As I wrote yesterday, one of the highpoints of the Florida trip was an interview with the man, who introduces us to the Most famous Mexican of all, the one an only, Richard Cheese. On-stage, in front of an audience in Orlando, Fla., and exclusive to The Firm™ And it ended with pengovsky’s sign-off song 😀
Month: June 2009
Trading Chuck Norris Jokes in Orlando
George Victory jammin’ at the Island Dogs Bar in Key West (photo by dr. fil)
As some of you know, pengovsky was in Florida during the post-blackout. To put a long story short – it was fun. Even neglecting the fact that pengovsky was in the Land of Plenty for the first time, there was no shortage of adventure. For starters, I was amazed by how quickly one forgets that there are borders between nations. Even crossing Slovenian-Croatian border is a mere formality in this day and age, despite multitude of problems between the countries. And then one finds oneself suddenly waiting in line with the rest of the world to be fingerprinted, webcammed, quizzed and stamped. Not that I’m complaining, it wasn’t bad at all. Just different.
Then there’s weather. A field of full-fledged storm clouds is something entirely different if it develops over the Everglades as opposed to developing over Poljanska dolina. Especially if you’re in a beat-up 757, running circles around cumulonimbi in a holding pattern as you wait for permission to land on Miami International which was closed for better part of the afternoon due to severe weather. But once you land safely, you don’t really mind waiting on wet tarmac for two and a half hours to disembark. You’re just happy to be on the ground. Granted, pengovsky does not have plenty of flyer miles, but people at American Airlines come across as competent. And so you’re in Mighty Miami, the city of Don Johnson and Gloria Estefan, where aligators and manatees are as likely to hump your boat as you are likely to see fake tits on the famous Miami Beach. Very. Indeed, Miami Beach was apparently dubbed Florida’s silicon valley. And for a reason, I tell you. There, even exhibition dolls have enormous tits and if you took all that silicon and turned it into chips, Google would promptly move its headquarters to Art Deco quarter. But as things stand, you can stare at this tsunami of tittage all day long. Some of those hooters even have their own gravity field. But it’s okay. Really. Miami Beach is about seeing and being seen.
Moving on to Key West, which is more about getting wasted than beeing seen. In the entire Florida, Key West is about the only place where pengovsky would move to. The peculiar brand of humour people of Conch Republic sport is very much up pengovsky’s alley and although I realize that there is a Key west for the tourists and the real Key West, it still seems like a fun place to be. If nothing else, you can pick up waiting tables, join Olga and Katrin at the Island Dogs Bar and listen so some awesome guitar by George Victory (the dog be jammin’ every Saturday). And their tuna sashimi borders on dangerously excellent.
Oh, yes. Food. It’s everywhere. I mean ferfucksake, people! No wonder you fat! No, I don’t mean horizontally challenged. I mean fat. Ef-ey-tee. So fat that when you lie on the beach, Greenpeace people rush to you rescue you back to water. Jesus! But then again, I so know where you’re coming from. Just having breakfast at The Wooden Spoon in Key Marahton is enough food for about three days. Granted, you could just have a salad, but… Why would you want to do that? Not to mention steakhouses. “And how would you like your ribeye? Rare, please.” Corn-fed beef is just. So. Effing. Good. Not to mention that portion sizes come only in two sizes: extra-large and ludicrous. So you won’t be surprised that pengovsky put on a couple of pounds while eating out. And dirt-cheap, it turned out. But you can put that down to a weak dollar.
Speaking of steakhouses: while going for seconds at an Outback’s in Orlando, we chatted up a waitress and the conversation went from gators via Crocodile Dundee to Chuck Norris. And before you know it, there was a guy from kitchen, with whom pengovsky began trading Chuck Norris jokes. Did you know Chuch Norris can divide by zero? Of course you did. But did you know Chuck Norris does not read books, but stares them down until they give him information he wants? No? Well, neither did he 🙂 You live and you learn.
And of course, while in Orlando, pengovsky did an on-stage interview with Richard Cheese. But more on that tomorrow. Suffice it to say that it was awesome. 😀
There were other things as well. Snorkelling with barracuda and having a one-on-one with a shark at a coral reef. Getting pulled over by a Florida State Trooper and asked if we’re from Soviet Union. Looking at some huge gators and space vehicles. Stuff like that. But it’ll have to wait until the silly season when things will go into a lull and pengovsky will have little to report on. But there’s catch-up to play on this blog, which includes an over-due round-up of European elections, ministers who are in a hole but don’t stop digging and a breakdown of negotiations in Slovenian-Croatian border dispute.
Things To Chew On A Saturday Morning (vol. 7).
If things went according to plan, I’m somewhere else right now. Expect scarce posting this week
Full Disclosure
Gregor Golobič, president of junior coalition member Zares and minister for higher education, science and technology was on top of his game only a week ago when his adamant insistence on non-extension of huge loans to Laško Brewery by Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) caused the freshly minted bank’s CEO Draško Veselinovič to vacate his post prematurely. As you will remember, in mid-April Veselinovič approved an extension of an unsecured loan (a loan without enough collateral) of some 150 million euros to Infond Holding, one of many companies controlled by Boško Šrot in a complicated chain of ownership of Laško Brewery.
Gregor Golobič (photo by Blaž Samec, source)
Two months ago it seemed that it was Katarina Kresal’s LDS, another junior coalition partner who played their cards right. Their man Draško Veselinovič was the head of NLB, the biggest financial institution in the country and their stock soared in terms of influence. But then a series of really stupid moves by Veselinovič and his party (for it is unlikely that he decided on such big issues entirely of his own accord) caused them to lose in a week all that they had painstakingly gained in months.And then shit begun hitting the fan.
Out of nowhere an anonymous report appeared which claimed that Ultra, a high-tech firm from Zagorje, where Golobič was employed during his “exile from politics” between 2003 and 2007, had some 21 million euros of unsecured loans at NLB.Naturally, all hell broke loose, with accusations of double standards, mischievousness and corruption flying in Golobič’s general direction. This was the second time Ultra came under media and political spotlight in recent years. Prior to his electoral victory in 2004, Janez Janša dragged the company through the mud in a series of pre-election parliamentary sessions, where he presented an image of a country infested with clientelism and nepotism where an almighty LDS (yes, I know it’s hard to believe that it’s the same party) decided who made it and who didn’t.According to Janša, Ultra was a prime example of this.
A sligth but necessary digression: Whatever one may think of Ultra, those guys do some really hardcore shit. The company is most widely known in Slovenia for creating Moneta, a mobile-payment solution which is widely used (paying the parking fee by mobile really never was so easy) and which – admittedly – gained popularity once it was adopted by Mobitel, the largest Slovenian mobile operator which just happens to be state-owned.
But pengovsky first heard of the company years ago when I interviewed an attractive and (as it later turned out) freshly-single writer/artist who said that she couldn’t stand her boyfriend (or was it fiancee?) being constantly on call in this company called Ultra, which builds systems for measuring how much oil is lost to vapour during transport. Apparently oilmen went gaga over the prospect of literally seeing their petrodollars vanishing in thin air. Years later The Firm™ built a mobile webpage for LPP – Ljubljana Public Transport (point your phone’s browser to http://mobi.lpp.si) and literally stumbled over their WAP application for bus ETAs, which Ultra built as a part of a comprehensive overhaul of LPP’s IT overhaul. I was amazed that something as useful was wholly unmarketed. We obviously made a link to the application and from what I understand it is the most used part of LPP’s mobile webpage.
Anyhoo. Just as in the summer of 2004, Ultra became an object of half-truths and misinterpretations in the summer of 2009. As accusations of relatively huge unsecured loans were made, Ultra authorised NLB to make a full disclosure. It turned out that the company has about 5 million euros worth of loans, all of which backed up by proper collaterals. Even more, those loans were used to finance company operations rather than MBOs as it the case with so-called “tycoon loans” of Laško and Istrabenz. Afterall, Ultra already is privately owned.A part of this full disclosure was also the fact that Gregor Golobič owns 10% of Ultra SUM, a Dutch-based company, which is the nominal parent-company of Slovenian Ultra, owning about 80% of the latter. So far so good. But when asked about his personal assets during the 2008 election campaign, Golobič failed to mention this particular share of Ultra SUM.
Which is why today he is in such shit.It is one thing not to tell when not asked. But when asked about a touchy subject such as personal wealth, politicans are expected to be forthcoming. When Golobič was elected president of Zares, pengovsky wrote a very cynical post, basically saying that there is no new politics, only old politics done in a new way. Golobič disagreed and thus raised the bar of expectations much much higer.And that is the main problem right now. Technically, Golobič did nothing wrong. It must be said that Gregor Golobič followed the letter of the law and did report his share in the company to the Anticorruption Commission upon becoming minister. Also, his share in the company is small enough (8 percent of Slovenian Ultra) for the company to escape the ban on doing business with the state. The cap is set at 20 percent, a detail pengovsky learned painfully years ago. But apparently when media went on their annual “how-much-do-politicians-earn” rampage (as they do almost every February), Golobič again failed to mention his share in Ultra. Which -when the story broke days ago – only reinforced the appearance that he has something to hide.
Yesterday Golobič admitted to making a mistake and had already apologized for it. He said that he held back on his share in Ultra out of fear of company being dragged through the mud yet again just because he owns a part of it, but reiterated that he did report his ownership to propper authorities. He condeeded that his actions go against the principle of transparent and accountable governing and that a basic trust, necesary for creating resposnible and trustworthy politics, was tainted. He added, however, that it remains to be seen whether this mistake is so grave that it would require his resignation.
Naturally, all hell broke loose, especially when PM Borut Pahor said it is for Golobič to decide what to do next, but added that he will wait only until the end of next week. This translates as “I’d have your head for this, but I can’t because you’re the president of a coalition party so I sure hope you resign by yourself“. Pahor’s reaction puts an interesting angle on the whole business, as it was uncharasteristically swift and decisive, the very adjectives we’ve come not to expect from Pahor.
But first, let’s take a look at Golobič’s actions. This Ultra affair made him uncharateristically edgy. When state television aired its first piece on the issue and made a claim about him giving a helping hand in the company getting 21 mil in unsecured loans, he came on really hard, stating outright that the journalist and his editor published politically motivated lies in a manner which would make Janša’s SDS proud. Additionally, he accused them of denying him the opportunity to respond by deliberately sending him questions late in the afternoon, knowing that he will be attending a public ceremony and will not be able to respond until the piece was published.
To Golobič’s credit, the piece indeed featured the famous “minister was unavailable for comment“, but what bothers me is the manner in which he responded. OK, so the piece was indeed based on false information, argumentative and biased. It was a classic example of agitprop journalism which was always present in Slovenia but which especially flourished under Janša’s government. But Golobič was neither the first nor the last person to find himself on the wrong end of a semi-competent journalistic stick. And whatever the motives of this journalist and/or his editor, Golobič should have responded more calmly. If the journalist and his editor got a bit too eager in creating this piece, at least Golobič should have held his composure. But I guess it came too close for comfort. On the other hand, I’m happy to see that Ultra plans lawsuits against those who knowingly spread false information about its loans. There is nothing worse in the business world than an undeserved bad rep.
While we’re on the issue: Almost three years ago, during an election campaign this journalist and pengovsky worked side by side covering the 2006 municipal elections and I found him to be generally competent and on the whole a rather likable guy, so I’m at a loss to explain such pieces (it’s not the first time he authored a piece like this).
Anyways – once it became obvious to Golobič that shit will hit the fan one way or the other, he did the right thing and made a full disclosure and apologized. I do feel, however, that he is needlesly nitpicking over whether “witholding information” is the same as “lying”. Even if he may be right on this point (although I’m far from sure that he is right), he is losing energy over a rather trivial question. Bottom line is that he fucked up. Not because he did anything illegal, but because he failed to meet his own standards.
Having said that, it not unimportant to put the entire affair in a political context. While Golobič’s initial reaction was that SDS is behind the whole thing, it seems more probable that we are witnessing an inter-coalition backlash. An attempt to make Golobič toe the line, if you will. By employing his superior political skill, Golobič made sure Zares’s power in Pahor’s government grew disproportionally to other coalition partners. This made a lot of people unhappy, especially LDS who were oh-so-fucking-close-to-heaven only to come crashing down, aided an abetted in that painful excersise by Golobič and Zares, who pointed out bad practices in appointing people to powerful positions, rather than turning a friedly blind eye to them.
Even PM Pahor probably has a vested interest in seeing Golobič humiliated. It all began even before the goverment was formed, when Golobič forced Pahor to trasfer the ministry of culture to Zares quota by threatning to quit the coalition. Pahor caved in and had to go back on a word he gave to an earmarked candidate. Secondly, there was the ire Pahor got from Zares for his failed experiment with former foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel and some other coalition clashes and you can see that Pahor is not the one to rush to Golobič’s rescue right now.
And finally, there’s the plan to transfer the Directorate for Electronic comunications from under minisitry of economy (headed by Zares’ Matej Lahovnik) to Golobič’s ministry. The idea was immediately opposed by some in Pahor’s Social Democrats, even though (or precisely because) it would put an important directorate where it belongs.Namely, this particular directorate deals -among other things – in radio frequences. Not just FM radio (like the one The Firm™ never got), but mobile telephony, wi-fi and stuff. It also deals with regulating ISP-related stuff and is generally the place to form what we may collectively call “digital policies”. It makes perfect sense to have such a department within an R&D ministry, rather than within a ministry which only looked at these things from a market-regulation point of view and did it badly at that. I’m not saying that Golobič’s ministry would do an inherently better job, but I’m sure a lot of people would lose a lot of leverage in media and IT industry if the switch had happened.
But there you go. The empire struck back and Golobič was proven to be fallible. However, if Borut Pahor wants to keep on truckin’ as PM, he will probably be ill-advised to apply principles in case of Gregor Golobič, after he failed to do so in the case of Dimitrij Rupel and Draško Veselinović. Golobič can always leave the coalition and prompt a fall of Pahor’s government, for there’s always a nice and engaging job waiting for him in Ultra. He even registered as a holder of at least one patent.
Informed Decisions
In case you haven’t noticed, the good doctor is back with yet another excellent post (apparently, the cats are fine). In a debate with Adriaan both agreed that it would be rather welcome if voters were to make an informed decision when casting their votes.
Ideally, this is so. You have a bunch of different sources, websites, newspapers, TV and radio channels as well as an occasional blog, the whole shebang. Today we will set aside the irony of an exponential increase in media companies actually leading to a decrease in amount of useful information. But media act as more or less effective “gatekeepers”, which – in part – gave rise to citizen journalism. Of course it didn’t take long for political parties to catch on (although “didn’t take long” should be interpreted liberally). As usual in Slovenia, it was left wing parties which mastered “new media” first and were sooner or later followed by their right-wing counterparts.
By employing tactics of citizen journalism, political parties finally got what they wanted all along. Unfettered access to voters, without the hassle of media scrutiny, no matter how superficial the latter may be. Their messages are delivered in their original form, with exactly the right spin and possibly omitting all the unpleasant details. In short – it’s propaganda in its purest form.
Unless, of course you fuck up. Like Janez Janša’s SDS did in their “how to vote” video hosted by Eva Irgl, MP.
(thx to dr. fil for an excellent catch)
Admittedly, you wouldn’t shy away from Eva if she surprised you naked in a shower on a Friday evening, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and a big fucking dildo in the other, possibly with a girlfriend in tow. However, even though she is a former TV hostess and was even featured as Friday Foxy, she is apparently only good for reading from a script. Because if you hadn’t noticed by now (or don’t understand Slovene), Eva Irgl says in the video above that “citizens of all twenty-seven member states will cast their vote on Sunday in European elections“.
Something tells me that voters in United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Czech Republic, Cyprus, French colonies, Italy, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia would not agree. Voters in these states will cast their votes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This may seem trivial, but the fact that the party, which only a year ago boasted that it is single-handedly running the EU, doesn’t know the basics, is just sad.
So much for informed decisions.
50 is more than 100
The upcoming elections to the European Parliament continue what pengovsky calls a perpetual election campaign. Starting in 2006 Slovenians went to the polls every year since and will continue to do so until 2010 (inclusive). There will be a short pause in 2011 which will be followed by a super-election year in 2012, when both parliamentary and presidential elections will be held.
This year’s European elections come only nine months after the parliamentary elections of 2008 when Social democrats won by the thinnest of margins and Borut Pahor put together a left-wing coalition which is high on friction factor from the beginning, not to mention that it has an economic crisis to handle. With this in mind it is all the more clear why European elections are seen as a sort of a test for the ruling coalition. Even worse – as two ministers of Pahor’s government are running for MEPs, a cabinet shake-up is possbile (although not very likely), which would throw this quarrelsome coalition off balance yet again.
European parliament is composed of 785 MEPs, only seven of whom come from Slovenia. They are elected by a proportional voting system with a preferential vote, where every party runs a list of maximum seven candidates. Voters choose either a list (a party) as a whole or a particular candidate. The number of seats each party wins is proportional to the percentage of the vote it gets. If a party wins more than one seat, MEPs are seated in the order they appear on the list – unless a particular candidate on the list won enough preferential votes to “jump queue”. On the whole, each seat corresponds to approximately 14,5 percent of the votes cast, although this can vary as a lot of smaller parties might not make it above this “threshold”.
The above suggests that turnout is crucial. Small turnout can cause seemingly enormous fluctuations in votes cast and crucially affect the end result. Thus in 2004, when Slovenes voted in euroelections for the first time, the turnout was appallingly small (only 44%) and christian-democratic Nova Slovenia got most of the vote even though they were only a slightly-more-than-a-marginal political force in Slovenia. Indeed, Nova Slovenia has the most to lose this time around. They’ve dropped out of the parliament in 2008 parliamentary elections and are holding on to political survival by their fingernails. While they publicly state that they hope to repeat the result of 2004, the reality is much bleaker: they can only pray (pun very much intended) to win one MEP. Just as it was the case in parliamentary elections in 2008, the bulk of NSi electorate seems to have moved to Janez Janša’s SDS. Which is good news for the former PM, as his party seems poised to win as many as three EP seats, which would be a first in the short history of European elections in Slovenia and would mean that SDS won the elections beyond the shadow of a doubt.
However – winning more seats at the expense of your ideological allies only goes so far.
Ruling Social democrats of PM Borut Pahor seem certain to win two MEPs. Together with the projected result of SDS this would result for the bulk of Slovenian EP quota and throw the field wide open for the remaining two seats. As I wrote above, NSi can only hope to win one, as do all three junior coalition members: Zares, LDS and DeSUS. The latter stands little chance of success, but remember the paragraph about attendance: the smaller the attendance, the bigger the possible upsets.
Today, five days before the elections it seems like the opposition SDS will win three seats, ruling SD two, at least one seat will go to either LDS or Zares, whereas the seventh seat will be a toss-up between LDS, Zares, NSi and possibly DeSUS and SLS.
Naturally, the result will be interpreted in a zillion different ways. While the number of seats will of course be important, percentages won will be the thing to watch to get a quick snapshot of the political balance of power. Obviously, most people will be interested in the difference between Janša’s SDS and Pahor’s SD. In parliamentary elections six months ago the latter got only marginally more votes than the former (both won about 28 percent of the vote) and if this balance is not disturbed too much, even if SDS wins three seats and SD only two, than it will be safe to say that Social Democrats held out pretty well. Anything less than that, and it will be obvious that SDS regains some ground it lost to SD six months ago.
However, it could be that SD is not losing to SDS but to Zares and LDS, its two major coalition partners (DeSUS being the third). So it will also be interesting to see how the coalition parties will fare as a whole. Remember, SDS expanded its base mostly at the expense of Nova Slovenija (NSi) and it could very well be that it made only marginal headway in the “swing vote” category. If SD, Zares, LDS and even DeSUS rack up a healthy percentage, then Janša, who is increasingly alone in the opposition, will have to rethink his tactics.
There are numerous other lists and parties running in these elections. The Greens and the Youth party are the eternal underdogs which – with every election – look more like a group of dedicated amateurs than a serious policial party. If these guys were for real, they’d have merged long ago, as their platforms are painfully similar. But as things stand, they split up even the poor vote they do get. Then there’s Jelinčič’s nationalists, who are in a bit of schizophrenic position: they are anti-European and yet they run in an European position. Their message is therefore appropriately muddled.
But then, there are what we call “parachuters”, people who have zero chance of being elected and who run on the wildest of platforms. My favourite is Nedeljko Dabić, a candidate for Christian Socialist Party, whose slogan is “50 is more than a 100” and who runs on a radical solidarity platform – that every company must share 50% of its profit with its employees. Sounds nice. But first we have to have companies creating profits! 