Chicken
I only caught an echo of a story on Wednesday, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. It was this story by Dnevnik that made me look at the incident again…
JJ and Vlad while they were still chums…
Namely: The Prime Minister was due in Sankt Peterburg on Friday for an economic forum organized by Russian government. There, he was due to meet with President Putin, but canceled the visit just 24 hours prior to the meeting.
What. The. Fuck. ?!?
I’m not a foreign policy expert, but I’m sure there are things you just don’t do. Like cancel a meeting with the Russian president. Especially this Russian president. And especially since they seemed to hit it off quite well a year ago, when apparently a lot of high level business deals were agreed. Including a deal to sell the largest Slovene oil company Petrol to Russian Lukoil.
AHA! A clue, Sherlock!!!
Perhaps that’s it. Check this story out. It seems that Petrol’s CEO is not at all trhilled at the prospect of his business card being printed in cyrilic (although in my opinion going from Marko Kryžanowski to Марко Крижановский is not such a big strech).
Which would of course all be well had Slovenia been a normal state like…… say…… um…… let’s see…… searching…… ah yes!….. like Malta, for example. But since Slovenia seems to be on a par with Cuba and the US (health system-wise) and Venezuela (freedom of media-wise), the definition of “normal” becomes pretty vague. Especially with this government.
Take Kryžanowski for example. He became CEO of Petrol against all odds, holding only semi-important positions before that (such as being CEO of Slovenian branch of Mercedez-Benz). But apparently he co-owned a car dealership in Grosuplje with the prime minister’s brother, and I’m sure that helped. But just to be on the safe side, Kryžanowski is also a nephew to Božo Dimnik, one of the most powerful Slovene lobbyists, who seems to have lobbied hard for a Petrol-Lukoil deal. Finance even ran Dimnik’s op-ed on the deal (Slovene only, free registration).
Now, it could be that JJ and his government took some intense heat for dealing with the Russkies (Foreign Minsiter and an international menace Dimitrij Rupel was sucking up to Condi Rice at the same time when JJ should have been glad handing Vlad), or it could be that Kryžanowski went haywire (which seems to be a reccuring theme with Janša for the past few weeks) and is dealing on his own.
In either case Janša ran for cover rather than having to face the music. Chicken…
Saturday, June 16th, 2007
