[UPDATED] Will Thursday Finally See The End Of The Border Dispute Between Slovenia And Croatia?

UPDATE 29/06/2016 @ 1630 CET: The Tribunal has announced its decision which (at least in part) goes along the lines argued in the post. See the end of the post for details.

Once for a change, Slovenia and Croatia have every right to feel like the centre of the world. It’s not as if they don’t feel like that most of time, but with the final decision of the arbitration tribunal on the border between the two former Yugoslav republics due on Thursday, the attention of much of the continent (if not the world) will be upon them. And it shows.


The disputed maritime border between Slovenia and Croatia

The story of the Slovenia-Croatia border dispute is as long as the independence of the two countries and has in the past quarter-century gone from practically non-existent to near-armed-conflict and back again, with everything in between. It has been used time and again for scoring cheap political points, divert attention from other problems or even (allegedly) coordinated by players on both sides of the borders to swing elections. But in reality it was nothing more than a neighbourly dispute over a few patches of land that got out of hand.

Continue reading [UPDATED] Will Thursday Finally See The End Of The Border Dispute Between Slovenia And Croatia?

Presidential Elections 2017: Hoisting Tits Up The Flagpole And Seeing If Anyone Got Wood

Slovenian presidential elections got a slightly unexpected impetus in the past ten days or so with the emergence of what seems to be the most credible challenger to president Pahor to date.


Marjan Šarec (left) and Milan Jazbec (right) are challenging president Borut Pahor this Autumn

The whole presidential race thing is in a bit of a flux right now. Obviously, everyone knows it will happen but few people know when exactly. Which is why the dynamic is slow at the moment although we’re already in mid-June and the clock is ticking.

Continue reading Presidential Elections 2017: Hoisting Tits Up The Flagpole And Seeing If Anyone Got Wood

Wag The Thompson

This sorry little excuse for a country spent much of the past week (and then some) fretting over a seemingly minor issue which – as per usual in this part of the world – was blown way out of proportion. We are, of course, referring to one Marko Perković – Thompson who was scheduled to give a concert in Maribor today but was banned only days ago over security concerns.


Marko Perković – Thompson being all patriotic and shit. (source)

When the concert was announced, everybody freaked out. The charge was led by local press, most notably Maribor-based Večer daily which has national coverage and soon half of the country was in overdrive.

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Notes From A Former Province (part deux)

Much has happened in the two months since the last post on this blog but as luck would have it we are dealing with la presidentielle yet again. Specifically, how the evolution (or is that regression?) of the Slovenian political landscape can be used to explain, albeit in broad contours, ouate de phoque happened in France. And that’s even without Macron’s campaign being hacked hours before the campaign media blackout.

To begin with, it turned out that our reading of François Fillon‘s political fate was spot on. He did cling on by means of ever more ludicrous claims which however did convince enough of his base to stick with him to claim third place. But since there are no points for third place, he is now reduced to claiming that a satire magazine “illegally influenced the campaign“. The absurdity of the sentence alone is worthy of making it Le Canard enchaîné‘s tagline.

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For François Fillon, Notes From A Former Province

Many well-placed observers expected François Fillon, the French centre-right presidential candidate to finally pull the plug on his beleaguered campaign as news of him being put under formal investigation finally broke. After all, that was what he promised to do.


Janez Janša and François Fillon being all statesman-like and shit (source)

But it appears the ties betwixt France and Slovenia, the proud observer in La Francophonie, the former Ilyrian province of the French Empire and one of the few European countries other than France to have fond memories of a certain Corsican corporal,  are more than just historic and/or cultural. In particular, they seem to include a former French prime minister heavily copying the playbook of a former Slovenian prime minister.

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