Matej Tonin And 1970s Porn Movies

Matej Tonin has a problem. It is increasingly becoming obvious that the NSi leader and minister of defence views PM Janez Janša first as his boss, and only second as leader of coalition SDS and thus his political equal. The last time an NSi chief saw things this way was during the first Janša government where then-president Andrej Bajuk served as finance minsiter. It did not end well.

Matej Tonin naively tweeting that Janez Janša and Ljudmila Novak should get along.
Matej Tonin, splitting the difference (source)

Back then the SDS sucked up all the oxygen on the political right in the run-up to the 2008 election. Andrej Bajuk and the NSi didn’t put up a fight and failed to make the parliamentary threshold. It took Ljudmila Novak and a minor miracle for the NSi to regain parliamentary representation four years later. As things stand, she might be forced to step in again.

One of the reasons Novak was able to bring NSi back from the dead after the 2008 humiliation (which ended in Bajuk resigning) was the fact that she carved out a new lane for the party she just took over.

This didn’t sit well with the Glorious Leader who entered into a long-running feud with Ljudmila Novak, who decamped to Brussels after the young guard spearheaded by Tonin thanked her for her services only months before the 2018 vote. The Novak-Janša feud boiled over (again) on Monday and poor Matej Tonin didn’t know what to do: protect his predecessor and the party’s sole MEP or pay fealty to Mashal Twito.

One too many

To cut a long story short, Ljudmila Novak kept doing what she does best, and put Janša on the spot for attacking the media. Specifically, in a EU-themed town-hall debate in Ljubljana she called his attacks on Slovenian Press Agency (STA) unjustified and added that she expects more statecraft and less problematic tweeting of him.

This, of course, did not go down well with Marshal Twito who by than had already had a rough couple of days on the European stage and surely didn’t need more grief. I mean, between his meltdown over the article in Politico, his letter toUrsula von der Leyen and a grilling by Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veldt he narrowly avioded, he was already in a pretty foul mood.

And then Fidesz, the party of Janša’s mentor, cash-cow and Lord Protector Viktor Órban was kicked out of the EPP parliamentary group.

Paying fealty to Lord Protector Órban

Technically, Fidesz MEPs walked out on their own, following a change in the group’s procedural rules that was approved by an overwhelming majority of EPP MEPs. Of the four MEPs of the party group who come from Muddy Hollows, three did what was expedted of them. That is, they opposed the change, even though Franc Bogovič, who was elected on a joint SLS/SDS ticked did much hand-wringing over this. But when fealty is expected, fealty is duly paid.

Only Ljudmila Novak voted in favour of the change. This, of course, was too much for Janša who once again took to twitter to disparage Novak, using two time-tested tropes: MEP salaries and casual sexism.

This is a level of vitriol Janša usually reserves for opposition female politicians such as Tanja Fajon of SD or Alenka Bratušek of SAB. To see it hurled at an MEP of a coalition party whose votes Janša desperately needs to stay in power is, well, self-defeating. And yet, it was totally expected. Not least by Ljudmila Novak herself.

You’d think that in a situation like this Matej Tonin would rally the party around its senior member. Especially since Novak seems to be very well aligned with the majority of EPP and Tonin continues to peddle the narrative that NSi represents the political centre. Well, you’d think wrong.

It took the NSi president several hours to come up with a “both sides” tweet, trying to split the difference and spread the blame to both Janša and Novak.

https://twitter.com/MatejTonin/status/1367904987322449920

After spending exactly a year in Janša’s government, after seeing over and over again, the hate, the venom and the dog-whistles employed by Janša (and mostly staying quiet about it), Tonin goes for the “why can’t we all just get along” routine?

This is a level of naivetë we have not seen outside of 1970s porn movies.

“Gee mister, you mean the time machine only works if I take off all my clothes?”

I mean, Tonin once actually boasted about asking Marshal Twito to lay off social media for a week and the man supposedly said “he’ll try”. After all of this, including seeing up-close-and-personal how Janša disparaged Novak for years on end, Tonin somehow believes that if only they tried enough, the animosity would just go away?

The only thing more unrealistic than this is the expectations people get from watching pornographic films, about repairmen arriving within fifteen minutes of placing the call.

What is baffling here is that Tonin took over from Novak precisely because the boys’ club that is the NSi leadership decided he would steer the party better than Novak. The idea back then seem to have been that she had outlived her usefulness and couldn’t make the final push to put the party consistently into double digits, poll-wise.

The fact that Tonin couldn’t do it either, and actually under-performed in 2018 elections was an early warning sign that the kid may not be all what he’s cracked up to be.

But if he continues in this fashion, he may soon find himself following in the footsteps of Andrej Bajuk, resigning after the polls close on election night and watching Ljudmila Novak bring the party back from the dead, yet again.

After all, women in politics are still too often at the forefront only when the boys have made too much of a mess and won’t clean up after themselves.

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pengovsky

Agent provocateur and an occasional scribe.