Well, fuck me sideways and call me Sally. For a bunch of right wing culture war issues meant to prop up the legislative referendum on parliamentary inquiry, Sunday sure was a barn-burner. As you probably know by now the YES camp won the vote on disenfranchising third-country nationals on local level, and the one on tying welfare benefits to public work.
Crucially, however, the NO camp won the all-important vote on removing safeguards of a parliamentary inquiry and abolition of RTV SLO fee. The margins of victory are thin as fuck, but they do exist. And the resulting panic in the right wing coalition of Janez Janša suggests that his government is much shakier than he would like you to believe. Today’s shakeups and resignations in the parliament support that notion.
Coffee is like turnout. It is problematic if there’s too little of it, and suggest a huge problem if there’s more than a 100% of it. What modern democracies and pengovsky have in common is that they both thrive at “just about right” levels of turnout and coffee. So, if you’re not a third-country national in Slovenia, go help with the turnout. And help pengovsky thrive by buying him a coffee.
The mother of all cliffhangers
Hoo-boy… To say that the results of the Sunday referendums were a cliff-hanger would be an understatement of galactic proportions. This was Best Of Both Worlds episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation material.
While the binding vote on parliamentary inquiry had flipped from yes to no at about 11pm, the non-binding vote on RTV SLO fee (the only other vote the NO campaign worked on), came close but didn’t flip even by midnight. But to virtually everyone’s surprise, by 6am the following morning, when the counting continued, the NO vote prevailed on RTV SLO fee as well.
With 0.02 % of outstanding ballots to be counted (at this point it’s just votes from abroad), it continues to hold the lead by about 550 votes, out of 924,000 cast. Kids, never let anyone tell you your vote doesn’t matter.
And the turnout? Sweet Jesus on a pogo stick. 55% in a referendum? Outside of the independence and EU/NATO votes, this country has never seen anything like it. True, the trend of a rising referendum turnout has been picking up steam for a couple of years now. But still. Fifty-five percent? Ferfucksake, we’ve had elections with a lower turnout than this. Pure awesomeness, that’s what it was.
Why the long face?
The shock on the government side was palpable. There were long faces galore, and the naturally long faces were even longer than usual. Yes, pengovsky is looking at you, prime minister.
But after the initial shock has subsided, the question remained: what happens next? And the way this scribe sees it, there are at least two ways to skin this crocodile.
On one hand, the result, as dramatic as it is, doesn’t really change anything. The coalition will continue to undermine and defund RTV SLO. To this end, it has already drafted a new law to that effect, results of the consultative referendum results be damned.
In line with this, Janša started pushing a stupendously dishonest interpretation of the result. Some-fucking-how this character came up with an interpretation saying that some people want to pay the fee while others don’t. and that the government will “respect the will of the people and act accordingly.”
The will of the people
Not missing a beat, minister of culture Ignacija Fridl Jarc stepped in front of the cameras to say that her ministry will “try to take into account all views expressed in the referendum”. Which in standard Slovene translates to “because we got our asses kicked we will now exact revenge and prioritise political takeover of RTV SLO even more.” Not that any of this is surprising, but it is vile, nevertheless.
And as for parliamentary inquiry, the majority regularly ignored existing legal and constitutional provisions on this subject. Which suggests they don’t really need a new law to continue refusing the formation of an opposition-led parliamentary investigation. They will be just as happy breaking the old one, too.
So yeah, on one hand the Sunday result changes nothing. But on the other, it changes everything.
First and foremost, the Glorious Leader was once again shown to be anything but the grand strategist and rational player that some people paint him to be. He and his people fucked up a perfectly winnable vote, and did it only four months after he was sworn in. And when he realised that he had his ass handed to him, Marshal Twito went apeshit.
Brooding Janša is back, baby
Gone was the cool and calculating Janša of Spring this year, who seemed positively zen compared to the chaotic aboutfuckery of Logar, Stevanović and even Vrtovec. In his stead, we got the dark, brooding and conspiratorial Janša we all know and, well, love. In a weird and toxic way, but still…
Basically, Janša is now claiming that there were massive irregularities with the vote, that the state electoral commission (DVK) is guilty of gross incompetence and should be prosecuted and that the entire organisation of the election and DVK will be overhauled, pronto.
Basically, what Marshal Twito is saying here is that it doesn’t matter what the votes were, it matter who counts them.
pengovsky hates to repeat himself, but if there is a Stalinist heaven, comrade Dzhugashvili is smiling down favourably upon his disciple.
A weak and unstable government
More to the point, the result has also shown what this blogger has been droning on about ever since Janša got the top job again. This is an inherently weak and unstable government. It was made even weaker by some really stupid and shortsighted tactical decisions, which in turn were made due to a lack of anything resembling a strategy.
To illustrate this point, let’s take three things that happened in rapid succession in the days after the vote: Tea Košir, the would-be returning MP of Demokrati, who threatened to go independent, and Boris Mijić, the brazenly corrupt Resnica MP, who said days earlier that he will not resign his post, both suddenly saw the light and resigned their positions.
And then Janša went on the record and said that he will take a NO vote on the next referendum (the one on the Logar-Vrtovec omnibus bill) as a vote of no-confidence in his government. Threatening people with a good time, are we?
Janša sucks at defence
Basically, the PM was forced to clean the stable to keep his tight-but-functional technical majority (remember, officially his is a minority government) from falling down to a single-vote majority technical of 46 MPs. He then he threw a hissy-fit and a good dose of emotional blackmail, just to remind his coalition partners they’ve got plenty to lose.
Manhandling HR issues in partner parties, threatening election officials with criminal prosecution, attempting to tamper with election apparatus while claiming to be doing to prevent tampering with election apparatus, and blackmailing his allies by opening the prospect of resignation. You’d think that Janša has a lot riding on the events of the next couple of weeks.
And, in a way, he does. It’s just that suddenly he’s playing defence and he’s not very good at that.
You see, a month from now Muddy Hollows will vote in local elections. Which is generally good news for right wing parties. And while 212 mostly rural municipalities still mean that the field is generally tilted in right wing’s favour, there seems to be more voter enthusiasm on the left-liberal side of the spectrum right now.
More referendums, yay!
This will be crucial not only for the municipal vote, where Janša’s SDS can probably kiss goodbye any hopes of making inroads into liberal urban bastions, but also for the upcoming referendum on the omnibus law. The very vote Chairman Janša said will interpret as a vote of confidence in his administration. To which the coalition will apparently attach three populist consultative referendums. Sounds familiar?
So, come early December, the good people of Muddy Hollows will get to vote on the Logar-Vrtovec omnibus shenanigans, but also on a burqa ban, a forced downsizing of the public sector and a reduced VAT rate for fuel and energy.
This, of course, is literally the same basic pattern we saw this past Sunday. A politically important legislative vote supported by a populist vote aimed at cultural and ethnic minorities, the amorphous “parasites on taxpayers’ money”, and a vote that promises to leave more money in people’s pockets.
On balance, Janša is right that the December vote will be even more crucial than the one this past Sunday was. And given how the latter went, it seems clear that the coalition is no longer automatically favoured to win the December vote.
Making the same mistake twice
But it also seems that despite having this strategy blow up in his face, the Glorious Leader has no choice but to try again using the same basic setup and hope for a different result.
And if it fails, minister of health Tadej Ostrc might not be the only government official who will be out of a job come 2027. The really seems to be a bit of a panic at the right wing disco these days.
