Some People Just Don’t Know When To Quit

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…