Month: February 2008

Orlek And The Beast

The Good Doctor has yet again uncovered a gem. Apparently Slovenian minister for sports Milan Zver (literally: Milan Beast) advised against participants in 2008 Summer Olympics in China bringing up the issue of human rights.

Now, to be fair, Zver had a point. He said that athletes shouldn’t be doing the politician’s job. True. But the problem is that politicians seem reluctant to do the job, especially especially if China is an important business partner. And China is an important business partner to …. ummmm …. pretty much the rest of the world. So the politicos either keep quiet or jost go through the motions, hoping that they will not anger the Big Red Dragon, while keeping the local branch of Amnesty International at bay.

Not everyone is happy, though. Reporters without borders demanded that Slovenian government disowns Zver’s statement. But there’s no need for that. Zver already backed off, saying that he didn’t mean to pressure anybody, it just that he thinks that a boycott of the Olympics would do little good..

Which is all fine and dandy, except for two things: that he was pressuring the athletes, or was at least very much out of line – much like PM Janša was on the issue of Portugese referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – and the small fact that Zver’s original statement didn’t mention boycott at all. Which is a typical modus operandi of this administration: first they jump the gun on those who may make life unpleasant for them (like journalists signing a petition against censorhip or athletes advocating human rights) and then they claim that the other party was after something much worse (conspiring against Slovenia or advocating a boycott of the Olympics).

May opinion is that politicians, civil society, NGOs and industry should highlight violations of human right all over the world, including China. I firmly believe that a boycott of the Olympic Games is not a proper political approach in the 21st century and that sports should become the tool of intercultural dialog, co-operation and peace in the world.

(I’ve preserved the lovley typo at the begining of the quote)

And yes, if we neglect the boycott-spin, the intercultural dialog is indeed the way to go about it. Case in point being Orleki, an etno-rock-brass group from the mining town of Zagorje, which have just concluded a 14-day-tour of Beijing, celebrating the Chinese New Year, shaking a whole lot of local booty. And if you ask how come, check the video.

Pretty cool, huh? :mrgreen:

Belgium Explained To Slovenes (And Whoever Else ) In Ten Easy Lessons

He’s back, ladies and gentlemen! Dr. Arf has resurfaced to continue his legendary series about Belgium and its woes. Will Belgium disintegrate and steal the limelight from Kosovo, or will the most European of EU members get its act together and keep going? Find out in the latest installment of dr. Arf’s Belgium Explained To Slovenes (And Whoever Else ) In Ten Easy Lessons!

LESSON VII : HOW TO MESS UP YOUR CHANCES OF BECOMING BELGIUM’S NEW GOVERNMENT/PM IN FIVE EASY NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Yes, Dr. ARF is finally back with the concluding entries to the ?Belgium’ saga. I’ve been overcome with work lately, and there simply was no time left to write blog entries. But I know our P.’s own blog posts were interesting enough to not make you miss mine too much. 😉

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Yves Leterme (source)

SO, HOW’S BELGIUM DOING RIGHT NOW?

It’s still loads of fun here, politically speaking. Why? Because, unlike the generations preceding them, the Modern Day Elected have a really big problem with keeping their mouths shut; especially to the media. Whereas former government formation negotiations bore an uncanny resemblance to the Vatican choosing a new pope behind closed doors and with no outside communications, nowadays we find they can’t seem to leave their Blackberries and mobile phones alone. I’m amazed none of their wives (or husbands) have threatened with impending divorce yet. “You love that Blackberry more than me!!!” Oh well, in that case, our supposed new leader, Yves Leterme, still has his goat. :mrgreen: But still, how is ?ol’ Eve’ doing government wise?

THE GOVERNMENT THAT JUST WON’T GET INTO OFFICE

Not so well, as it happens. The Walloon politicians already hated his guts and chastised his party, CD&V, every chance they got for getting together with the Flemish Nationalists of NV-A. Not only political Wallonia hated his guts, the Wallonian media liked him as much as a hole in the head, much to his chagrin. Over the course of last year’s negotiations, Leterme became known for his public chastising (we Belgians are masochists by nature, due to this age old inferiority complex) of the French speaking media. It even went so far that he berated the francophone national broadcast corporation RTBf and generally adopted an attitude of ?you’re my buddies, the only ones I can trust’ toward its Flemish counterpart, VRT; seemingly a garden of delights for our Yves in those days.

Be that as it may, the result of the negotiations was absolute zero. Sure, they had a few partial agreements, a think tank would pore its combined brain cells over the illustrious state reform in the upcoming months, but a government, or a national budget? Sorry, constituents. We’ve lost too much time bickering and whining to the press to get to that. Mea maxima culpa. NOT.

So it was off to our good king Albert II for a – I lost count – third time (cautious estimate) for another round of talks. I won’t bore you with the details, but the end of it all was that we did get a prime minister and a cabinet : Guy Verhostadt, acting PM, would continue until Easter, Match 23rd, by which time the parties who won the elections way back when (I vaguely recall it was some time in June) would have sufficient agreements to start governing. You’d think they’d all sit in silence and work towards that goal. Not so. The Flemish liberal VLD ministers are trying to enforce new elections by constantly criticizing their future government partners, especially Yves Leterme – who landed a minister post in the interim government, as well as being vice – PM – and in fact do a better job at criticizing their own government than the opposition! And of course, all negotiation partners had to honour their agreement with the press to go over the botched negotiations with a fine tooth comb. And this week, it seemed some, if not all, took that a bit too literal…

WE LOVE THE PRESS

This week, the De Standaard newspaper – once upon a time the reference for conservative christian integrity and thus of christian democrat persusasion – is publishing a series about the botched government negotiations. Some tenors had already given interviews with other media, but this was different, as the newspaper had agreed with all key players to go over the whole period and give insight into the negotiations. I don’t read newspapers, so I was oblivious to the whole thing, until a massive row ensued, which had the media in uproar. Not only did the interviewed dignitaries talk about their negotiations, it also seemed they showed the journalists text messages from one politician to another, blackberry conversations and – stop the presses!!!! – literal quotes from their talks with King Albert II. Even worse, they quoted him, while he is supposed to maintain a public neutrality! The shock!! The horror!!

See, Albie said a couple of things that certain parties would take exception to, like, suggesting to Yves Leterme to cut loose NV-A, because he didn’t like them weighing on the negotiations. Much to the chagrin of said party, Ol’ Eve admitted NV-A were a millstone around his neck and would like nothing more. See, there’s a protocol for these matters, called ?Colloque Singulier’, which kind of means ?Private Conversation’. If the monarch can’t have such talks with the politicians without having them published virtually the next day, he is unable to say anything to anyone anymore, because he has to maintain said neutrality at least in public. Mark Eyskens (CD&V, retired), having been PM himself, as was his father, said in an interview these leaks were deliberate attempts to discredit the monarchy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s right, but on the other hand, I am a republican, thus have no love for it anyway.

I do, however, feel that this leaking has gone several bridges too far. If you agree to maintain silence about something, you should. Not one politician in this whole ordeal has adhered to any agreement made about the confidentiality of the negotiation talks, be it amongst themselves or with the monarch. Now, I know leaks are part and parcel of the political game, but what has transpired here of the past nine months is so out of line that it definitely hindered the government formation and we’re now having a ridiculous farce that’s called an interim government, led by the Guy who should have been the former PM by now and although the Easter date is being held up as the installment date of the ?real’ new government, the recent events clearly show that the path towards it is rocky, narrow and full of holes. Not surprisingly, Yves Leterme is being made scape (the man should stop breeding the beasties, it’s way too easy to make jokes about this :P) of the whole series in De Standaard. So much, even, that editor in chief Peter Vandermeersch had to come to his defense and state that all key players contributed to the series, so it wasn’t just Leterme who gave insight into his Blackberry records and his private talks with King Albert II.

In short, you wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t see it. Politicians, virtually rolling across the floor fighting amongst each other, in order to get the upper hand like children in a playground. And meanwhile, the country just rolls on as if it doesn’t need a government anyway. Day to day lives aren’t being affected by all this, which to some observers begs the question whether we still need a government at all. I say we do, if only to counter the outgrowths of globalized economies and a perfidious capitalist system (and no, I’m not a commie bastard; I just call it like I see it). But this is a display so shameful, I’m starting to long for the Stalinist manner of government and corrupt administration days of the 70’s and 80’s…

By the way, Yves Leterme this week said he’d find it ?uncouth’ if he wouldn’t be PM of the Easter Government. Yah, sure, Eve; whatever you say…

Dr. ARF

Largest Parties Keep Bleeding Support, Zares Loses A Third

We’ve had two new polls come in yesterday, both dealing in variety of issues – but obvioulsy support the main political parties are getting is of main interest. A poll by the Public Opinion and Mass Communication Research Centre (CJM) shows basically the same relations between Pahor’s Social Democrats (SD) and Janša’s Slovene Democratic Party (SDS) we’ve seen in Delo poll 12 days ago.

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Also in accordance with Delo’s poll is the undecided column, which grew substantially. A couple of eddies are notable, though. Firstly, the relatively big drop for Zares, which seems to correspond to an increase in support for LDS – the change in both cases in exactly 3 percent. Now, this can be attributed to a different polling sample, but as CJM’s samples are notoriously accurate (most of the time, anyway), this could very well be the definite proof that these two parties are addressing basically the same voters – although Delo’s poll shows that Zares might aslo be entering SD’s turf as well. In any case, I think Zares are not particularly happy with this poll, whereas LDS shouldn’t break out the extra spam rations, as this result has yet to turn into an upward trend.

Lower on the chart, a rise in support for the nationalists (SNS), pensioners’ party (DeSUS) and predominantly catholic NSi is notable. All three parties have a difficult-to-detect base, so in reality SNS’s 6 percent means huge gains in the parliament, while DeSUS’s 3 percent also translate into comfortably making it across the 4% treshold for entering the parliament. The same goes for NSi, which cannot be exactly happy with 2 percent, but as I already noted, they might have gone below radar to regroup. According to this CJM poll, it is only Slovene People’s Party (SLS) which has to ring the alarm bells, but we’ll see what (if any) effect the Operation Clean Shovel will have on the polls. Namely CJM was polling from February 11 until February 13, missing the full blow of the operation by a day-and-a-half.

In the other corner, wearing blue shorts, is a poll by Parcifal Group (commissioned by the government, might I add), which shows a somewhat different picture. Most notably, according to this poll – a similar sample, but polled from 11 Feb until 14 Feb – the ruling SDS of Janez Janša holds a .9 percent lead over Borut Pahor‘s opposition Social Democrats, a result which is definitely going against the flow. Also, this poll shows the least support for SLS, as well as the higehst percentage of undecided voters, which strongly suggest a significantly different pattern. But although this poll was commisioned by the government, it doesn’t neceserily mean that it is wrong or rigged. It’s just – different :mrgreen:

BTW: Neither polls shows data for Sašo Peče’s Lipa – probably because the renegades of SNS have yet to formally establish a political party.

Pengovsky’s projection: Despite the different percentages, two things become obvious – that the number of undecided voters is again on the rise, which probably means that the effect of presiedntial elections is slowly wearing off, which might spell better times for Janša’s government (it recorded a mere 33% of support according to CJM poll). SD and SDS will probably continue running neck and neck, with SD slowly bleeding suporrt for the next couple of months. Who takes the top stop thus depends on whether SDS can bleed its support at a slowe pace than SD. For now that seems to be the case. Also, keep an eye on Zares. Losing a third of support is not a trivial thing, which means that voters might see this party as a sort of a refuge for disenchanted left-wing voters. Generally speaking, things are still interesting on the left side of the political spectrum, with all parties in the poll looking to make it across the 4% parliamentarian treshold.

Operation Clean Shovel

A series of high profile arrests rattled Slovenia yesterday. In what appears to be the an almost year-long investigation, the anti-crime unit and a specialized team of prosecutors gathered enough evidence to detain Ivan Zidar, Dušan Črnigoj and Hilda Tovšak, CEOs of construction companies SCT, Primorje and Vegrad respectively.


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Ivan Zidar (SCT), Dušan Črnigoj (Primorje) and Hilda Tovšak (Vegrad)


To cover the intricacies of the Slovenian construction sector would require a whole series of posts, but suffice it to say that the past 15 years have been good for business in the sector. As the good doctor would have us know, real-estate prices in Slovenia have reached utterly pocket-crippling prices, but the demand outpaces supply by far, enabling contruction companies to practically sell whole blocks of appartments before even construction begins.

But this is just end-user market. The real money is in the infrastructure, namely in the Slovenian highway system, which was at the time it was commenced a) 30 years behind schedule and b) naivelly under-priced. This had two immediate effects: Slovenian construction companies, suffering the loss of the Yugoslav market and finding it increasingly hard to do business internationally (it is said that SCT built bunkers for Saddam Hussein in Iraq), were suddenly looking at a very bright future at home but at the same time the project kept getting more and more expensive until it became clear that someone wasn’t looking at the right column when adding up the total costs of Slovene highways.

There was more than enough work for entire Slovenian construction sector (and an occasional foreign contractor as well), but the most contracts by far went to Ivan Zidar’s SCT – some commentators estimate that his company earned €3,5 billion just by building highways.


Now, anyone who ever build a house (or even just redid the bathroom) knows that in the end it is always more expensive than initially thought, because “we had to change them pipes that were leaking all over the place” and that once you go with the project you don’t really change the contractor, because finding a new one again costs time and money while you can’t use the loo. And so Slovene construction companies followed the culture of underpricing and then, when a particular section of the highway was half-built, went “Errr… you know, about the price….”. And the government coughed up another tonne of money, because a) it didn’t want to come off as naive, b) this way it kept employment and GDP up and c) the deal was probably political anyway.

And this is the gist of it: it is more or less a matter of public record that companies, supposedly competing for winning contracts, formed a sort of a trust, fixing their bids and pre-aranging who would win which contract, hiring the remaining companied as subcontractors afterwards. Just that noone was able to prove it, because…. well… the government didn’t really feel like it, mostly due to the a,b,c cited above, plus the fact that some wealth was probably spread the government way as well (I won’t use the word bribe, but feel free to think it). But even if there was no direct bribery involved, the fact remains that people from construction companies would often find themselves in government or para-government posts (such as board of the Slovene Highway Company – DARS) or vice-versa. Nearly everybody is connected to nearly everybody else and in this game nobody tops Ivan Zidar, who is probably the single most-connected person in this coutnry. His connections span from old communist aparatchiks to the highest levels of the Catholic Church (SCT being its main contractor as well).

Yesterday’s arrests strike at the very heart of Slovene economy, especially since last year’s high GDP growth was riding solely on a government-funded construction boom. But rattling the economy cage, arrests are also political. If one had to name a party which had overwhelming influnece (especially in the highway business), it would be Slovene People’s Party (SLS), whose economic influence far exceeds its political might. Indeed, Finance minister Andrej Bajuk (NSi) allegedly ran a pet project of breaking this party’s grip on the construction sector, although both parties belong to the political right. Or maybe that was precisely the reason.


The stakes are high for PM Janez Janša. Although he (as he should) claims that he had no prior knowledge of the operation, noone really believes him. This is just to big for him not to be in the know. Moreover, he publicly declared a war against “tycoons” (i.e.: so called winners of transition) who ammased relatively huge ammounts of wealth in the past 15-20 years. So the police and the prosecutors better have an air-tight and waterproof case which they will close fast. Because if they don’t – and if the whole thing turns out to be just a political and PR stunt – the wrath the detained trio will bring down on the PM will be tantamount to Samuel L. Jackson’s “great vengence and furious anger“.

And remember – the burden of proof lies with the government. This is not a traffic violation we are talking about here. Being convinced that the three are guilty of corruption and bribery and proving it beyond a shadow of the doubt are two very different things. If the government wants to avoid allegations of setting up a pre-election show-trial aimed at boosting its dwindling popularity, the prosecution needs to produce a smoking gun. And it doesn’t really matter they do it on a deal of building a new control tower at Ljubljana International, worth just € 30 million. Elliot Ness got Al Capone for tax evasion.


P.S.: If your comment doesn’t show up immediately, please be patient. Akismet is acting up…

Distance Slovene

Internet is a trully wonderful invention. Besides being a great way to get on the net (courtesy Bob Dole), a refuge for various radical leftists, revolutionaries, perverst, commie-pinkos, corrupted remnansts of a nepotist mentality, general no-goodniks and the rest of us scum who should be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly, internet can provide some awesome tools for things that do not have a large market potential. Like Slovene language.

But thankfully, some people acutally do use internet to get on the net and do not chase leftists ideals or just chase leftists. One of those people who actually spend their time on-line constructively is Michael N., who stumbled upon Distance Slovene, a website dedicated to distance learning of Slovene language.

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The site is a collaborative effort between The Centre for Slovene as a Second/Foreign Language, Ministry of Education and Sports, Ministry of Higher Education and Technology and Laboratory for Telecommunications at Faculty of Electronics, and it rocks. All you need is to enable popups, register and start rolling.

So – go learn! Kaj še čakate!? :mrgreen:


P.S.: There are reports that the site has problems with Firefox. It worked fine in my FF, but I did have to manually enable pop-ups.

Niko ne sme da vas bije*

According to the latest reports, Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia on February 17th, and as we know from a leaked document, the United States, which strongly favour an independent Kosovo have been pressuring (or strongly indicating their desire, whichever you preffer) Slovenia to be among the first countries to recognize an independent Kosovo. This has sparked a heated debate in Slovenia, which has as of late concentrated mostly on who is to blame on the leak rather than should Slovenia actually recognize Kosovo, slthough the latter is a much more important question.


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While some prominent politicians (incluing Former President Milan Kučan) and some highly-respectable bloggers think otherwise, I’m covinced there are scores of reasons for immediate recognition of Kosovo. As odd as it may seem, Slovenia and Kosovo share a common link in recent history (apart for the fact that they’ve both been a part of Yugoslavia). Personally, I think that for a plethora of reasons it is Slovenia’s – shall we be dramatic – duty to recognise an independent Kosovo as soon as the province declares independence.

As all nations, Kosovars too have a right to self-determination and their drive for an independent Kosovo is far from recent. Still as a part of Yugoslavia, Kosovo demaded an “upgrade” from a status od an autonomous region withih Serbia to a full-fledged republic. This did not happen, although the cry “Kosovo Republjik!” was getting louder and louder. And while the Yugoslav constitution of 1974 did not recognize Kosovo as a state within Yugoslavia (the six republics were treated as sovereing states, a fact that helped Slovenia greatly in getting legal ground for independence in 1991), it gave the region all the attributes of a republic.

It had its own administration, judiciary, assembly, police, League of Communists, eductational system, media – and perhaps most importnatly: it has equal representation in all federal organs as the republics – including the eight-member Presidency, comprised of representatives of the six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia) and two autonomous regions (Vojvodina and Kosovo). The 1974 Yugoslav constitution gave republics and regions as much independence as they could get without actually breaking up Yugoslavia – and it definitely gave Kosovars about as much independence as they could get for the next 34 years.

As Yugoslavia began experiencing a deadly mix of severe economic troubles, a grid-locked political system, a power-hungry Yugoslav National Army which was about to perform a coup d’etat and a drive by Serbia’s leadership (predominantly Slobodan Milošević) to solve problems by redrawing borders in favour of Serbia, the country that was once a powerful player began to disintegrate into sun dust.

A part of disintegration were also constitutional changes of 1988 which almost completely reversed the constitution of 1974 and – althtough illegal – stripped Kosovo of its autonomy, transfering all decisions about the future of the region from Priština back to Belgrade. And this is where paths of Slovenia and Kosovo intersect for a brief moment in history.

In Kosovo, the stripping of autonomy and subsequent replacing of region’s Kosovar leadership prompted miners in the mining town of Stari Trg to declare a hunger-strike until the autonomy is restored. The strike ended without meeting miner’s demands (naturally), but not before a meeting was held in Slovenia by both the emerging opposition and the ruling communist party supporting the miners, which sent shockwaves throught Belgrade, because Slovenia and Kosovo were suddenly on the same wavelenght – a seemingly impossible event until then.

But the fate of Kosovo was sealed much before that. In 1987 as the region grew restless and Serbs, being a minority in the region, but an overwhelming majority in Greater Serbia (Serbia plus both regions) often clashed with Kosovars – mostly with words, but sometimes with fists. And on one such occasion, Slobodan Milošević, then still Serbia’s second-in-command was witness to such a fight as Serbs in Kosovo gathered en masse and the predominantly-Kosovar police, fearing a riot, started using batons. Milošević ran out to see what was going on and he used a phrase which transformed him from a colourless aparatchik to a nationalist leader.

“Niko ne sme da vas bije!” (noone is allowed to beat you), he said to the demonstrating Serbs, who were already throwing rocks as the police and the mob (correctly, as it turned out) understood that as a green light for a rampage. A rampage that went on until 1999 – the year that Milošević lost his fourth war in Yugoslavia, this time beaten by NATO forces. The phrase became the gist of Milošević’s political creed – that Serbs are somehow superior to all other Yugoslav nations and have the right to live in Great Serbia – a country which spans to wherever in Yugoslavia Serbs live.

Thus Milošević started the breakup of Yugoslavia in Kosovo and it is only right and fitting that the process come full circle and ends where it started twenty-one years ago. Slovenia declared independence only four years after that fateful phrase and the memory of every political power in the world (including the EU and the US) trying to block our way to independece one way or another is still very much alive.

Not so much out of solidarity or heeding to a US dictate, but out of the fact that Kosovo has similiar legal grounds for independence and that Serbia lost it by waging war against its people (just as it did in Slovenia), I think that Slovenia must recognize Kosovo as soon as it declares independence. I think it is only fair that Slovena uses the same arguments when deciding on this as it did when arguing its own case for independence seventeen years ago.

I recognize the fact that times change and that today Slovenia has a growing economic interest in Serbia and that the US is probably favouring independent Kosovo out of economic reasons (and that Russia is probably opposing it for precisely the same reasons) and that an independent Kosovo could be viewed by other independence movements across the world as a model for their cause, but it would be extremely unhealthy if the process of Yugoslav breakup is not completely finished. And that includes the fact that two of the most wanted war criminals, Radovan Karadžić and general Ratko Mladić, both responsible for Serbian atroccities in Bosnian war are still at large.

The EU (including Slovenian government) is in danger of short-circuting the process by giving Serbia a partnership agreement before the two are brought before the Hague tribunal. Should this happen, the Serbs will skate clean yet again, which will both undermine the seriousness of the Hague tribunal and the belief in human rights which the EU supposedly holds so dear. This would also send a disatrous message to other candidate states, especially Croatia and Turkey, possibly stopping the expansion completely and preventing the EU from becoming a global player also in geopolitical terms.

In short: Slovenia should recognize Kosovo as soon as the region declares independece and refrain from signign any treaty until Karadžić and Mladić are in the Hague – or at least until proof given that they will find themselves there in an extremely short period of time. This is vital both for completion of the conclusion of the Yugoslav breakup and the continuation of EU expansion.

*special mention (Serbian only): http://arhiva.mojblog.co.yu/p-niko-ne-sme-da-vas-bije/16777.html