sex and politics

Members of the new parliament will convene today in a session called by the President of the Republic. The first orded of business will be to elect the Commission for public office and elections, which oversees the nominations and formally vets all candidates for parliamentary positions. After the Commision is elected, terms of MPs will be confirmed by which the new parliament will be fully empowered to perform its duties. But it will become fully operational only after its president is elected.

According to the constitution the President of the Parliament is second only to the President of the Republic. He or she can act with presidential authority when the President is unable to be it because he is abroad, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to perform his duties. Being president of the parliament is no small matter.

So it did come as a bit of a surprise when Zares, the second largest coalition party did not nominate its president Gregor Golobič for the post, but chose Pavel Gantar, a long-serving MP to do the job. While Gantar does have the benefit of in-depth knowledge of parliamentary twists and turns, he seems to lack charisma which I imagine can be very helpful when re-establishing the legislative branch as an equal partner in the system of checks and balances. In case you forgot, under Janša’s rule, the balance was tilted heavily in favour of the executive branch, reducing the parliament to rubber-stamp duties. But since outgping President of the Parlimanet France Cukjat dropped the bar pretty low in the charisma departement, Gantar should do OK.

I still thing, however, that having Gregor Golobič as parliamentary chief would provide for some agonisingly beautiful Kodak moments, when the Blut-und-Boden approach of the right-wing parties would clash with his proverbial wit and - some would say - cynicysm.

In any case, Pavel Gantar will be flanked by three vice-presidents, two of which are already known: Vasja Klavora of DeSUS, who served as vice-president in the last term as well and Miran Potrč of Pahor’s Social Democrats. Incidently, Klavora is also the oldest member of the Parliament and will preside over the session until President of the Parliament is elected. Choosing him as vice-president is a very strong signal that DeSUS will be a member of Pahor’s coalition. Giving DeSUS a vice-presidential spot also puts this party ahead of LDS in terms of political influence, which is what DeSUS president Karl Erjavec instist upon - namely that a party’s political power in the coalition must reflect its election result.

The second vice-president will be Miran Potrč of Social Democrats, a Slovene political legend in his own right. He was the president of the last socialist Slovene parliament (The Assembly, from 1988 to 1990) and in that capacity he overwas and helped bring about constitutional changes which provided legal grounds for holding the first democratic elections. Potrč is an old parliamentarian cat and know rules and procedures inside out.

And finally, Borut Pahor, the new PM-apparent said the other day that he will present his cabinet by Sunday. This would enable him to hold a vote on his government almost immediately after he will (assuming that he will) get the mandate to form the government. He will be given that mandate by the parliament, but he will be nominated for the post of PM by the President of the republic.

And speaking of The Prez - he will address the parliament today. It wil be interesting to se what he has to say. There are thing on his mind, but I’d venture to say that he will call for a more independent parliament, to finally enact all rulings of the Constitutional court (including the Erased) and some pointers for the future as he sees it.

Now that the final results of the elections are known and Janez Janša finally sort of conceded, the time has come for Borut Pahor to go about forming a coalition. All eyes are on DeSUS at the moment and bets are being made as to what concession exactly will Karl Erjavec get from the presumptive new PM, with the former already making noises that he expects to get a greater infulence than the smallest coalition party. Katarina Kresal of LDS went apeshit in responce, saynig that members of The Trio (SD, Zares, LDS) should be given prefferential treatment, because DeSUS is a member of Janša’s existing coalition.

Katarina Kresal and Karl Erjavec (source and source respectively)

Kresal’s comment drew a lot of criticism, not in the least by St. Luka, who published an op-ed on Vest.si yesterday (unfortunately Slovene only). It’s gist is that Katarina Kresal and LDS should not receive prefferential treatment, because it was the voters who gave votes to whichever party they saw fit and that the mere fact that The Trio existed does not make its members any more entitled to ministerial posts than any other member of the coalition.

Pengovsky (who ran an op-ed in a Sunday paper, by the way. Luckily, Slovene only) begs to differ. Namely. To a cetain point KK’s statements have merit. It would be ineed somewhat foolsih if Borut Pahor didn’t recoginse the interdependency of The Trio. SD, Zares and LDS need each other. Although the left is not exactly known for the ability to stick together, the fact is that any of the three parties would be very much alone, cold and scared without the other two. They were in it together almost from the very begining (insofar as we can define a speicific point of their begining) and if DeSUS missed the party, then - well - tough luck.

On the other hand, one can understand St. Luka and - by extention - Karl Erjavec (although I assume St. Luka did not intend to defend Teflon Karl). They recevied an unprecedented amount of votes, they are the fourh largest parilamentary group and do not intend to play the part of the fifth wheel. They want to cash in on the votes they got and are acutely aware of their position. However, this is not a game of chess (not yet, anyway), but rather a case of feeding the political masses with two loafs of bread. But unlike Jesus of Nazareth, Borut Pahor does not have enough to go around and will have to dissappoint a lot of people as it is.

So the 64.000 euro question is, whether Pahor should reward Erjavec and DeSUS for being late for the party or pussyfoot around them, given the party’s importance in securing a majority in the parliament.

I think Pahor’s priority should be in forming a more or less stable core of the coalition. DeSUS will probably assume the role of an attention whore from the start, which might ultimately lead to its premature departure from the coalition. Keeping the other two coalition partners happy will go a long way in a scenario like this.

Furthermore: although Katarina Kresal is still a bit rough around the edges and does tend to talk a lot even when she should listen, she seems to be a fast learner and will very likely know the game inside out within a year. And since her party is a member of the victorious Trio, she can and should receive a status that is more than just a reflection of the vote. Without DeSUS there is no coalition (well, at the very least it becomes harder to form one). But without LDS there is no Trio. So if Borut Pahor wants to position himself as a leader of the left bloc, he better keep LDS and Katarina Kresal happy.

Obviously the same applies in case of Gregor Golobič and Zares, but somehting tells me that GG will be able to hold his own against Pahor. But just to make sure that Slovenia avoids four more years of a top-down approach in politics, where all leaders of coalition parties were also ministers, enabling the PM to boss them around, the president of the Parliament should be a member of one of the junior coalition parties, possibly its president. This would also restore the balance of power in Slovenia, which was tilted heavily in favour of the executive branch in the last four years, reducing the parliament to rubber-stamp duties.

But can Borut Pahor have the cake and eat it? Surprisingly, I think yes. Namely. He will probably have to split 14 ministerial posts and 14 state secreatries (second only to ministers) among coalition parties, where (for argument’s sake) a state secretary is “worth” half a ministerial posts. SD has 29 deputies, Zares has 9, DeSUS 7 and LDS 5, equaling 50 votes in the parliament. And to keep LDS happy, the presumptive PM might think along the lines of giving LDS and DeSUS the same number of ministers and state secretaries, making a slight dent in DeSUS stature (but not much), perhaps offsetting that by giving them one really important ministry. But not the ministry of defence. Even Karl knows better by now

So the unofficial results of Slovene elections are in, including the overseas/expat vote and in the end very little changed. NSi, the one party which was hoping for an election miralce, did get a substantial percentage of the vote (16 percent of the overseas/expat vote as opposed to 3.26 of the domestic vote) but it was too little too late, especially since only about a quarter of 40.000 eligible votes were mailed in. The only person who probably loudly laments the expat vote is Silvo Mesojedec of SDS in voting unit 6 (Novo mesto), who lost his seat to Zvonko Lah (also SDS) by a mere 0.09 percent of the vote.

The distribution of seats in the parliament is as follows:

Distribution of seats in the new parliament (source: National Electoral Commission)

The National Electoral Commission will confirm the results on Friday (SDS has already stated that it will not contest the results), which means that the Prez will convene the first session of the parliament within twenty days starting Friday, 3 October.

The first session of the parliament will be presided by the oldest member of the parliament, probably Vasja Klavora of DeSUS. During this session the parilament will confirm the mandates of all ninety MPs and elect its leadership: the president and three vice-presidents, one of which will be chosen from the ranks of opposition MPs. They also form standing committees and divide membership in these committees according to a party’s standing the new coalition (one notable exception being the commitee on intelligience agencies which is headed by a member of the oppostion). The pick for the post of the President of the Parliament (technically the second most important position in the country) will also answer the question of what kind of government can we expect. Specifically, whether all coalition party leaders will hold ministerial posts or whether their influence will be dispersed over various institutions.

More on the above some time in the next twenty days, but suffice it to say that it would be prudent that the post of the President of Parliament should go to one of the junior coalition parties. With this the focal point of coalition decision making would shift towards the parliament (both in terms of division of powers as well as geographically), which would be a welcome improvement, since both the PM and the president of parliament were members of SDS, a fact that vastly contributed to having a rubber-stamp parliament most of the time during the last four years (unless DeSUS was in its rebelious mood and SNS wasn’t on the same page).

In any case: Within thirty days of the initial session of the parliament, the President of the Republic holds consultations with leaders of parliamentary groups (including minorities) and decides on his candidate for the PM. The Prez proposes this person (usually leader of the victorious party, or anyone else of whom he is given assurance that can secure an absolute majority of forty-six votes) to the parliament, which holds a secret ballot. The candidate is empowered with the mandate to form a government if he or she wins an absolute majority (46+ votes total).

This is not the end, however.

Within fifteen days the candidate for MP must propose his cabinet, with all the ministers appearing before hearing committees where they outline their policies for the next four years. Hearing committees will hold a non-binding vote on the candidate and all of the candidates for ministerial posts will then be voted on en masse by the parliament in a plenary session. They too must win an absolute majority of votes, creating a curious situation where ministers are firstly reponsible to the parliament for their actions rather then to the PM and it is the parliament which can recall them, not the PM.

On the other hand, things can go wrong (not that I expect them to). If the Candidate for PM fails to form a functioning government - possibly because he couldn’t get an agreement on who will get which department of the government, or couldn’t win the nomination to begin with, the Prez can nominate another person to the post (or repeat the nomination, depending on the circumstances) within a fourth-night. However, at this point the plot thickens since any ten MPs can propose their own candidate, regardless of his/her ability to form a functioning government. But as I said, things will probably go more or less smoothly and Borut Pahor should become the next Prime Minister no later than the end of November.