Month: June 2007

Just to follow up on yesterday’s post: The three stooges have suddenly fallen silent…

…but it looks like Janša and Sanader are in more trouble than originally thought.

Sanader (already embroiled in a privatisation scandal that threatens to bring down his government) is now facing claims by Croatian media that he indeed engineered border skirmishes with Janša. Croatian daily Jutarnji list goes on to note that Janša and Sanader did their deed via legmen (remember what I wrote about non-denial denial?). Unfortunately this story is in Croatian only. Croatian parliamentary elections are only months away…

Janša too, seems to be running an increasingly unstable coalition – just as Slovenia is about to start its first ever EU presidency in January 2008, not to mention the presidential elections in autumn.

Rop on the other hand is again twidling his thumbs. Or is he? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a transcript of the alleged Janša-Sanader parley suddenly surfaced.

As I said before. FUN! 😀

Oh, yeah, BABY! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’m definitely not emigrating, though… This is waaaay too much fun ❗

The three stooges: Sanader, Rop & Janša

Item #1: Government of Janez Janša wrecks havoc in Slovene intelligence agency (Pengovsky goes: disugst already dully noted)

Item #2: Dnevnik daily runs a story on Saturday, claiming that SOVA tapped the phone of Croatian PM Ivo Sanader (Pengovsky goes: Way to go SOVA!)

Item #3: Former PM Tone Rop (also formerly of Liberal Democrats, now of Social Democrats) confirms the claim and goes on to add that Sanader and Janša (then still as leader of the opposition) coordinated border skirmishes in the Bay of Piran, the disputed area of Slovene-Croatian border in the summer of 2004. Full disclosure: Rop lost elections to Janša in the autumn of the same year. (Pengovsky goes: Holy shit! Rop, are you serious?)

Item #4: Janša goes nuts over Rop’s claims, saying that no such records exist and thus either Rop is lying or there was a rouge tap and goes on to say that Rop should resign immediately. (Pegovsky goes: Wow! Dude, hold your fire!)

Item #5: Sanader loses it and call’s Rop statement “anthological political stupidity“. (Pengovsky goes: Idiot!)

Item #6: Janša appears on state TV for some obvious damage control. He states that the spy affair should end soon and that the media should focus on reporting the good economic fortunes of the country instead (Pengovsky goes: WTF?!?… Is the PM really telling me what to report?!?)

Item #7: Rop appears on Svet na Kanalu A and responds by saying that both Janša and Sanader are acting suspiciously nervous. (Pengovsky goes: Neither was he the texbook definition of relaxed)

Now…Could Rop be making it up? Possible, but not likely. Why would he? Rop is not a political idiot others try to make him look and surely he’s aware of the consequences of his actions.

So… Is Janša lying? Again: Possible, but not likely. If you look at his responce closely, Janša is very careful to categorically deny the statement that he arranged the incidents directly with Sanader, as for the rest of Rop’s statements he says that there is no proof. He doesn’t deny the claims.

And most importantly: Sanader does not utter one word of denial. He does say that Rop is acting stupidly, but there’s an evident lack of direct denial.

This is gonna be. So. Much. Fun. 😀

P.S.: What everyone seems to have overlooked is the fact that Slovene spies actually managed to eavesdrop on the confabulations of the Croatian prime minister. If I were Sanader, I’d fire my counterintelligence chief toot-suite…

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 Крижанов�?кий 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…