Some men are born great. Others achieve greatness. But some are just stupid little shits willing to put national security at stake in a coalition pissing contest. This, is in essence is what Robert Golob surprise announcement of a NATO membership referendum boils down to. There’s a backstory to it, obviously. But for starters suffice it to say the highlight of Friday’s shit-show was entirely due to Robert Golob’s fragile ego.
First, the SDS (predictably) outmanouvered him in the parliament. Then, the SD (also predictably) hung him out to dry on 5% defence spending referendum. And then the Big Bird flew (!) off the handle and made the whole shit-show even worse by calling for a referendum on NATO membership. Talk about shooting your balls off just to prove a point.
And to underscore just how bad all of this is, in his initial fit of pique, Robert Golob actually framed the whole thing as an in/out referendum on NATO membership.
This was then walked back by various media interpretations as an announcement of a consultative, that is to say nonbinding, referendum. But the damage had already been done.
Defence spending resolution
Both readers will do well to remember there are in fact two parallel stories here. One is ostensibly about defence spending and virtue signalling. The other is about a PM flying of the handle and miscalculating the distance.
Let’s start with spending. Slovenia was always tardy when it came to fulfilling NATO commitments on defence spending. Reasons for this are complex and are a combination of economic and financial revival post-2012 euro crisis and a clearly present non-aligned streak in parts of Slovenian left/liberal politics and intelligentsia.
In addition, despite being often described as “best in class” when it came to Euro-Atlantic integration, Muddy Hollows mostly took a guarded approach and only did unpopular things at the last acceptable moment, sometimes even later than that. In fact, if there is a file rouge to Slovenian policy (foreign and otherwise), it can best be described as maximum commitment with as little delivery as still acceptable. Paragons of virtue, we are not. Which, you know, fine. Just as long as we’re clear on that.
But when shit hit the fan in Ukraine, most of the current political class realised that it was time to literally put our money where our mouth was all this time. And while the feasibility of of 5% GDP for defence across NATO by 2035 is debatable, even hitting the 2% target next year would mean significant budgetary readjustments for Muddy Hollows.
Guns vs. Butter. Somehow.
Levica saw this as a classic guns/butter dilemma and decided to make an issue of it. Or at least pretend to make an issue of it. Because while they were and still are vocally opposed to anything that reeks of defence spending and/or NATO, they never really put up too much resistance.
In fact, things got complicated the other day when it transpired that despite voting against the parliamentary resolution approving the 5% defence spending target, Levica ministers did not vote against the draft text of said resolution as submitted by the government. Awkwaaaaard…
Anyway, to offset any notion that they are some sort of lackeys to the military-industrial complex, and (correctly) surmising that the window to pass meaningful legislation had apparently closed, Levica decided it was time to get back to the basics. And so they moved to call a referendum on defence spending, fully expecting the motion to fail.
We can only imagine their surprise when it didn’t.
Enough blame to go around
There is, of course, more than enough blame to go around in this particular clusterfuck and your particular mixture of assigning responsibility may vary. But for pengovsky’s money, it boils down to predictability, naivete and lack of perspective.
With the 2026 parliamentary election being mere months away, the fraying of the coalition cohesion was all but inevitable. Political parties (coalition and otherwise) are looking at the polls and are increasingly concerned not just by the trends but by the numbers themselves. And many of them don’t like what they see.
Especially the three smaller parliamentary parties, Levica, SD and NSi are not where any of them was hoping to be at this point in time. As a result they are much less concerned with their agenda and much more with their immediate political survival.
Because who cares about NATO’s 5% in 2035 if you’re not going to make it past parliamentary 4% in 2026, right? Right? Wrong. But that never stopped the dumbfucks that are the current political class of Muddy Hollows.
I’m looking at you, SD and NSi. And SDS, of course. But such ratfuckerry is par for the course for those guys anyway.
Social Democrats join playing with fire
For a while now Social Democrats are realising that Levica is happily populating the traditional left wing areas of the political spectrum, which the SD had been slowly but surely vacating, either as a matter of policy or by ways of corruption. And now they want their old turf back. Or at least a part of it. What better way to do so than to lean into the unreconstructed non-aligned streak and institutionalised anti-Americanism that runs through the party? So, support the referendum they did.
Unlike Levica, SD was always much more circumspect in terms of EU and NATO, despite the fact that rank-and-file continue to be skeptical of both. To wit, the party had officially always supported membership in both organisations and in the current debate on spending, they didn’t really commit one way or the other. I mean, increased spending should mean increased industrial investments and SD main honcho Matjaž Han is minister of economy, so… (in Jon Stewart voice) maybe?
And yet, here they were throwing their weight fully behind opposition to increased spending because political opportunism. In that respect, one can almost understand Robert Golob going ballistic over their vote (see below).
Which brings to opposition parties.
Opposition ratfuckery
In theory, SDS and NSi – being the conservative patriarchal parties that they are – should vote against the referendum. In their worldview safety trumps (hehe) liberty, especially social liberty. And so both NSi and SDS signaled throught Friday that they will not have anything to do with this referendum thing.
But according to N1 reporting, it was all a ruse. Both partied had faked abstentions and even recalled MPs from family vacations to ensure an ad-hoc majority in favour of the referendum. Just to mess with the coalition dynamics.
So yeah, safety trumps liberty. But in the world of SDS and NSi, ratfucking trumps both.
Oh, and speaking of (would-be) coalition dynamics, the moment Matej Tonin was gone NSi was happy to be SDS’s bitch once again. The next party president might as well get a nameplate reflecting that. Jernej Vrtovec, SDS VP for NSi. It has a nice ring to it, no?
And just to illustrate just how unprincipled and messed-up this whole vote was, consider the fact that votes against the referendum included Golob’s GS, of Anže Logar’s Demokrati (including Logar himself) and – drumroll – Miha Kordiš.
The mind boggles.
Lessons (not) learned
Which this brings us to the second concurrent story. Namely, Robert Golob going apeshit over the result of the vote.
It goes without saying that the coalition in general and GS in particular were outmanouvered. Tricked? By all means. But after three years even the greenest of MPs should have expected no less. After all, the very first move the SDS made this parliamentary term was to grind the legislative proceeding to a halt by stuffing it chock-full of inane quasi-legislative drafts.
And yet, this government and especially this PM consistently failed to learn the lesson. The other lesson Golob failed to learn over the last three years or so was when to shut the fuck up.
You see, this is not the first time Golob made grandiose pronouncements in an attempt to dominate the news cycle. Be it half-baked promises or ill-thought-out statements, it almost always came back to bite him in the ass. Odd are that his throwing the gauntlet to SD and SDS/NSi, by announcing a referendum on NATO membership will fare similarly.
Reader, we have finally come come to the statement.
After finally realising that he was the sucker in this little charade, PM Robert Golob threw a bit of a temper tantrum and said that, fuck it, if the parties which voted for defence spending referendum really want one, we might as well have a referendum on NATO membership. Or something along those lines, anyway.
Walkbacks
Which, of course, is a monstrously stupid thing to say. Even though his language was as florid.
First of all, NATO and EU memberships were defined as long-term strategic goal for Muddy Hollows. One don’t question that just because one lost a vote in the parliament.
Second of all, despite the fact that NATO membership enjoys a 2/3 support in public opinion, this is not something you re-check while unpopular policies are being debated and rockets are flying uncomfortably close to your borders. I mean, Ukraine is just a hop, skip and a jump away. Or whatever the equivalent Hungarian phrase is.
And third of all, even mentioning something like this will jump-start every fucking Russian asset in the country and have them foaming and the mouth. And rest assured, there are Russian assets in this country. Not to mention scores of left-wing useful idiots who will overthink their (often justifies) criticism of the USA, NATO and even the EU and then happily defend a conservative, nationalistic and murderous regime in Moscow, just because their internationalist and communitarian soul can’t stand the Western hypocrisy.
David Cameron enters chat
In case anyone is tempted to say that Golob couldn’t possibly lose a NATO membership referendum (just look at the polls!), pengovsky would like to inform them David Cameron would like a word…
Point being that if by any chance a politician or a political party starts dabbling in strategic shit, they better have a plan. And Robert Golob clearly does not have a plan. He just has a short fuse.
Which is why almost immediately after his shocking referendum announcement, there seems to have been a significant walk-back, specifying that it would have been a consultative (that is to say, nonbinding) referendum.
This in turn begs the question why hold the vote in the first place? Robert Golob wanted a leg up over the SDS (and SD). Which means that he would have to win the referendum regardless of its nature. But would he? Not necessarily, despite what opinion polls say right now.
Law of unintended consequences
There is a perfectly plausible scenario where a combination of political hubris, enemy propaganda and low turnout result in a defeat for NATO membership. Should this happen, you think anyone is going to care that the vote was non-binding? I mean, Brexit vote was technically non-binding and look how that turned out.
The law of unintended consequences it unforgiving.
Levica and SD dabbled in some virtue signalling and ended up in the same boat with SDS. (OK, SD might actually have a thing for SDS, but that’s another matter).
SDS and NSi wanted to trip the government up nine months before elections and instead opened the door to a debate on NATO they thought was settled a long time ago and was a source of much of their political legitimacy.
And PM Golob just wanted to stuff this whole defence spending posturing down everyone’s fucking throat, because fuck them and the high horse they rode in on. Instead, he saddled himself with a referendum that could reshape the strategic balance of power and that he is not sure he can win.
Looking for an off-ramp
No wonder even Janez Janša was trying to walk the whole thing back and reassure everyone that Slovenian NATO membership is not on the table, but that a debate on defence spending is legitimate, nevertheless.
The Glorious Leader trying to bring down the temperature, that is something we don’t see every day. Sure, he did it while he was on his way to Thompson’s concert in Zagreb, doing some far-right and fascist virtue signalling of his own, but still. He seems to realise things went a bit too far.
Which is why the best course of action right now would be for Robert Golob to do a full 180 and say that despite his earlier statements, there will be no referendum on NATO membership. Consultative or otherwise.
It would obviously be great if Golob would simply say that he thought it over and that it really was a shitty idea. But pengovsky will also accept some cockamamie explanation about how a simple-majority referendum cannot be held on questions that require a 2/3 majority in the parliament. Or some other bullshit in legalese.
Point is, PM Robert Golob needs an off-ramp. But he also needs to take it. And that’s not really his strong suit.
Pengovsky writes this blog free of charge. If you like it, buy him a coffee using the above button. If you already did, live long and prosper!
