In case you haven’t heard, there’s an EU vote on this Sunday in Muddy Hollows. Not just Muddy Holows but this is what this here blog deals in. And since there are also a couple of referendum votes attached, it is high time pengovsky writes this shit up.
In this case, shit is not just a casual swear word. Because two of the referendum questions deal with legalisation of marijuana. Bongy Hollows, as it were. Then there is a question on changes to the voting system and – the big one – a referendum on medical aid in dying.
Initially, pengovsky aimed to milk this six ways to Sunday. But since the vote is mere 36-or-so hours away, consider this the abridged version. A short primer on four referendums and an EU vote, so to speak.
EU Vote
The 2024 EU vote in Slovenia is a bit special because this sorry excuse for a country got an extra seat in the post-Brexit divvy of seats in the European Parliament. This time around there are nine seat up for grabs. One more than five years ago.
The odd number of seats available immediately gave rise to a political horse-race. As in, will the left-liberal bloc win more seats than the right-wing bloc. Will Slovenian EPP parties muster more support than their S&D and Renew competition? And, more to the point, will PM Golob’s Gibanje Svoboda retain its current tally of two MEPs and will Janez Janša’s SDS increase it’s tally from two to three or maybe even four?
NSi
Then, there was intra-party drama, as well. Quite a lot of it, in fact. The NSi had a bit of a dust-up with its current MEP and former party boss Ljudmila Novak. She didn’t protest her ouster from the NSi helm in 2018 and it was widely assumed that the price for that was a prime spot in 2019 NSi candidate list.
Five years later, Matej Tonin – after repeatedly failing to deliver the promised breakout election results – once again went after Ljudmila Novak. This time the well-respected MEP was relegated to the last place on party’s candidate list while Tonin took the top spot. And not only Tonin. Out of nine candidates, more than half are current national MPs or their assistants. Which gives the impression that many top NSi brass would like to decamp to Brussels while getting is still good.
Gibanje Svoboda
Things were wonky in PM Golob’s Gibanje Svoboda. The party spawned only in 2022 but after the merger with Alenka Bratušek’s SAB and Marjan Šarec’s LMŠ it took over the latter’s two MEPs, Irena Joveva and Klemen Grošelj.
This year, Joveva is GS’ Spitzenkandidatin while Grošelj was axed from the candidate list and is now running as an MEP candidate for Greens of Slovenia (not to be confused with an actual green party) and is now claiming that he is a victim of a sprawling conspiracy consisting of PM Golob, his hench-woman Vesna Vukovć, Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković and Serbian president Aca Vučić.
Grošelj goes green
What likely happened, however, is that Grošelj really really wanted to lead the GS candidate list, as the top stop all but guarantees re-election. However, he was outmanouvred for the plum post, got sore about it and was then kicked off of it entirely because he wouldn’t play ball.
The fact that he ended up with Andrej Čuš’s Greens of Slovenia (Zeleni Slovenije), a party that literally scooped rejects of other parties and called it a candidate list, speaks more of Grošelj’s lack of charisma than of anything else. He might be a competent policy wonk but he is as telegenic as Richard Nixon’s knee.
Social democrats
The SD were in a bit of a pickle even before the campaign kicked off officially, as Matjaž Han was busy dethroning Tanja Fajon as party leader back in April. But the clusterfuck that was the party congress left the party reeling and with much smaller ambitions than they may have harboured at the start of the year.
Party poo-bahs seem to have decided to rally around their top-ranked candidate and one of the two SD MEPs, Matjaž Nemec. Milan Brglez, the other MEP is seemingly left to his own devices. Given that five years ago he already pulled a rabbit out the proverbial hat and got elected alongside Nemec, Brglez shouldn’t be just written off. After all, the dude was Speaker and did run for president of the country in 2022 on a joint GS/SD ticket. But this time around he does seem to be fighting an uphill battle.
Vesna
Which leaves us with Vesna and Resni.ca, two non-parliamentary parties which couldn’t be more different if they tried.
Of the two, Vesna seems to be much more palatable to the high(er)-information voters. Founded in 2022 and overshadowed by much larger presence of Robert Golob and Gibanje Svoboda, Vesna has failed to gain a lot of traction. But as their founding members are two well-known environmental activists, it wasn’t all for naught, either.
They managed to stick around and even show some organisational prowess. And as EU vote started looming they were very much a party in search of a candidate. Luckily for them, mayor of Kočevje and a 2022 presidential hopeful Vladimir Prebilič very much looking for a party to channel his solid presidential result into.
Resnica
Resni.ca, on the other hand is the party of deplorables in the Hillary Clinton sense of the word. Full of Covid-deniers, Putinist and conspiracy theorists of every way, shape and form, it is your quintessential post-pandemic populist party which is just one good electoral result away from turning into a fascist organisation.
All that said, there are only nine seats to be won and in the horse-race narrative that was established early on the main rivalry was between GS and SDS, with the latter being the clear favourites.
Specifically, until the very last days of the campaign the accepted wisdom was that the Party would win four seats whereas GS has the outside chance of winning three, but shouldn’t be surprised if they only manage to keep their existing two.
SD and NSi were always hovering around one seat each which, although they would stay in the EP game, it would be quite a disaster for both parties, albeit for different reasons.
Different kinds of disasters
With a single NSi MEP Matej Tonin would once again be only repeating Ljudmila Novak’s result. Even though he ran her out of NSi leadership and then from the European Parliament on the basis that the party could do better under his leadership that it did under hers. Well, not so much as it turns out.
SD, on the other hand, is finally starting to feel the pain of the many missteps and scandals they got themselves into over the years. Going from two MEPs to a single one would be an unmitigated disaster, especially in a year where most of the EU is keeping its fingers crossed that the centre holds. But then again, at the very least they can count on Matjaž Nemec continuing as MEP and hopefully they can pick up the pieces over the next couple of years.
New new face
Vladimir Prebilič and Vesna are the real wildcards in this particular vote. A number of voters see Prebilič as the new “new face”, a politician untainted by scandal and amorphous enough to be many things to many people at the same time. There are also speculations – not unreasonable – that he will be using his EU bid as a springboard for national elections in two year’s time.
But he needs to get elected first. And while many polls put him over the hump and into the EP, not everyone does. Pengovsky, for example, would not be at all surprised if in the end Prebilič doesn’t clear the threshold. Either because many undecided would flock to two of the largest parties as Sunday approaches, or because of electoral mathematics.
Because there is a universe in which Prebilič doesn’t make the cut due to an increased turnout which would – ironically – then raise the number of votes needed to win an MEP seat in the proportional voting system Muddy Hollows sports for the EU vote.
Turnout
And speaking of turnout, it seems that after a dismal showing in 2019, when the electorate didn’t even crack 30%, turnout will be better this year. Polls show anything from 35 to 43 percent turnout. Which is not huge but is not unimportant, either. Especially if the actual number ends up near the higher end of this interval.
For the record, in the latest episode of LD;GD podcast, pengovsky predicted a 41.02% turnout.
One of the ways to increase turnout were actually three ways to do it. Or, should we say four. Namely, the ruling coalition was adamant to pull a Karl Rove and add a couple of ideologically charged referendum questions to the voting procedure, mostly with the intent of increasing the turnout of their historically unreliable voter base.
Referendums
Which why consultative referendums on assisted dying, on legalisation of ganja for medicinal and personal use, and on changes to voting system were called for the same day.
Pengovsky will write more on these next week because this post is already long as fuck. But suffice it to say that the referendums, while addressing important issues, mostly show lack of EU-related substance in parties’ campaigns. Unless, of course, you discount SDS constant scaremongering about migrants as an EU-related issue.
The main point to remember is that these referendums are consultative. Meaning that the government and the parliament are not bound by the result. If they like it, cool. If they don’t, they can safely ignore it.
This is why the whole thing leaves a bit of an aftertaste in one’s mouth. Just like Mary Jane.
