Talk about a massive political screw-up. After working up a rare case of bipartisan policy support, and on energy at that (!), major political parties on Monday abruptly walked away from a referendum on the second nuclear powerplant in Krško (JEK2).
pengovsky should note this does not mean JEK2 is cancelled. On the larger scale of things, this clusterfuck probably will not even count as a noticeable delay. Politically however, this is – to borrow a phrase – a bitchslap heard around Muddy Hollows.
JEK2 and the consultative referendum were given the full-court press by lobbyists, communication strategists, spin doctors and social media managers. The fact that it all fucktangular merely two weeks after the parliament passed the referendum act tells you that we are dealing political amateur hour deluxe.
Broad support for nuclear
On balance, the case for nuclear energy couldn’t be more clear-cut. Consumer electricity is getting more and more expensive. War in Ukraine has shown that over-reliance on cheap foreign energy can get really costly really fast. CO2 emissions are no longer in vogue. And renewables are not always a reliable option.
Not unimportant in this whole matter is the fact that Slovenia already has a fully operational nuclear power-plant with an impeccable safety record. As a result, use of nuclear power as a source of electric energy has broad public support.
Moreover, in addition to broad public support for nuclear energy in general, there was (and still is) also broad political support for construction of the second nuclear power-plant.
And yet, the political class managed to screw up royally.
Maybe check with the people?
Because for all the bipartisan support and the general acceptance of the concept, someone forgot to check with the people about they really felt about JEK2.
But pengovsky, wasn’t the referendum supposed to do that, I hear you ask. Not really, no.
The consultative referendum was supposed to whitewash (greenwash? yellowwash?) a decision that in principle was already made. I mean, by the time the the parliament was voting on the referendum, it had already passed a resolution on energy security which included references to nuclear as an acceptable source.
The referendum was simply supposed to give cover to the political class when JEK2 would inevitably overrun all budgetary and time constraints. What better way to explain away another couple of billion in rising costs that to wave with “the will of the people”.
What happens between now and then
However, it is not as if there was a lack of public debate over JEK2 in particular and nuclear in general over the last couple of years in Muddy Hollows. So, what was all this about, then?
To put is simply, it was about what happens between now and when JEK2 is inevitably built.
Very broadly speaking, people fell into three camps. Non-nuclear, nuclear-in-principle and JEK2-only. And JEK2-only people were very keen on locking up as much money as possible. The nuclear-in-principle camp was willing to go along with that, as long as the oversight side of things was ramped up and there was room to develop renewables, batteries and such.
As for non-nuclear people, they were loud but not all that important. Until last week.
Decisions and processes
You see, in general, the democratic process runs quite smoothly when things are not all that problematic. Sure, there are kinks to iron out every so often, votes must be taken and amendments passed, and so on. But in general, about 85 percent of parliamentary decisions are more or less a formality.
Things get dicey when the legislative body is faced with either a controversial decision or a lack of defined process.
Controversial decisions are where democracy really shines (or doesn’t). They are either legitimised or rejected, using a time-tested deliberative and legislative process. Rules and tests are known in advance, everyone more or less agrees with them and if the idea passes every one of those checks, it gains legitimacy. It becomes law or some other official act, allowing for further action.
On the other hand, if the idea at hand is inherently legitimate and had broad public support, but there is no established legislative and/or political process to enact it, the representative body must get creative. Such was, for example, the ensuring that Slovenian independence had legal and constitutional justification. Sure, the idea itself may have been invented out of whole cloth (at least in the eyes of others). But the legal justification it needed was found by ways of some creative and yet legally sound reasoning and actions.
To put is simply, you can either pass a controversial decision via a legitimate process or invent a process for an inherently legitimate decision. But the moment you try to legitimise a controversial decision via an invented process, things fall apart. Which is precisely what happened with the consultative referendum on JEK2.
Party pretzels
Parliamentary parties were twisting themselves into a pretzel trying to craft a question that would provide the cover they needed but still read invitingly enough for the people to vote yes. Finally, they came up with a suggestive mess that not only asked about supporting JEK2 but also implied that it will provide a stable, low-carbon source of electricity, in conjunction with other sources.
So, what exactly would the people be voting on, then? JEK2? Low-carbon juice? Other energy sources? It was a politically convoluted dump of epic proportions that nearly caused the parliamentary legal service to have a collective stroke. Still, the parties, save Levica, went with it.
And then the turd-polishing process leaked out. Someone secretly taped the inter-party negotiations that resulted in the mental gymnastics and all hell broke loose.
How the sausage is made
Not only did it become plainly obvious the ultimate goal was not to get an honest answer to an honest(-ish) question, but to make sure that the people green-light the project. More to the point, it turned out that neither the lawmakers nor the experts arguing for JEK2 had any idea about the scope of the project. As in, not even a ballpark figure.
Now, to be fair, the leaked recordings are nothing special unto themselves. This is how the sausage is made 95% of the time. People way out of their depth are negotiating about stuff they know very little about and are trying to find a favourable angle for themselves and the party.
But that tipped it over was two generational Ur-angsts joining together and derailing the not-so-meticulously planned political choreography.
Chernobyl meets TEŠ6
On one hand, the possibility of yet another energy infrastructure bottomless money-pit sent shivers down people’s spines. It has literally been only weeks since the TEŠ6 clusterfuck came full circle and the government informed the taxpayers that after spending 2.2 billion euro, the supposed coal-fueled money tree never made a single cent and is now desperately broke.
On the other, the memory of the Chernobyl disaster is still very much alive. And as luck would have it, the (young) adults in Muddy Hollows who were at the receiving end of that particular event in 1986 are 55+ years old in 2024. In other words, they are among the most disciplined and regular voters.
Put all of this together and suddenly you’ve gone from a referendum that should have been a walk in a park to a potential smack in the face, a little more than a year before the parliamentary election. And that’s a big no-no.
SDS bailing out
Which is why SDS, the party which pushed for JEK2-only option the hardest, bailed on the referendum first.
Janez Janša did the math and realised that getting his ass whooped this close to an election would not look good. Even less so, if he were to receive a beating while in cahoots with PM Robert Golob and Gibanje Svoboda.
Glorious Leader is, of course, too smart to admit anything like that so the official party line is that it was all GS’s fault. But you can always count on Janša’s new favourite underling Zvone Černač to say the quiet part out lout.
And Černač went on the record saying that the current climate simply isn’t friendly enough for the referendum question to be approved. Which is tantamount to admitting that the whole thing was dishonest in the first place. But Černač never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, so there’s that.
SD follows suit
The SD soon followed suit. Being the party that will forever be stained by TEŠ6 scandal is bad enough. Being left to hold the bag on a project that will likely be an order of magnitude more expensive is something the badly mauled Social Democrats simply cannot afford.
At which point the GS said fuck it and just dropped the whole thing, too. Not that they really wanted a referendum in the first place. At least not right now.
On the whole, the pundit class is convinced that bailing on the referendum was another one of Janša’s masterstrokes. That he continues to dictate the narrative an the tempo on the issue.
Janša playing defence
While that might not be completely off the mark, it is much more likely that the Glorious Leader is playing defence.
Not only can he ill afford to get his ass kicked this close to an election. If the referendum were to fail indeed, as it now seems likely, this would have been the eighth referendum in a row Janša and the SDS were to lose.
PM Golob, on the other hand, doesn’t really care either way. He walked away from an issue dividing his party and the liberal-left in general. He also comes across as the adult in the room, trying to work with tantrum-prone SDS.
On top of that, JEK2 will happen at some point in the future, probably with more oversight. Which is not saying much, given the lack of transparency until now, but still.
