Boštjan Poklukar will stay on as minister of the interior. At least for now. With NSi taking the lead, the opposition held his feet to the fire yesterday. But in the end the no-confidence vote fell well short of the mark as only 29 MPs voted for his dismissal.

That said, coalition had its own skibidi moment when they only mustered 35 votes in Poklukar’s support. Meaning that even the GS came up five votes short when supporting their own minister, as SD and Levica said upfront they were going to sit this one out.
But we should not read too much into these numbers. Per parliamentary rules, the opposition needed 46 votes (absolute majority) to dismiss Poklukar. And even if called an all-hands-on-deck, they can only get to 35.
Job well done
So, from their perspective the idea was to put pressure on the minister, dig up as much dirt as possible and hope that the fucks up somehow. Creating as many soundbites and video clips as possible before and during the debate was an important secondary objective.
On balance, the opposition did their job well, despite the poor result. OK, so the videos are very mid and had little traction outside the opposition’s various troll networks. Politically, however, the NSi rattled the coalition’s cage well.
Firstly, the airborne fecal bonanza resulted in top cop Jušić resigning his post. To be more precise, he was told to quit. But the point is that after months, nay, years of Poklukar and PM Golob swearing up and down that everything was ship-shape with Jušić’s appointment, they threw him under the bus to protect the minister.
Secondly, Jušić’s dismissal was a key demand by coalition SD and Levica. But once that happened, junior coalition parties got greedy and couldn’t simply take the win. SD especially was interested in seeing how much it can get away with. There was real pressure for Poklukar to follow Jušić out the door.
Nice tender you have there…
But every action has its equal and opposite reaction. As if automagically, information about a shady tender under the auspices of economy minister and SD leader Matjaž Han were leaked. Multi-million grants for what are basically shell companies and such.
It did not look pretty from the get-go. But just in case Han hadn’t gotten the message, a criminal investigation was launched, too. One day, you are playing Jenga with your coalition frenemy, the next day you’ve got cops turning your place upside down. Life, huh?
At any rate, Han did get the message. He moved quick to have the tender quashed and made sure the head of the agency responsible quit. Then, SD dully sat on their hands during last night’s parliamentary vote. Levica followed suit and Boštjan Poklukar lived to police the ministry another day.
Harsh words were said, yet Robert Golob’s coalition survived. But pengovsky should note that it is that much worse for the wear. A couple of more dust-ups like this and Muddy Hollows will be praying for elections to come sooner rather than later.