Month: July 2008

Low Ratings? Arrest Someone!

Ivan Zidar of “Operation Clean Shovel” and Boštjan Penko, (now former) state prosecutor have been detained on Sunday in another episode of high-profile arrests which echoed throughout Slovenia. Zidar, who is still under investigation as a result of Operation Clean Shovel is about to face charges for tax evasion, and is apparently looking to build a team of stellar defence lawyers. To this end he approached Penko, who was just about to leave the Attorey General’s Office. Both Penko and Zidar were arrested after their meeting on Sunday and detained on charges of corruption and abuse of powers (Penko) and luring into criminal activity (Zidar). And then a funny thing happened. A judge refused to issue a search warrant for both men’s houses and cars and the two were subsequently released without charges and even without being questioned. So while on Sunday everone went Again?, on Monday most people went Waddafuck?. So let’s start putting two and two together:

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Ivan Zidar (left) and Boštjan Penko (right)

–Ivan Zidar is in rather deep shit, as the case against him on tax evasion charges is rumoured to be pretty solid. So he needs a Slovenian version of Johnny Cochrane. Even more – he needs a couple of them, because there’s no jury in Slovenian legal system and the “if-it-don’t-fit-you-must-acquit” approach is not likely to work.

–Boštjan Penko was (still is) on the outs with Attorney General Barbara Brezigar. She relieved him as a member of a special task-force fighting white-collar crime, since he failed to bring charges against suspects in a buy-and-lease-back scheme which relieved quite a few Slovenians of a lot of money. Penko says there just wasn’t enough evidence to build a case, as the scheme was legal altough murky. He was also a fervent opponent of politics meddling with the work of prosecution. Prior to becoming prosecutor he was also a judge specialising in white-collar-crime cases, author of Slovenia’s first Code of Ethics in Civil Service and the first head od Anti-Corruption Commission.

–Barbara Brezigar, one of this country’s top lawyers is aslo considered one of PM Janša’s most faithful people. She ran for President of the republic in 2002 with support of Janša and his party and narrowly lost to late Janez Drnovšek. She also quashed investigations of arms dealings between 1991 and 1993, where then defence minister Janez Janša and his people repudetly made incredible sums of money selling arms to Bosnia.

-Prime Minister Janez Janša again had a couple of bad PR episodes. The fiasco with the referendum on regions, the thing with copying Blair’s victory speech made him the laughing stock of the nation, overshadowing the end of the EU presidency, which (also due to the result of the Irish referendum) ended with a puf rather than a bang.

And so we can already observe a pattern here: Whenever Janša feels he is losing ground he responds by creating an atmosphere of emergency

When Danilo Türk was elected President by a landslide, Janša started talking about resignation and called for a vote of confidence, where he presented himself as a victim of the bad, bad pressa and the evil, evil opposition, effectively stopping the political momentum of the opposition which supported the Prez.

When his and government’s ratings plummeted further, he announced a “war against tycoons” which culminated early in 2008 with Operation Clean Showel. Three CEOs were arrested, but all they could come up with were charges of tax evasion against Ivan Zidar

And now, when Janša can’t sell the referendum result as a success, when he was caught red-handed in Tony Blair’s speech-jar, when inflation is up to a staggering 7 percent and when he finally “handed the EU over to the French” he can make a comeback in style. And what better way to do it then to send in a SWAT team to pick up a loathed state procecutor who always refused to play ball.

Yes, they sent in special forces to arrest a 75-year old CEO and a state prosecutor. Let’s make one thing clear. Penko, although leaving the office was formally still a prosecutor (his term ended yesterday) and meeting Zidar was poor judgement at best. It transpired that Zidar gave him copies of his case for Penko to study and possibly join Zidar’s defence team. At first the whole thing looks a bit like Boris Popovič’s case in Koper, but Penko was on leave and annoucned his resignation some time earlier and therefore made his intention clear.

Given the fact that no charges were filed and that a search warrant was denied – which means that the case against the two is extremely weak – one cannot shake the feeling that arrests served at least two purposes: shifting the focus from prime minister’s blunders and giving Barbara Brezigar for revenge agains Penko for all the trouble he caused her.

It is quite possible that what we are witnessing in Slovenia is abuse of repressive organs to personal and political ends. Some people are convinced that more arrests will happen as elections near.

More Arrests As Janša Looks For A Comeback in Polls And Ends EU Presidency

A lot has happened in the past week and there was no time to analyse four (yes, four) polls published in the last ten days. It is worth noting that two of them (Politbarometer, Ninamedia) were conducted prior to referendum on regions. Politbarometer poll showed a steep increase in ratings for Social Democrats, but Ninamedia poll, published only days later showed Janša’s SDS and Pahor’s SD neck-and-neck.

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On the other hand, a poll by RTV Slovenia (which changed its pollster recently, BTW) was published after the results of the referendum were published and – suprisingly enough – the results more or less follow the general pattern of the other polls, at least as far as the leading two parties are concerned (Politbarometer poll being a recent exception to the rule). Furthermore, a Delo poll published yesterday confirms SD and SDS being neck-and-neck.

A detailed look reveales a lot of things. Take Politbarometer and Ninamedia polls: both were published only days appart (June 20th and 22nd respectively) but they show strikingly different results. Time again we see that it is indeed very important how you pick your sample and how do you formulate the question. Asking “which party do you feel closer to” is not the same as asking “which party would you vote for were elections held next Sunday”. Take Zmago Jelinčič’s Slovene National Party (SNS) for example: Politbarometer detects a staggering 7% support for SNS (equaling its best result since pengovsky is following polls on this blog), while Ninamedia detects only 3,7% for that same party only days later. My guess would be that Politbarometer asked questions along the lines of “who are you going to vote for”, wheread Ninamedia went for “who do you feel closer to politically” or something like that. Admittedly this is just an educated guess, but at grass-roots levels you will often hear sentences “I don’t like what Jelinčič stands for, but am going to vote for him nevertheless, as he is the only one who can talk straight”.

On the other hand, results of RTVSLO and Delo polls, suggest that referendum on regions had little or no positive effect for the government of Janez Janša. Quite the opposite in fact. Delo detects a huge boost in ratings for Zares, while RTVSLO recorded the government getting only 28 % approval rating (I’m not following ratings of the government as such – only parties – but just to give you an idea). On a larger level of things this becomes paintfully obvious if we look at combined ratings of the three left- and right-wing parties (red and yellow lines respectively):

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As Slovenia ends its six-month EU presidency, prime minister Janez Janša will devote all his attention to his re-election on Septeber 21st. Referendum on regions failed to deliver, but maybe a couple of more arrests will. More on this tommorow, but as not to leave you in the dark: Ivan Zidar of “Operation Clean Shovel” was rearrested yesterday, along with (now former) state-prosecutor Boštjan Penko. The latter was on the outs with current Attorney General Barbara Brezigar (who once unsucessfully ran for President on an SDS ballot, among other things) and has resigned from his office a month ago, but effective today, while Zidar is under scrutiny for months now. Both Penko and Zidar were released withouth charges, although they will probably be filed against Penko for giving private legal advice to Zidar while still in office. It was spectatular, though. More on this tommorow, as more details become known.

Pengovsky’s projection: You can see that the three left wing parties enjoy a sold 10+ percent lead over their rightwing counterparts. This means that PM Janša has his work cut out for him. Until now he has managed to basically canibalise his “natural coalition partners”, the NSi and the SLS. But as there are only so many percentage points he can skin off of them, he has to start closing the gap on the emerging left-wing coalition. And he seems to be on his own doing that, as NSi and SLS have no votes to help him with (a Catch 22!). So we will see Janša using the big guns more and more often as he is increasingly running out of time. But he is far from being defeated. Quite the opposite, in fact. As he will now be able focus solely on Slovenian politics, you can be sure that the pace will pick up here. Political bloodshed will begin shortly.

Elections 2008 Badge: Based on the total results of the decided vote of the last poll (Delo), left wing parties get 52 percent of the decided vote, while current coalition plus the nationalist party get 46 percent of the vote. Lipa gets 2 % and is noted separately, because I’m still at a loss as to in which column to count it exactly.