No, this is not a blog post about Zoran Stevanović and his high school rock band. Primarily because there’s no record of Zoran Stevanović ever being a part of, let alone leading a high school rock band. But also because, in the unlikely event of Zoran Stevanović leading a band in high school (or at least being a part of one), rock is not exactly the genre one would put him in.
If Stevo had a band, it would be a cheap pop wall-of-sound act. In mono. Much like his party. And like Phil Spector, wall-of-sound inventor and music industry’s biggest asshole by a country mile, Stevo is cranking up the volume and compression. All in an attempt to hide the fact that Resnica are a bunch of lying insignificunts who took the most toxic and corrupt traits in Muddy Hollows politics and ran with it. Unsurprisingly, it turns out they suck at that, too.
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Over the last couple of days, it was a petition to remove Mr. Muscles as Speaker that got the most eyeballs. Doubly so because the initiative is spearheaded by Miha Brejc, a former Janša loyalist and the first head of Slovenian spook service. But the thing got derailed by some pretty basic online ratfucking, so we’ll get there in due course.
Making Logar and Mesec agree on… something
First, we need to deal with the fuckup that in pengovsky’s opinion contributed the most to Resnica tanking in public opinion polls like it was Donald Trump’s crypto currency.
A couple of weeks ago, a story (rather, stories) broke about Resnica MP Boris Mijić and his construction business shenanigans. Apparently Mijić has, in turn: failed to report a conflict of interest and the fact that he was still at his old job; has, in said job as a construction foreman, stiffed a number of his employees out of their paychecks and social security contributions; dodged taxes; had major construction companies that rely on government projects pay said taxes; evaded all sorts of oversight by either singing up relatives to strawmen managerial positions or working through their firms which have nothing to do with construction; and finally offloaded said indebted firm to Rok Snežič, PM Janša’s cellmate back in 2014 and a purveyor of shady SDS finances in 2018.
This last part is so sick that even Anže Logar agreed with Luka Mesec saying that such shit is simply beyond the pale. And we all know how difficult it is for Logar to take a firm position on, well, anything.
Zoran Stevanović has 40k EUR lying around
Obviously, this sort of Mijić-pulation didn’t go down well with Resnica rank-and-file. These people joined and supported the party precisely due to the (not entirely unfounded) belief that corrupt politicians were protecting corrupt business-people in Muddy Hollows and vice versa. And now one of their own turned out exactly the same, the moment he got elected to a national office. I mean, who could have predicted that, right?
Also unsurprising was the way Mr. Muscles tried to handle his wayward MP. His first instinct was to influence the shit out of it, posting even more reels on Insta and TikTok than he usually does, and pretend he’s got things under control.
When that didn’t work, he forked out the money Mijić owed these people. Allegedly out of his own savings. Which made some people ask how the hell does a newly minted Speaker have 40k euros just lying around. Which is a fair question and stick a pin into that one.
Taking liberties
But this was all put aside when he marched the poor construction workers in front of cameras for a photo op and declared that he and Mijić will handle things privately.
It was as if Stevo saw Godfather one too many times and pengovsky really hopes Mijić doesn’t have a horse in a barn somewhere. But then the story got even more bizarre. Turns out Mijić lied about his formal education and did not, in fact, ever graduate from university.
As an aside, while listing the level of formal education is a requirement on the candidate form, the state electoral commission (DVK) does not check whether the information is correct. So, theoretically, Mijić could have put down a PhD and get away with it, had no-one bothered to check. But check they did. Albeit three months after the election and it was at that point when Mr. Muscolo blew his brain cell.
Tricking and swindling other people is apparently fine. After all, that’s how Resnica’s anointed understand politics. But trick the leader and make him look like the fool that he is? Well, that’s just taking liberties, innit?
Power to the people-ish
There is immense pressure for Mijić to resign immediately. Levica, rediscovering their penchant for labour rights, has been screaming for his head since the story broke. And the rest of the opposition was not far behind, either. For his part, the embattled MP continues to do his best Nick the Greek impression, with that what’s-going-on-here look slapped all over his chevy chase. But Mr. Muscles, not being a complete idiot, realised (albeit somewhat slowly) that Mijić is dragging him and the party down. So he started to look for ways to cut him loose.
The problem is that the law says that an MP’s resignation within six months of the election, triggers an automatic by-election for that seat. A by-election that Resnica would surely lose, thereby loosening Stevo’s grip on the speakership. And Stevo likes his speakership.
To that end, Zoran Stevanović turned himself into a knot that would make any self-respecting pretzel jealous as fuck and declared that Mijić is finished, but only come October, after the six-month limitation will have lapsed. Apparently, the will of the people is to have corrupt MPs representing them. But only as long as they don’t get caught.
Power to the people… -ish.
Boris Mijić has the chance to do the funniest thing…
But here’s the kicker: no-one can actually force Boris Mijić to resign. Slovenian constitution does not provide for a recall procedure and specifically says that MPs are representatives of all citizens not just those that elected them or live in the precinct or voting unit an MP was elected in. Additionally, MPs are specifically shielded from having to conform to any instructions and from having to face sanctions for not obeying said instructions.
Point being, that Zoran Stevanović may huff, puff and try to influence the shit out of this thing, but come late October Boris Mijić will have an opportunity to do the funniest thing…
Not that Stevo will not have his strong, muscular hands full of other shit he brought on himself until then.
In fact, Boris Mijić was not he only Resnica MP who is facing calls for resignation as of late. Zoran Stevanović just survived a motion of dismissal as Speaker, also tabled by Levica. But as Stevo’s transgression was just garden variety breaking of parliamentary rules and procedures (by refusing to call a vote on two opposition-led parliamentary investigations), his position was never really in danger.
Stevo and the Bear
But maybe, that could change if someone took another look at those 40k Stevo pulled out of a hat to cover for Mijić and the backpay the MP owed to his workers. Obviously, pengovsky is speculating wildly here but the proximity of those 40k appearing and Zoran Stevanović openly and formally starting to cozy up to Russia sticks out like a sore thumb.
You see, about a week ago Russian state news agency TASS reported that Zoran Stevanović is now in contact with his Russian counterpart Vjačeslav Volodin and that that it all happened at the initiative or Mr. Muscles.
Of course, this could all be a coincidence. After all, Stevo has signalled his pro-Russian and pro-Putin sentiment before. And word on the street has it that he used to be a regular at the Russian embassy, so it’s not like he woke a week ago and realised that he loves borsch, Masha and the Bear.
But the clumsy way in which the press release states that “the exchange of messages between the speakers of the Russian and Slovenian parliaments – the first such exchange after a four-year hiatus that, we recall, arose at Ljubljana’s initiative” looks like Moscow is trying very hard to show they had nothing to do with writing this letter. Maybe too hard, if you catch my meaning…
A petition is born
The whole thing obviously stinks to high heaven. So much so in fact, that Miha Brejc, the former head of Slovenian intelligence service (then known as VIS) and a former SDS faithful, launched an online petition calling for dismissal of Zoran Stevanović and the formation of the two blocked parliamentary investigations: one on campaign financing, and the other on Black Cube Affair about Janša’s Israeli friends meddling in Slovenian elections.
Given that you can’t really throw a stick in Muddy Hollows and not hit a petition of one sort or another, this one somewhat unexpectedly got off the ground. Within days, it was clocking in tens of thousands of signatures and got enough traction that it got under Stevanović’s and Janša’s skin. The former, because it dawned on him that his ass is actually on the line. The latter because he and his Israeli friends really want for this whole Black Cube story to simply go away.
The fact that it took a late-game surge of fake signatures from accounts originating in Israel and India to derail the petition and have it taken offline tells you everything you need to know about how many people got nervous over it. Brejc took the petition offline but the damage was done.
Jewish space lasers
The one person who did not get fazed by any of this was Katja Kokot. The leader of Resnica parliamentary group and Muddy Hollows’ answer to Marjorie Taylor Greene would not stand out in any random sample of MAGA loyalists. And that includes pushing pseudo-scientific ideas nuttier than a port-a-potty at a peanut festival.
To be fair, not all of her parliamentary work is batshit crazy. Some of it bog-standard culture war virtue signalling, like filing criminal charges against NGOs she doesn’t like. Still more is just carrying water for special interests, in her case privately-owned veterinary clinics. Like the one she once owned and ran into the ground.
That said, like MTG, Kokot seems to be the sort of person who never met a conspiracy theory she didn’t like. Only she didn’t come up with Jewish space lasers (yet?) and opted for some old-fashioned weather-controlling conspiracies. Because if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Only she claims it is broken and…
Climate change sceptics meet pseudo-scientific nutjobs
Anyway, the other day Katja “MTG” Kokot dropped a four-part parliamentary question requesting the government come up with a cross-departmental report on investment, research, development, and deployment of weather-controlling technology. And like your weird twice-removed uncle on Facebook she bases her “common sense thinking” on intermittent hail suppression efforts with dubious results. Because if you can throw silver iodide into a storm cloud and hope hail will form sooner with smaller stones (hope being the operative word here), surely you can also steer storms, create floods and poison people.
Now, pengovsky is generally all for this coalition sabotaging itself with mountains of paperwork. Specifically, he would love to see the knots some climate-change skeptic ministers (*cough* Janez Cigler Kralj *cough*) would have to turn themselves into when answering this banger of a question.
I mean, watching NSi best and brightest trying to explain that the beating Slovenian agriculture and infrastructure took this season is not the result of climate change, but is also not the result of weather control, that would be… *chefs_kiss.gif*… Sure, at the end of the day, NSi could still claim god’s will and get away with it, but in the words of Mr. Spock, I’d give real money to see this.
Still worth it?
It may seem tempting to think of Kokot as being another vector of outside influence sowing distrust and eroding democratic institutions. But on balance, she seems perfectly happy and capable of doing it just for the love of the game.
But overall, despite providing oodles of fun and she-said-WHAT?-moments, having to deal with Kokot’s kookiness is a huge net negative. It’s making the parliament look even less serious than it actually is, it is wasting limited government resources and undermines the government’s and coalition’s credibility with their own people. You know, sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas sort of thing.
Which brings us to the question that might just have started keeping the Glorious Leader up at night. At what point does all of this stop being worth it?
