Category: Ljubljana

The nice gentleman with schnapps is here again

This is for you sleepyheads 🙂

Ljubljana has been dubbed the most beautiful city in the world as well as the fifth most desirable place to live in Europe. It has even been declared the most honest city in the world, but there’s trouble in paradise.

Dnevnik daily ran a story yesterday (followed up today) claiming that Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković was indicted on fraud charges dating back to 2004 while he was still at the helm of Mercator retail chain. The article says that he or a member of his board signed a ficticious contract in with a security firm, owned by a CEO of Maximarket, a retail company Mercator took over that year. The contract, worth about 800k euros was supposedly a reward to management of Maximarket for being cooperative in the takeover bid, which was hotly contested by Tuš retail chain, the smallest but at the time the fastest developing of the big three retailors in Slovenia (the third being Swiss-owned Spar).

The problem is that – according to the article – SAS Group (the security firm in question) was a) unlicensed and b) didn’t hold up to its end of the bargain, but still kept the money, which no one seemed to mind. Problems obviously arose when balance sheets didn’t add up, at which point investigators became interested. Mayor Janković’s initial response to Dnevnik didn’t help either, as he first said that as far as he knows the money had been returned (a fact that was apparently confirmed by the current management of Mercator), but later added that he knows nothing about the whole thing.

There are many rough edges to this story, however. First and foremost is the nature of the deal. Ficticious (ghost) contracts are a national sport over here, especially when tax evasion and money laundering is concerned. From what I understand it usually involves at least three players which perform overpriced services for one another, thus balancing each other’s sheets. If you just sign a contract, hand over the cash and the other guy does nothing, it becomes too obvious too soon and the Tax Admin gets interested. But It seems unlikely that a top-level player like Janković would make such an obvious mistake. OK, so maybe the guy is not as cunning as he seems to be, but – if he really did what he is accused of – I’m pretty much certain that he knew to cover his tracks better.

Which brings us to the next problem. If pengovsky read the articles correctly, the cops and the Tax Admin got interested in this in 2007, just before the three-year limitation period (another curious habit of the local law enforcement). But in October 2006, as it became obvious that Zoran Janković will probably win the municipal elections in Ljubljana, Laško Brewery the then-new owner of Mercator (yes, it’s Boško Šrot again), in tow with government of then-PM Janez Janša, while Boško and Janez were still buddies, ran a smear campaing against Janković, trying to dig up dirt on him during his Mercator years – and all they could come up with was a dubiously paid bill for the wedding of Janković’s eldest son, and even that turned out to be a dud. So the question is, how come this didn’t come up earlier, when Janković was at total odds with just about everyone who ran the country in 2006?

And finally, could it be that after a string of investigation fiascos which include but are not limited to Operation Clean Shovel, Slovene law enforcement agencies (especially the prosecution) suddenly became über-efficient and dug up dirt on Zoran Janković which lay there unnoticed for at least three years?

This has the potential to get extremely interesting. After all, current General Prosecutor Barbara Brezigar is not exactly popular with the new government and if this blows into her face, her career might face a premature demise.

Some of you may already know about the Prešeren recital which is due to take place tomorrow at noon on Prešeren square in Ljubljana. With it the Slovene Association of Dramatic Artists celebrates the Culture Day, the day when France Prešeren, the greatest Slovenian poet died in 1849.

Pengovsky is shamelessly promoting the recital 🙂

On that note: it seems that the reason for celebrating his death rather than his birth is entirely coincidental. Culture Day was first marked during WWII as a form of protest. For various reasons it couldn’t have been held on 3 December (Prešeren’s birthday) and it was postponed until 8 February. The day stuck as Culture Day ever since. It is also a holiday – not that it makes much difference this year, does it 😈

At any rate – just as in the past, The Firm™ is co-organiser, and just as in previous years, we’ll be broadcasting the event in cable network, webcasting it on our websites (classic and mobile), as well as making it available on demand (previous events available here).

Schedule permitting I’ll post an embedded stream tomorrow, but as a backup, here is the link to the Prešen webcast, which will be live from about 11.50. For those of you who are constantly on the move, there will also be a mobile webcast on http://mobile.radiokaos.info.

If you’re in the neighbourhood tomorrow, drop by Prešeren sqare, but if you can’t make it, take a quick peek on your computer or mobile phone.

You gotta love this city!

P.S.: I received these pictures via e-mail. I think the author is Primož Hieng, but I’m not sure. If I’m wrong, I’d very much like the true author to contact me.

As you know, the city of Ljubljana is one of the few (if not only) European capital with a substantial Muslim community and without a mosque. Curiously enough, this is not a result of some post-9/11 anti-Muslim pogrom, but rather a result of thirty years of systematically blocking Ljubljana Muslims to express their faith in a manner they wish.

Site of the future mosque on Paroma and Kuriliniška streets in Ljubljana (source)

Naturally in socialism religion was not exactly encouraged, but in a predominantly Catholic enviroment the Communist party tolerated the Church as long as it toed the line. Not so for Muslims (mostly Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims) who came to Slovenia in mid 60s as the economic expansion of the republic began. Things were not getting any better after 1990, when the Catholic church made a comeback, whereas other religions maintained status quo. For Orthodox Chistians and Protestants that meant that they could continue in their churches as long as they toed the line and recognised the unofficial priviliged status of the Catholic Church, wheras the Muslims were still left without a mosque.

All this changed in 2005, when then-mayor Danica Simšič decided to correct the decade-old wrong and pushed its fragile coalition to allocate a piece of land on the outskirts of Ljubljana for a future mosque which was to be funded and built by the Slovenian Muslim Community. (slightly OT: this was one of the highlights of otherwise disastrous Simšič mayorship).

Enter Mihael Jarc (the blockhead), the sole councilor of the List For Clean Drinking Water (go figure!), who was elected to city council by some wierd coincidence and has done about as much for clean drinking water in Ljubljana as Pamela Andersson has done for the Icelandic fishing industry. Next to nothing. However, Mr. Jarc did take it upon himself to defend Ljubljana from the Muslims whom he saw as a reincarnation of 16th century Turks and their invasion of the Balkans and the Central Europe. He became a firebrand preacher against construction of the mosque, blabbering about how the Muslims (if they have to be here) should be confined to their places of prayes or embrace the local culture and went on to say that “the enemy of the cross is the enemy of Slovenes”. He even made it to the BBC! Mihael Jarc and his nationalistic and religious bigotous fundamentalism struck a worryingly resounding chord with a number of Ljubljanchans which allowed him to collect some 11.000 signatures which called for a referendum on construction of the mosque.

At which point mayor Danica Simšič entered a short-but-glorious period of her otherwise hopelessly beleagured mayorship. She fought back and refused to call a referendum. The question nearly drove appart the already fragile centre-left coalition (which ultimate failed for other reasons), but the mayor stood firm despite protest (she was publicly called a bitch among other things) and populist onslaught which included Jarc reading from the Bible at 2 A.M. during his debate in an extremely long session of the City Council. Mayor Simšič asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the referendum beforehand and after a lengthy deliberation it found that although the question for technically about whether the land should be sold to the Muslim community (not a word about the mosque) it was ultimately aimed at preventing a religious group from practising its faith and was therefore unconstitutional.

Thus political obstacles to building the mosque were cleared after thirty-odd years. Or were they? Between 2005 and today the location of the future mosque was changed. It was – in my opinion correctly – moved from the outskirts of Ljubljana close to the city centre. The idea originally came from the legendary city councilor and fellow blogger Miha Jazbinšek (Green Party) and was adopted by mayor Zoran Janković after he replaced Danica Simšič. And almost two years after Janković took office some 10.000 sq metres of land in the vicinity of Ljubljana Railway station were sold to Muslim community for 4.5 million euros. If it were up to me I’d give the land away for free as mayor Simšič intended, but mayor Janković insisted that under the new administration no piece of land will be give awas for free to anyone.

Last week the city council passed a decree which allows for actual construction of the mosque and sets the height of the object at 12 metres metres maximum and the height of the minaret at 40 metres maximum. At which point the blockhead Jarc re-emerged and now wants the mosque to be built without the minaret saying that minaret makes the whole building too high. Of course Jarc conveniently forgets that there are skyscrapers (existing or planned) in the vicinty which dwarf the height of the minaret by a large margin. But most of all, demanding a mosque without a minaret is like demanding a catholic church without a tower. A minaret is an integral part of any mosque and preventing Muslims from building one in (in my opinion) even more insulting than preventing them from building a mosque in the first place.

Since he (Allah be praised!) has almost no power in the city council and is repeatedly misusing those he does have (during his rhetorical escapades his microphone is often cut off by mayor Janković for abusive language), Mihael Jarc is playing referendum games yet again. This time around he want so call the referendum on the minaret issue. Days ago he collected 100 signatures on his referendum petition thus obliging mayor Janković to declare a 40-60 day period in which Jarc must collect signatures of 5% of Ljubljana electorate (some 11.000 signatures) for referendum to be called.

While mayor Janković has more or less publicly stated that he will try to prevent the reherendum and even ask the constitutional court to judge on the constitutionality of the referendum question, it is entirely possible that this time around Jarc will get a referendum he so badly craves, because technically he is disputing the wording of the decree and not the construction of the mosque itself.

Hopefully, however, the Constitutional Court will show as much wisdom as the last time around and will see through Jarc’s little charade.