Category: Ljubljana

Ljubljana Elections of 2010 (Part Two: The City Council)

For Part One click here

If the mayoral race in Ljubljana seems all but decided (although, as they say on the other side of the pond, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings), the elections for 45 seats in the Ljubljana city council are a different matter. In the landslide of 2006 Zoran “Zoki” Janković not only won 63% of the vote, but his List of Zoran Janković won 45% of the vote which (due to vote losses on account of parties and list which got the votes but didn’t make the cut) translated into an absolute majority of 23 out of 45 votes. This completely rearranged the political landscape in Ljubljana, where the mayor was usually held hostage by the power struggle within the uneasy coalition between liberal democrats (LDS) and Social democrats (SD). In 2006 the voters overwhelmingly send political parties packing and put the reins exclusively into Janković’s hands who used the powers thus vested in him to the fullest of his abilities.


Who’ll be sitting where? Ljubljana City Council (photo: The Firm™)

First he rammed through changes to Council Rules and Procedures, making the work of the city council a bit quicker and (for the most part) also more effective. And then he managed (contrary to pengovsky’s expectations) to keep members oh his list – most of them accomplished individuals, many of whom did not expect to get elected in the first place – to toe the line, be present in sufficient numbers at every vote (there was only one slip in four years) and vote according to mayor’s wishes. Janković basically ran a very tight ship and if things got too slow for his liking he was liable to bend rules of procedures a bit, just to get things going. All of the above made the rest of the political groups in the city council go mad with rage. Well, some more than others, but those who were regularly foaming at the mouth were mostly Borut Pahor‘s SD and Janez Janša‘s SDS, aided by Green Party’s very own Miha “Jazby” Jazbinšek.

Truth be told, there were quite a lot of votes where for one reason or another Janković secured more than just the slim majority of the votes. Some measures were passed even without a vote against, a fact Zoki never fails to mention when he is accused of autocratic tendencies. And to an extent he is right. There’s also the fact that his majority was a direct result of a popular vote and for better or for worse you don’t fuck with that. And to be honest, despite all their rage, the rest of the political groups in the city council understood that. They just found it hard to swallow.

Playing hardball

But playing hardball can cost you down the road. And Janković played a lot of hardball. He didn’t compromise because he didn’t have to. He also had a couple of very public fallouts with a couple of prominent city politicos, most notably with Dimitrij Kovačič of SDS (who was removed from front party lines by the new SDS Ljubljana leadership) and with Metka Tekavčič of Ljubljana SD, who now runs against him in the race for mayor (without much success for now). The spat between her and Janković is especially interesting as they had a more or less cordial relationship for the most of the term, but some time around March this year something happened and they were publicly spewing fire and sulphur at each other, to the point of Janković saying weeks ago of Tekavčič that “she would do better to shut up as she’s been in city politics for 15 years and has precious little to show for“. Playing hardball indeed.

Anyways, it seemed that all remaining political groups in the city council just sort of gritted their teeth, hoping that the term would end as soon as possible and were counting on the fact that there is no way Janković can get an absolute majority in the council for the second time, even though he is virtually unbeatable in the race for mayor. Were they right? Yes and no.

Polls and horse-trading

The Ninamedia/POP TV poll pengovsky quoted on Sunday does indeed show that the List of Zoran Janković (his 45 candidates for city council) register some 23% support, which only half as much as they got on election day four years ago. Slightly more surprising is the 19% support Social Democrats sport. It is not exactly clear where this came from. But what’s even more surprising is that all the other parties (including Janez Janša’s SDS) get only single-digit percentages.

So, what does all of this mean for the political future of everyone involved? First and foremost, this is far from over. While it is not uncommon for a party like SD to have a “proper” percentage of support and having its candidate for mayor fare miserably, it is unclear why the voters seem to have singled out Social Democrats as the party of choice. Hopefully, there’ll be another poll soon and we’ll see if this was just a fluke. Percentages scored by Jankovič’s list are much more interesting. Zoki said time and again that he will not engage in any horse-trading after elections even if he has to form a coalition government (a prospect he dreads) and should the voters deny him an absolute majority it will be interesting to see if and how he goes about that. Despite his claims it would be hard to imagine him throwing it all away just because he doesn’t like who SD (or any other coalition partner) would have put forward for a manager of this-or-that city service.

Lest we forget

Virtually all players on the Ljubljana political scene made it plain obvious that their prime goal is not defeating Janković but reining him in by means of making sure he doesn’t win an absolute majority again. Janković recognises this and is pushing the message of “Zoran Janković and his List” more aggressively. Whether or nor he will succeed remains to be seen, but before people start passing judgements, a couple of things should be remembered:

1) 27% of those likely to vote are still undecided. Granted, not all of them will go to the same camp, but they could tip the balance heavily one way or the other.

2) Voter turnout and vote dispersal are crucial. In urban municipalities a straight proportional voting system is used and if the turnout is low or a lot of votes get lost(i.e.: go to candidates who don’t make the cut), then a couple of thousands votes one way or the other can mean a big difference for the bigger players.

3) Right wing parties register unusually low scores. Despite the fact that Janez Janša while prime minister did everything in his power to alienate voters in Ljubljana, SDS, NSi and SLS should under normal circumstances fare much better.

4) On that same token, there’s no apparent reason why (in addition to Janković’s List) it should be only Social Democrats which get a substantial support on the left wing without Zares, LDS and DeSUS joining in on the fun. This too will in all likelihood play out a bit differently.

and 5) Four years ago no poll registered even the remote possibility of Janković’s List grabbing an absolute majority. A couple of polls near the end of the campaign put his list on top, but none predicted the whoopass which was election day on 22 October 2006.

Projections

None, at this time. The way things stand, this could go either way. The campaign to date has been about as lacklustre as a sex-life of a catatonic and is poised to pick up in the ten remaining days. We’ll just have to wait and see how this particular election cookie crumbles

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Ljubljana Elections of 2010 (Part One: The Mayor)

With local elections fourteen days away it is high time pengovsky writes them up. Not that there’s a whole lot of interest in them in the first place. Case in point being this video featuring main contenders for mayor which drew about as much attention as a six-days-old fart (either that or it’s just that fucking bad :)). Be that as it may, fact of the matter is that as many as 770 people are running for mayors of 208 municipalities, of those sixty-nine are running for mayors of eleven urban municipalities.

If you’re a statistics buff, here’s some more for you, courtesy of the National Electoral Commission: 25,824 people are running for seats in municipal and city councils, of those 9,951 are women. There are 93 women running for mayor, while the youngest candidate is one Aljaž Verhovnik, age 19, who’s running for mayor of Ravne na Koroškem on a Social Democrats ticket. 23 incumbent mayors have no opposing candidate and are for all intents and purposes already re-elected. And, finally turning to Ljubljana, the nation’s capital sports the longest ballot as there are thirteen people running for mayor and twenty-four parties and lists which put forward 658 candidates for 45 seats in the city council.


Janković seems poised to continue to wear the mayoral chain and recieve foreign dignitaries (photo: The Firm™)

The Metropolis

Ninamedia polling agency and POP TV ran some polling results for Ljubljana ten days ago which were encouraging, Or discouraging. Or surprising. Depends on how you look at them. Pengovsky had the opportunity to look at the entire data set so my conclusions in this series will be based on more that just the sketchy report published first by POP TV and then by Finance daily.

So, where is we? Basically there’s no chance of an upset in Ljubljana mayor race. Incumbent mayor Zoran Janković has a 63% support among Ljubljana voters and is trailed a long way back by Mojca Kucler Dolinar of Nova Slovenija (NSi) who got a measly 6,2 % support. She is then followed by Zofija Mazej Kukovič of Janez Janša‘s SDS, who mustered a 5,3 % support.

Say what?

Let me run that by you again: Zoran Janković has a 63% of support to begin with. This is exactly the same level of support he won in elections four years ago. So despite all the mud that was thrown at him, despite the fact that sometimes things are not exactly as advertised, despite the fact that he has the political nuance of a bulldozer on steroids which alienated some of his political supporters and the despite the fact that he doesn’t give a shit about the “not-in-my-back-yard” syndrome, which spurred some sixty initiatives opposing many of his projects in Ljubjlana, despite all that he didn’t lose an inch of support among the electorate.

What seems to have occurred though, is that the above initiatives have generated enough support for Miha Jazbinšek (The Green Party), the lonesome cowboy of Ljubljana politics to end up in fourth place with a staggering 5,1 % of support, who constantly hovered around them, giving them advice (either solicited or unsolicited) Since Jazby, as he is popularly known runs for mayor primarily to generate enough votes for his list of city council candidates, the result is more than encouraging for him. If this goes on he might even get enough votes to not just get himself re-elected as councilman, but also to squeeze in another member of his list which would be a major achievment for the former environment minister (1990-1994) who runs a no-budget campaign.

A smack in the face

But if Jazbinšek is (percentage-wise) on a par or even better than most of the candidates save Janković, this also a smack in the face for established political parties (i.e: those which are represented in the national parliament). Namely, local elections in Ljubljana transcend the pure local nature of the phenomenon. Ljubljana has always been prime battle ground between the left and the right, even more so since Janković took power in 2006 in what was a direct “fuck you” to then-PM Janez Janša. Back then the political right united behind a single candidate and France Arhar (former governor of the Bank od Slovenia, now CEO of Slovenian branch of Unicredit) won almost 20% of the vote. Fast forward to today and candidates of the three main right wing parties, NSi, SDS and SLS, Mojca Kucler Dolinar, Zofija Mazej Kukovič and Janez Žagar can muster only 13,5 percent of support between them.

But the situation is even worse for the left wing parties. Metka Tekavčič of Social Democrats barely registers with a meagre 2,1 %, while Meta Vesel Valentinčič of DeSUS and Milan Hosta of Zares hover around 1% mark. In that respect the only party which saved itself grief it doesn’t need is LDS which openly supported Janković and did not nominate a candidate of its own. However, that may work against them. Sure enough, they will not be wasting resources on a lost battle for mayor, but as a result they may not get enough exposure for their list of candidates to make a decent result. Currently LDS holds three seats in the city council (initially it held five, but then two members switched allegiances) and anything less than that would be a bitter disappointment. And truth be said, this is probably exactly why Zares sent Hosta into the battle: to steal the limelight from LDS, chip off some more votes and come out on top in a continuous low-intensity struggle between two parties which rose from the ashed of once almighty LDS.

Also-rans

The list of would-be mayors obviously does not end there (pengovsky can, contrary to some reports, count to thirteen) thus it is only fair that we mention the rest of the poor sods who barely register on the voters’ radars: Marko Mitja Feguš, who also ran for mayor in 2006 and won an impressive tally of 69 votes (yes, sixty-nine). This year Feguš (a landscape architect) runs as a candidate for List for Clean Drinking Water and has had a stroke of luck with the floods of last weekend, where he actually sounded credible for a moment. But only for a moment. Especially since the LCDW (headed by Mihael Jarc) made local news not as much for their drive for clean tap water but much more for their opposition to erection of a mosque in Ljubljana some years ago.

Then there’s Jože “Joc” Javornik of Slovenska Unija, which (a bit of political gossip) is ran by Metka Tekavčič’s ex-husband and minister of labour Vlado Dimovski. Among also-rans we find Jože Drnovšek (presumably no relation to the late president) a candidate for Naprej, Slovenija (Forward, Slovenia), a ridiculous proto-Nazi party whose chief Blaž Svetek reportedly runs a whore-house on the outskirts of Ljubljana. Then we have another proto-Nazi who goes by the name of Miha Majc and runs as a candidate for Stranka slovenskega naroda (SSN – Party of Slovene Nation) which made its claim to five minutes of fame during the near-fuck-up on Croatian NATO entry. And last (and most likely least) we have before us Janez Lesar, a candidate for Social-Liberal party, who was ran the city services in the early 90s and was pretty powerful back then. Time’s a bitch, however, and Lesar (who seems not to be entirely with us) is running on a platform of more biomedicine for everyone.

End of Part One

Since the power in the city lies with the city council as much as with the mayor, the results of council elections will be just as interesting. Perhaps even more so. More on that on Tuesday…

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Top Gun (who’s who in local elections)

Pengovsky is not covering this year’s local elections to the extent he’d like. He’s much too busy doing that very same thing for The Firm™. Also, there’s been some light rain recently and as a result blogging suffered. Hopefully this will improve in the coming weeks and to kick it off, here’s a round-up of candidates for mayor of Ljubljana in the October elections. If you remember this post, then you know what to expect 🙂

Top Gun (who’s who in Ljubljana local election) from pengovsky on Vimeo.

Note: LCWD stands for List for Clean Drinking Water (yeah, I know!) and LZJ stands for List of Zoran Janković (not very imaginative, but it does get the message across.).

EDIT: Also, please note that there are also four other candidates running. But they don’t really matter and I don’t really mind. 🙂

Parts of Ljubljana Flooded

Yesterday and today Slovenia was hit by some heavy rain which caused some serious flooding. Even in Ljubljana. Pengovsky was out and around doing work for The Firm™ and below are some pics taken during this eventful weekend which bears promise of more rain still. The hardest hit areas in Ljubljana include Vič, Murgle, Brdo, Vrhovci and Kozarje.

But as you can see, some people had fun nevertheless :mrgreen:

Not As Initially Advertised


Zoran Janković’s campaign poster (source)

In the weeks leading up to local elections incumbent mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Jankovič is not having the smooth ride he (probably) hoped for. On one hand the recently passed City Zoning Act is not yet effective as a group of citizens assisted by City Councilman and one of Janković’s opponents for mayor Miha Jazbinšek filed for a referendum on the issue and are now in the process of collecting the necessary signatures for referendum to take place. On the other hand the Administrative Court days ago rescinded Janković’s decision not to allow another referendum on construction of an underground parking lot below the Central Market. This particular referendum was filed for by Councilman Mihael Jarc (he of anti-mosque fame) and repeatedly rejected by the mayor on the grounds that it didn’t meet the legal criteria. Jarc took the case to court and – for the time being at least – won. But despite two looming referenda which threaten to overshadow the election campaign (or at the very least influence it a lot), Janković has bigger problems. Well, problem, actually: Despite initially claiming the opposite, the mayor way forced to admit that the recently completed Stožice complex will come with a price tag: 40 million euro.

During 2006 election campaign Zoki promised to build the stadium in what was widely believed to be just a pre-election PR stunt. After all, the shenanigans around the stadium have been at that time going on for seven years, about almost 20 million was already spent by previous administrations on buying a hole in the ground (at the site of today’s Stožice complex) and running a short-lived city owned company tasked with preparing everything necessary for construction of the stadium. Needless to say the company went through 5 million euro without as much as moving a muscle. So little was expected from Janković, knowing that he just hung a huge political mill-stone around his neck.

But the newly minted mayor did go about it. It soon turned out that even though the city spent 15 million buying a degraded piece of land (and doing it twice over, mind you!), some smart soul agreed to return a strip of land to its previous owners in a process of de-nationalisation (rather than just compensating them in cash) and the first order of business was to buy the new/old owners out. At a price of about 8 million. And then the city announced a tender for a public-private partnership for construction of a new sports-and-shopping complex at Stožice. The idea was that the city would chip in the land and building rights, whereas the private partner would chip in everything else in a 350 million euro project, of which 83 million was estimated value of sports infrastructure.

Fast forward to a week ago and the city has to cough up 40 million. What went wrong? Well, nothing really. Or everything, depending on your point of view. It’s not as if project got out of hand or anything, but as it was developed, additional features were decided upon, which pushed the price-tag above the 83 million mark. Things such as an auxiliary football pitch and another smaller sports hall, a skate-park and number of other features which were all lacking in the original proposal.

But be that as it may, as the project was nearing completion Janković was realising more and more that some public funds will be necessary. Originally this was estimated at around 15 million, but when it was all put together and after some tugging between the private partner and the city, the needle stopped at 38.4 million euro. Regardless of whether you feel Janković just ass-fucked everyone involved or that 40 million still ain’t that bad a price for a brand new stadium, fact of the matter is that things are not as advertised way back in 2008, even though one can’t accuse the mayor of lying or deception, as he did admit the need for public financing soon enough. It’s just that this need wasn’t there to begin with.

Thus Janković will probably have to do some damage control in the coming weeks. The fact that he has to have the city council rebalance this year’s budget in two weeks’ time, 14 days before the elections to pay the initial 16 mil out of 40, means that he’s not out of the woods yet. And since campaign period is a free-for-all with even the most stupid, outrageous and suggestive questions being perfectly acceptable (not to mention those which are actually aimed at finding stuff out), the incumbent mayor will probably take a lot of heat for this one.

Given a somewhat surprising lack of polls pengovsky’s got nothing to go on here but a hunch, but for the time being Janković seems safe in the position of the front-runner. Not just because of his record, which may not be as brilliant as he’d like, but which is still a huge improvement over the last fifteen years of this city being at a virtual stand-still, but also because his opponents in the mayoral race seem either half-witted or half-hearted. However, it will probably not be a walk in the park (nearly) everyone expected. Even if he does win in the first round.


P.S.: pengovsky skipped on blogging last week entirely so we’ll just pick up where we left and pretend nothing ever happened. Thus no MMM this week. Sorry 🙁

Why One Should Never Allow Economists Dabble in Political Theory

Pengovsky is chez les Croats enjoying a rather peaceful part of the
year in which, according to Jack Wallance in City Slickers “you city
boys think you can solve all your problems” and only occasionally do I
bother to check my mail, let alone blog. Thus the lack of skin and
meat, but I’m sure you’ve guessed that already. Also, the wi-fi screen
in pengovsky’s destination of choice classifies this blog as
“pornography” and filters it out, of which I’m especially proud 🙂

However, be that as it may, my algae-and-salt cocoon of sweet oblivion
was not to last. I’m lucky enough to have this blog visited by the few
but intelligent, who constantly rattle pengovsky’s cage of
self-importance and righteousness, which always provides good ground
for a healthy debate. The latest example being the series of posts on
Stožice stadium and arena, which irked Crni into commenting.

So far, so good. Crni rox, regardless of the fact that most of the
time we don’t see eye to eye. However, the last time around he picked
the wrong horse. He linked to an op-ed by Janez Šušteršič, Ph.D. in
Thursday’s Finance daily in which Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković’s
politics, administration and overall management both of the city and
the Stožice project are taken apart brutally and effectively.

In a text titled Ljubljana in a pork barrel Šušteršič leaves little to
imagination. He says mayor Janković is Slovenian king of pork barrel
politics, case in point being the Stožice project, which was completed
against all odds, with all kinds of government interventions, both
financial and administrative, while workers and subcontractors still
haven’t been paid. Furthermore, goes Šušteršič, Janković has cajoled
the government into passing a custom-tailored piece of legislation by
which the city of Ljubljana will get additional monies from state
budget, thus depriving less developed parts of Slovenia of much needed
cash. And as if that were not enough, Janković also raised prices of
infrastructure services as much as 50%, further lining city’s coffers
with taxpayers’ money.

Effective and very persuasive, especially if you read the original.
However, while I respect Crni’s agreeing with what Šušteršič (former
head of the Government Office of Macroeconomics analysis and
Development and currently professor with the University of Koper)
wrote, the text itself is just another proof that economist should not
be allowed to dabble in political theory. Well, as we’ve seen in the
past couple of years, they should not even be allowed to dabble in
economic theory, but that’s a different story altogether.

Šušteršič gets it wrong from the start. One can not by definition
accuse a local politician of pork barrel politics. Yes, it has a nice
ring to it, but Šušteršič would do well to do at least a basic
Wikipedia search. Or ask one of his professorial colleagues who is
more familiar with political theory and – specifically- American
political culture.

Pork barrel politics means appropriating state funds for local
projects by an elected official on state level. To put it in Slovenian
terms this translates as an MP securing funds for his/her particular
constituency, mostly for projects which are not high on government’s
priority list. There’s a lot of this going around and in this
particular parliament there are about 25-or-so people liable to be
crowned as pork-barrel kings. They are those who serve both as MPs and
mayors. And who are, incidentally, up for re-election in five weeks
time. True, so is mayor Janković, but the last time I checked he was
not an MP, nor was he serving at any other state-level position with
direct or indirect power over budget expenditure. Therefore, whatever
concessions Janković wriggled out of this government, he did nothing
more or nothing less what the rest of 180-or-so mayors who don’t serve
as MPs do for most of their time in office. But this is not
pork-barrel politics. QED.

In all honesty, the bit about Janković having the Ljubljana ring
closed to heavy vehicles prior to Stožice opening in fear of truckers’
protest over not being paid more or less stands. That particular move
was a bit over the top. Although various excuses for closure were
given by various relevant officials, it is no secret that this was
done on Janković’s behest and it is just not cricket for a public
official to do something like that.

Consequently Šušteršič’s arguments against Janković and his
re-election bid (for the ends his text with an appeal to Ljubljanchans
to vote for anyone else but Janković) turn into nothing else but a
political pamphlet without so much as a hint of theoretical background
to support it. An effective and (depending on one’s political
preferences) valid pamphlet, but a pamphlet nonetheless.

Stožice Stadium Statue

Yesterday saw the second half of the grand opening of the Stožice sports complex. Less demanding construction-wise, but incredibly more important in terms of symbolism, the new Stožice Stadium is quite probably the high-point of Zoran Janković‘s first term as mayor of Ljubljana.

The 16,000-seat stadium was understandably packed and the atmosphere wonderful. If you can’t wait, you can skip the rest of the text and go straight to the video. For the two of you remaining, a bit of context :mrgreen:

With the opening of the stadium a sort of spell was broken. Whoever touched the issue of the new stadium in the past ten years crashed and burned politically. Not Janković. The standing ovation he received yesterday and the day before symbolises his complete victory over everyone who ever opposed the new stadium and arena, regardless of how good their arguments might have been.

As crni rightfully pointed out yesterday, this indeed was (at least to an extent) a classic case of panem et circenses. All the more so as Janković is a very populistic politician with quick reflexes and an extremely good touch for public opinon. However, he offsets the perils of politicking from one public opinion poll to another by following his vision (or, as his opponents would say, delusions) which is clearly long term-oriented.

Some say that by building Stožice complex Janković erected himself a monument. They couldn’t be more wrong and it only shows that the main difference between Janković and the rest of the political pool in this city is in the fact that Zoki thinks big. And I mean big. Whoever went about meddling with the stadium project, dealt solely with the stadium and ended up screwing everything up. Janković didn’t just want a stadium. He wanted a sports hall (two of them in fact), an auxiliary football pitch and a huge shopping centre, all with a price tag of some 360 million euro.

And the same goes for the “monument issue”. Stožice are not nearly big enough for Janković to consider them a monument befitting him. A radically changed city, now that’s a different matter. That might be just enough of a monument for our bold mayor 😀

But this self-induced aura of grandeur Janković radiates is compensated by actually getting things done. He was known to spend hours and days on Stožice construction site. Pengovsky heard of stories how he literally threw one of the principal contractors out of his office half-way through the project, almost hurling papers after him and telling him to brush up on his arithmetic since he obviously didn’t know how to calculate costs of the project correctly. I’ve no idea how much of the story is true, but it goes on to add that the entire spread-sheet was covered with cross-outs in red ink and recalculated by hand by the illustrious (and industrious) mayor.

And – politically speaking – he did it all by himself, possibly (but it is way too early to say for sure) securing himself a comfortable second term with an absolute majority in the city council.

Aside from a well-meaning but very late move by education and sports minister Igor Lukšič (who is yet to receive flak over it from the opposition), Janković got no help from the state whatsoever. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. The much-debated financial construction was perfectly sound at the start of the project. But then everything fell apart. First the government (then still led by Janez Janša) withdrew monies earmarked for the project, then the crisis struck, then Serbian Delta pulled out of the project and Janković together principal contractors ended up in an unenviable pants-down-dick-in-hand position. But rather then dropping everything they pressed on, much to dismay of ever increasing number of critics, which included the political left.

Which is why Janković didn’t lift an eyebrow, when the 12,000 strong crowd booed Prime Minister Borut Pahor, when the mayor announced him prior to Tuesday’s opening of the Arena. It was Zoki’s own private “fuck you” to the PM. His moment of vindication and gloating came moments earlies when the same crowd cheered him fanatically. And when Janković told the crowd to stand up in honour of the people who worked in the project and the people did what they were told, he probably knew what Janez Janša felt, when he during an independence day celebration in mid-90s told people (even those watching on television) to stand up in honour of those who died for independence. Just sayin’ 🙂

But be that as it may, there was a lot of standing yesterday too. Not because anyone told the crowd to stand up (no that note: Zoki’s speech was mercifully short) but because it was a good game. And you don’t sit through good games 🙂

Slovenia v Australia @ Stožice Stadium from pengovsky on Vimeo.

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