About half of Lux residents do not have citizenship because they don’t speak Luxembourgish. They don’t have access to public sector jobs and are not allowed to vote. There are 256,000 people eligible to vote, which is less than 43 percent of the population.‘ If your mind was just blown, you’re not the only one….

Continue reading Bashing Luxembourg, Janša Goes Off At The Deep End

Short Primer On The Šarec Government

One of the peculiarties of the Slovenian parliamentary system are the separate votes on the prime minister and on their cabinet. Which means that once he was appointed PM, Marjan Šarec was only half-done. But as posturing slowly gave way to reality he and his coalition partners were able to agree on a division of labour which broadly goes along the lines of leaders of junior coalition partners getting all the high-profile jobs, LMŠ getting the PM spot and all the crappy jobs with the remaining cabinet members having merely to show up on time and not to screw up too much.


The Šarec Government (source)

The one thing that separates this government from the previous twelve is the fact that Šarec will have two former PMs in his cabinet. Alenka Bratušek and Miro Cerar have both dealt with their own respective large-scale crises and will be able to provide Šarec with some first-hand advice on handling the situation if things suddenly go tits up. Provided, of course, the new PM will want to listen in the first place. Because he already demonstrated that he can have a bit of a fuck you attitude. But we’ll get there. So, apart from Šarec, who’s who in the new pecking order?

Continue reading Short Primer On The Šarec Government

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

With the last of the committee hearings slowly drawing to a close, the newly-minted Slovenian PM Marjan Šarec will submit his entire cabinet for parliamentary approval later this week and presumably get his government up and running. Thus a protracted three-month episode which culminated in a five-member coalition and a minority government, supported by the left-most party in the parliament, will finally come to an end. But, in the words of the worst British finance minister of the 20th century, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of an end. But it is, perhaps, an end of a beginning.


Marjan Šarec impersonating a PM (left) and being one. (source and source)

While this blog was mum due to vacay, pengovsky did a few media appearances on the coalition clusterfuck. Financial Times, The Europeans podcast and The Economist were among the victims (although, to the latter’s credit, apparently my bit got edited out). N1, a Croatian private news network, even had their viewers endure a 15-minute interview where yours truly bumbles along in Croatian. The gist of all this attention was two-fold: how come Janez Janša didn’t get to be PM and how come Šarec did?

Continue reading Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

Writing On The Wall

In a development that came as a surprise to a grand total of zero people (save possibly to the man himself), president Pahor announced on Monday that he will not be nominating a candidate for the post of prime minister. With this, the first round of attempts to form a government following the election on 3 June came to an end.


(source)

Despite the brouhaha that surrounded the event, nothing spectacular had in fact happened. Other than the fact that The Prez has once again talked himself into a corner out of which there was no clean way out which is why he resorted to fear-mongering and his drama-queen act.

Continue reading Writing On The Wall

Dereliction of Duty

As expected, President Pahor announced on Thursday he will nominate leader of SDS Janez Janša for the position of the prime minister following the results of election on 3 June. In reponse, Janša said he will think about it and will get back to Pahor on that.
*record scratch*
NARRATOR: You’re probably wondering what the fuck is going on here…


The president and the guy playing hard-to-get. (source)

Six weeks after the voters have had their say, Muddy Hollows is still government-less. Not that anyone really noticed, but there you go. In the mean time, a lot has happened but the country is only marginally closer to appointing a new government than it was six weeks ago. Not in the least because President Pahor seems keen on shedding as much of his constitutional prerogative on this matter as humanly possible.

Continue reading Dereliction of Duty