If pengovsky’s calculations are correct the good people of Muddy Hollows will go to the poll in less than a year. The 2022 election season is upon us and Janez Janša-led coalition has less than 365 days left. Perhaps a lot less.
Standard issue ballot box in Muddy Hollows
In fact, Slovenians will go to the polls in exactly a month. Not be to elect new people’s representatives but to vote in a referendum on a controversial Waters Act. Still, the political parties are already in full-on campaign mode.
SDS, the party of PM Janez Janša seems to be in a bit of a pickle. With its congress just around the corner, it started sounding alarm over a supposedly looming civil war and the spectre of communism haunting Slovenia (to paraphrase a certain German philosopher).
Part of Branko Grim’s letter denying being lacklustre in the Cause. (source)
As both readers of this blog are well aware, alarmism and fearmongering are par for the course for the Party and its Glorious Leader. Still, toying with Parteiverbotand internecine violence is a new level of increasingly beligerent rhetortic of Janša’s party. So, what gives?
News of Lilijana Kozlovič resigning as minister of justice earlier today, or to be precise, the reason for her resignation is yet another proof of what is euphemistically put as “democratic backsliding” in Slovenia. Better described as an increasingly authoritarian rule, the waste Marshal Twito is laying to the system of checks and balances is massive. It will also likely outlast his regime.
A clip-art bearing suspicious likeness to PM Janša (source)
Given enough time, many fuck-ups of Janez Janša’s third government will be reversed or corrected. The economy will pick up. Various health, social, and educational sub-systems will pull back from the brink. But over the past year or so, the entire system of democratic norms and institutions was put under immense strain, both in terms of baseline behaviour as well as shifting the legal balance of power. If either of these stay the norm – and chances are, they will – Muddy Hollows will be in deep shit regarding the future of its democracy.
In the larger scale of things, Janez Janša’s reaction to the drama that was the Super League debacle is not really important. In fact, Janez Janša’s reaction to, well, anything these days is not really important, as the man was relegated (pun very much intended) to the also-ran category of European politics. That said, with the Super League drama being the talk of the continent, everyone who’s anyone chimed in.
However in contrast to other European leaders, especially those of populist persuasion (see: Johnson, Boris; Macron, Emmanuel; Órban, Viktor), the Glorious Leader started his wild 72-hour ride with a tacit approval of the Super League monstrosity. This was done less out of his love for runaway capitalist mayhem than out of his fear of UEFA chief Aleksander Čeferin entering the political fray in Muddy Hollows.
The clusterfuck is complete and there will be a bloodbath. The legendary words by the late, great Jaša L. Zlobec, although uttered in a different context, never seemed more appropriate than these days, as the story of what is becoming known as “Slovenian non-paper” on partition of Bosnia and the rest of Western Balkans is developing at pace.
There are many angles to this story, none of them appealing to the eye. There is nothing to be gained by fooling around with redrawing borders in the Balkans. Doubly so when done in the crass and pedestrian manner the leaked non-paper suggests. The only potential upside to this might be the powers that be paying more attention to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Or at least it might result in Slovenian foreign minister Logar being thrown to the dogs, seeing as this happened on his watch and whatnot.
