Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković is about to enter the wildest four months of his political career. On Sunday, the good people of Ljubljana (dubbed Ljubljanchans at some point on this blog) will vote in a referendum on a parking ordnance this coming Sunday. Exactly four months later, that same crowd will vote in local elections. In both cases, mayor Janković is, surprisingly (perhaps even to himself), forced to fight some rearguard action.
The parking ordnance referendum simply refused to go away, despite Zoki’s legal maneuvering. In addition, he also seems to have finally drawn a worthy challenger in the autumn election. While names like Luka Mesec and Urška Klakočar Zupančič are being tested and retested as potential candidates, the one name that probably really rattled the mayor’s cage is former PM Tone Rop.
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Beating someone with someone else
This blogger often repeats the mantra that you cannot beat somebody with a nobody. Zoran Janković and his undisputed twenty-year rule is a textbook example. He won in a landslide in 2006 and drew no serious challengers since. OK, so the SDS tried once or twice even they gave up soon, leaving it to the likes of Miha Jazbinšek to do the challenging.
Not this time.
OK, so the SDS still can’t come up with a decent challenger. In all likelihood, they will nominate someone, or risk having to support either Aleš Primc or Mihael Jarc. Both these charaters are different shades of Catholic fundamentalism. Specifically, the former is an anti-choice and anti-LGBTQI activist while the latter cut his teeth opposing the construction of Ljubljana’s only mosque back in the day. Barring a disaster of epic proportions, neither of these twats stands a chance.
Rather, in a suggestion that nature might indeed be healing, the challenge to mayor Janković comes from the liberal/left side of the spectrum. Specifically, about a month and a half ago, former PM Tone Rop emerged as a contender and for the first time in two decades Zoran Janković seems to have an actual fight on his hands.
Who the fuck is Tone Rop?
Pengovsky needs to point out that to date, no-one but Janković officially declared an election bid. So if Rop officially jumps into the fray, there will be ample time talk about him.
For now, suffice it to say that his top billing nationall is, of course, former PM and the guy who oversaw Slovenian accession to EU and NATO. He is also the guy who lost to Janša in 2004, which precipitated the splintering of once-mighty LDS, and ended up in SD, so there’s that.
Internationally, he peaked as VP at European Investment Bank and kept sort of a low profile since, until his bid for governorship of Bank of Slovenia, which went up in flames (his bid, not the bank) due to petty differences between president Pirc Musar and PM Golob.
But most importantly, if Tone Rop were to really challenge Zoran Janković, it would be fucking hilarious. Not in the least because of an exchange 25 years ago, when Rop was caught on a hot mic telling Zoki off, that he was appointed as CEO of Mercator only because he (Rop) made it happen.
It would be glorious.
A crowded field on the left
That said, Tone Rop is not alone in this enterprise and apparently his group of political malcontents also includes former Speaker Urška Klakočar Zupančič and former MP and TV journalist Mojca Šetinc Pašek, as well as former SD secretary general Uroš Jauševec. And if reports are to be believed, UKZ is also in play for a mayoral race, apparently because she polls better. But while name recognition is important, she seems much better suited for an office that is more glamorous and less nitty-gritty. Such as president of the republic.
But pengovsky digresses. Point is that there are serious bids mulled on the left. One such potential candidate is also Levica co-coordinator Luka Mesec.
Failing some disaster befalling Janković, Mesec doesn’t really stand a chance against incumbent mayor. But seeing as mayoral debates are the only televised debates in local elections, a good performance by Mesec could raise the number of Levica councilors. This, in turn, would make the party a force to be reckoned with in the city, not just a one-person nuisance for Janković’s voting steamroller.
While these bids were likely mulled for a while now, they were given new impetus after the parking ordnance clusterfuck.
*the* parking ordnance
In short, the city wanted to handle an ever-growing problem of non-residents parking in residential areas by installing parking meters and enforcing parking fees everywhere, including in parking spaces that are effectively functional land of apartment blocks. (cf. last post about Miha Jazbinšek).
While this approach does have some merit and has shown good results in other neighbourhoods, Janković went about it with all the nuance of a runaway bulldozer. As per usual.
Only this time he rubbed that particular part of Ljubljana (an area called Štepajnsko naselje) wrong in so many ways that the residents decided to give Janković a piece of their mind. Reader, it did not go well.
Zoran Janković relishes conflict. But this time the citizens’ initiative from Štepanjsko naselje soon ballooned into a city-wide effort, under the campaign slogan of “Our parking spaces”. And a s problematic as this slogan is, it is very effective.
Status quo ante parkingum
You see, parking spaces are not “ours” per se, as there are not nearly enough of them for all residents of most Ljubljana neighbourhoods. And in areas where parking metres were installed, freeloading daytime parking by non-residents has all but ceased. Ultimately, what proponents of the referendum aim for is a prolongation of the current regime, where some people have solved their parking problem on common land, whereas everyone else can go fuck themselves.
But in an average Muddy Hollows mentality very few things are allowed to come between Slovenians and their car and a city mayor definitely is not one of them.
By the time Zoran Janković realised he bit off more than he could chew, the Our Parking Spaces campaign had already collected enought signatures to force a referendum. At that stage Jaković did a panic and had the city council rescind the ordnance. It is better to kill a parking measure than to be knifed at the ballot box four months before the election.
Of metres and mercurial mayors
But in a classic case of the cover up being worse than the crime, the legality of the cancellation is dubious and the campaign pressed on with the referendum bid. Because at this point his is no longer about a parking meters under people’s windows but about a mercurial mayor who does whatever and whenever the fuck he pleases.
There was serious polling of this referendum bid, at least none pengovsky is aware of. But it makes sense to think that this is the sort of issue that primarily motivates people unhappy with Zoran Janković. Which is why his main approach was to draw as little attention to the issue as possible and hope that the referendum does not reach the necessary quorum. This way the inevitable rejection on the parking ordnance would be null and void, and he would technically remain undefeated.
But we all know how this approach turned out the last time around.
