Month: October 2008

Contrary to expectations, The Prez did not nominate a candidate for PM yesterday. He is widely expected to nominate Borut Pahor as leaders of all parilamentary groups (save Janez Janša‘s SDS) stated that they will vote in favour of Pahor’s premiership. But President Danilo Türk said yesterday that he needs a tete-a-tete with Pavle Gantar the newly minted President of the Parliament, hoping that the parliamentary committees will have comenced work when he nominates his man. Türk said that he expects to make that move early next week.

Waddayouknow! It’s The Prez 🙂

Why the delay? Türk said that he would like to coordinate with Gantar to have parliamentary committees and bodies up-and-running by the time the MPs vote on Türk’s nominee.

Which is a load of bollocks.

Contrary to his subsequent cabinet nominees, the PM nominee is not vetted by parliamentary bodies. Instead, he or she outlines his or her policies, if they choose so, parliamentary groups explain whether they support the nominee, after which a secret ballot is held, where the nominee must win an absolute majority of 46 votes. Period.

So, why is The Prez snowing us with his need to confabulate with his stand-in? Probably because he is covering Borut Pahor’s ass for a day or two, buying him time to re-negotiate a specific paragraph of the coalition agreement. Namely – it transpired yesterday late in the afternoon, that DeSUS and the rest of The Quartet read the segment on pension reform differently (suprise, surprise!). So, they’ll be ironing out the details over the extended weekend as tommorow is a public holiday in Slovenia, while simultaneously go about deciding who gets which portfolio.

Rumours are plentifuly and speculation is rife in that departement. The question on everyone’s mind is which portfolios will leaders of The Quartet take for themselves. While Pahor is obviously going to be the PM and cannot take on a specific portfolio (unlike in the UK), Gregor Golobič, Karl Erjavec and Katarina Kresal remain a mystery. The latter is apparently eyeing the job of foreign minister (an out-and-out bad idea), Erjavec is playing the table hard and wants to be either foreign or interior minister, while some add civil service and judicial porfolios to his range of choices, whereas Gregor Golobič has consistently kept his mouth shut over his ministerial ambitions. The latest unconfirmed rumours put him in charge of ministry for higher education, science and technology. Which I think is a good idea and is hopefully true.

The Trio is now officially The Quartet. Social Democrats, Zares, LDS and DeSUS, members of the future ruling coalition have apparently reached a deal on the coalition agreement. While the actual text of the agreement is not yet public, it is known that the agreement will detail government policies in a wide range of fields, from media to workers’ participation in profit sharing and pensions.

The Quartet (photo: Matej Povše/Dnevnik)

Especially the latter were a bit of a hold up, as DeSUS – the pensioners’ party demanded an across-the-table increase in pensions, but later agreed on an inverse increase, where people with pensions lower than € 500 per month will receive two € 150 bonuses in 2009, while those with larger pensions will receive proportionally lower bonuses (the bigger the pension the smaller the bonus). At this stage it is not exactly known what consession have been granted to Zares and LDS, but off the top of my head I’d say Zares stuck to its guns especially in the field of media legislation, while LDS remains a mystery. It is clear that – as a the smallest party in the new coalition – it had very little leverage and I wouldn’t be surprised if it kept its chips off the table for the next round of coalition negotiations.

As a sidenote: having a particular interest in the area, I’d like to reiterate the “four-point-test“, later ammended to a “three-point-test” which would in my opinion show whether the new government is serious about media freedom:

a) Change the law on RTV Slovenia, radically lowering the number of politically appointed members of both boards (to a max of, say, 25%).
b) The Law on media should be ammended, re-introducing the clause forbidding media contentration.
c) Forbid operators of future digital radio and television networks from becoming content providers as well.

Be that as it may, The Quarter now moves into dangerous territory: deciding who exactly will get a particular portfolio. It seems that Karl Erjavec of DeSUS succeeded with his demand of getting a ministry more than LDS, while it is also almost a given that there are some portfolios the PM-apparent Borut Pahor has already earmarked for his party and already has a specific person in mind to run it.

There are fifteen ministries up for grabs and up to two ministries without portfolio. Each ministry has a state secretary (something like an underminister), wheras the PM can name four additional state secretaries to serve directly under him. There are also fourteen Government Offices, some more political than other (ranging from Office for European Affairs to Slovene Intelligence Agency). Some of these GOs can be elevated to the level of a ministry without porftoilo.

And although they’re supposed to be left to mind their own business, one can be pretty sure that horse trading in names will also include parliamentary committees, as a party, which will have felt disenfranchised by its influence in the government will probably be compensated by a larger influence in the parliament.

In any case, things can still get ugly, as it is inevitable that egoes are about to clash. PM-apparent Borut Pahor already passed one test by cajoling Karl Erjavec back to the negotiating table. Now he faces an even bigger test, when he has to actually divide the influence and rule the government.

Today The Prez will hold consultations with leaders of all parliamentary groups, after which he will formally nominate his candidate for Prime Minister. He is expected to nominate Borut Pahor later today in or tommorow morning at the latest.

If, however, you’re feeling lucky, you can go over to Dr. Filomena’s and try to guess the exact composition of Pahor’s government. How many ministers will the next government have? Who will get which portfolio? How many of them will each party have? Place a bet with dr. Fil and win a prize!

BTW: Sleeping with Pengovsky went online exactly two years ago.

As the Queen leaves Slovenia (in case you missed it, I did post a video of her visit to Prešeren square), coalition builiding takes the stage front and centre once again.

The two amigos (source)

In case you forgot all about it, you can bring yourself up to speed here, here and here (and if you call now, here as well. If lines are busy, call later, but do call).

According to various reports the text of coalition agreement is more or less agreed upon. Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats and Zares hit it off quite well and have settled their policy differences some days ago. And while the three parties have – publicly at least – postponed the question of who exactly will get which portfolio, Karl Erjavec of DeSUS stirred the pot quite a bit when he flat out demanded the position of defence minister (which he holds in in the outgoing government of Janez Janša as well).

However, in an unexpected show of cojones Borut Pahor categorically rejected his demand, bringing their meeting to an end after mere five minutes. Apparently, it went something like this

Pahor: “Welcome, Karl! Look, you can pick any portfoilo save defence.”
Erjavec: “No. I want to continue as minister of defence!”
Pahor: “No go.”
Erjavec: “OK, bye!”

How’s that for brevity of coalition negotaions, huh? 😀

After Bojan Šrot‘s SLS opted out of any potential coalition deals with The Trio, Erjavec (correctly) calculated that he is the only really viable option for Pahor to form a working coalition. However, he terribly overestimated his bargaining position. Keeping Erjavec as defence minister would heavily damage Pahor’s crediblity, as much of left bloc’s campaing was built on the Patria Affair and calls for Erjavec to step down as minister of defence. Furthermore, rumours have it that Pahor engaged in some underground diplomacy and found out that SLS could be persuaded to start negotiating were Janez Podobnik to keep his job as minister of enviroment.

If correct, this information was the carbon in Pahor’s balls of steel when he nixed Karl Erjavec. But it was still a big gamble. SLS could go either way, leaving Pahor out in the cold with his pants down. But the bulj of the work was done by DeSUS’s MPs, who went apeshit when Erjavec walked out of the meeting with Pahor. Since they are the seven votes Erjavec is bargaining with, they raised their voice and after a weekend of arm twisting Erjavec caved in. Officially, he was applauded for taking a tough line against Pahor, raising the ante, but there was a lot of barely veiled criticsm by MPs – of which only two are actually party members. Which was something Erjavec has to consider when he tries to impose party discipline.

In any case, if all the junior coalition parties (Zares, DeSUS and LDS) confim the text of the coalition agreement, then the policies of the new government are set. And Pahor is off to do some heavy-duty human resource managing…

They say one chooses one’s friends and one’s enemies. But family – that’s in the stars. Most of us lead fairly normal lives. We go to work, go out, have a drink, get laid – that sort of thing – without getting interrupted. Even if people hold public office, they vacate it sooner or later and can go about their usual lives.

Queen Elizabeth II while inspecting the guard of honour (photo: Boštjan Tacol/Žurnal24)

But if you happen to be born into royality, you’re fucked. Yes the fancy dresses. Yes the royal weddings. Yes the lineages that go all the way back to King Alfred or Charlemagne. But having to rule the country every day since the day you ascend the throne until the day you either croak or abdicate, kind of sucks. And it’s not as if you really have a choice. I mean, you could take a pass, but it is not really what you were brought up for, is it? And so you are – through no fault of your own other than being borin into a specific family – expected to be on top of things daily (Sundays included), receive dignitaries, tour the country, attend receptions and ceremonies, represent the monarchy and be stately basically 24/7. And you have to do it for the rest of your life

If you, however, happen to be a notch or two down the line of ascendacy – or are only married to member of a royal family – then you’re screwed for life. What do you do when you’re second (or twenty-second) in line for the throne? You still can’t take a leak without protocol, but you’ll never amout to anything much and at the end of it there will be precious little you’ll be able to show for yourself. At least compared to the head of the family.

So despite my republican persuasion I have the utmost respect for members of royal families. Especialy the Winsdors. I wouldn’t trade places with them for all the farms in Cuba and I think Queen Elizabeth rocks. Think about it. She has had her weekly conferences with eleven Prime Ministers. From Winston Churchill to Gordon Brown. She ruled the UK since John and Paul were still The Quarrymen, she resisted the charms of Mick The Lick and survived the onslaught of Sid Vicious. And I’m sure that – were they sill on this Earth – John Lennon and Sic Vicious would have joined Sir Mick and Sir Paul in the ranks of nobility. And apparently Margharet Thatcher once remarked that the Queen is the sort of person who would probably vote for social democrats.

The Queen is a cool leader indeed.

P.S.: Hopefully I’ll be able to post a video later in the day.
Finally! Here is the video of the Queen touring Ljubljana Prešeren square, acompanied by President Türk and Mayor Janković

Queen Elizabeth Tours Ljubljana from pengovsky on Vimeo.

I know it’s a bit late, but – better late than never! 🙂

As Slovenia is getting ready to welcome Queen Elisabeth II, some people in the outgoing government are apparently taking the election result really hard.

Rupel’s public letter to The Prez (source)

First, there is the little issue of Ljubljana Central Market, which Ljubljana mayor Janković wants renovated (adding an additional brige and an underground parking garage). The trick is that this one of several areas of the city declared as a historical and cultural heritage and is as such under special protection of either the municipality or the state. Janković’s plans caused an uproar with numerous Ljubljanchans, who have formed a citizen’s initiative, staged rallies and organised round tables. In any case, they’ve been up against Janković for the better part of his term so far, voicing their opinion loud and clear and yet the outgoing Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti has found it necesary to issue an order protecting the Central Market, efectively stopping plans to renovate three weeks after his party lost the elections. I mean, tehcnically his ruling has legal merit, but the in this and similar cases the minsiter has the right of discretion and could have ordered the protection any time in the last year-and-a-half. But no. He had to do it now. Just to be a nuissance.

Second, the outgoing Prime-Minister Janez Janša has gotten law-suit-happy. Not only has he filed a suit agaist Magnus Berglund, a reporter with Finnish YLE and author of a programme claiming Janša took a € 20 milion bribe in the Patria affair, against CEO of Sistemska Tehnika Milan Švajger and fomer advisor to the President Bojan Potočnik. This select trio of defendants is now joined by Drago Kos, head of the Anti-Corruption Office of Slovenia who also appeared on the programme, but did not make any direct charges against Janša, although – truth be said – he did make a couple of indirect ones. It looks as if Janša in watching the programme over and over again, constantly finding more and more proof that it was a conspiracy. There is a word for that.

Third, The No-Longer-Eternal Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel apparently really really wants that ambassador’s job in Vienna. And he takes it personally as well. Had he not, he would have probably found the taste and demenaor not to write a public letter to President Danilo Türk (Slovene only), urging him to expedite the process of nominations of new ambassadors, because “the current situation could damage Slovenia’s reputation in the international community” and (earlier in the letter) that “the current global economic situation, recent export of scandalous manupulations to Finland and their subsequent import back to Slovenia, use of international connections to discredit political opponents in Slovenia, all of this suggests a need for a concerted and organised diplomatic presence of Slovene diplomacy in the international arena“… And so on ad nauseam. And although Rupel denies that this letter is about his tenure in Vienna, it is obvious that is precisely about that. He seemingly finds it hard that someone would question his wishes and ambitions, even though it was he as a minister who nominated himself as an ambassador to Austria. There is a word to describe that as well.

BTW: The Prez refused to comment on Rupel’s letter, calling it inappropriate and indecent. There you go.

P.S.: Sorry for late posting. You know… Things to see and people to do…