Category: Slovenia

Mocja Kulcer Dolinar, the freshly named minister.

If you haven’t paid attention, you might have missed the fact that PM Janša replaced three cabinet ministers a month ago. The last new minister to be replaced was minister of Higher Education, Technology and Science Jure Zupan of NSi (Nova Slovenia, a very right wing junior coalition partner). In his place Janša proposed (and his rubber stamp parliament approved) Mojca Kucler Dolinar, MP and Ljubljana city councillor. So far, everything is fine and dandy. Now, according to the law, a function of a government minister is incompatible with a function of a member of parliament. Thus, someone else will take Mojca’s place in the parliament.

But who?!?

There are two candidates: Majda Zupan and Anton Zakrajšek, both of whom have received the same percentage of the votes in their district. But there is a twist. They both received the same percentage rounded up to the second decimal point. The local electoral committee has – according to the law – decided to hold a draw between the two candidates who ran on NSi ballot. It turns out that Anton Zakrajšek got the long end of the stick and won the draw.

Just to explain – for purposes of parliamentary elections, Slovenia has eight voting units, each consisting of eleven voting districts. Votes are counted in each district separately and then summed up at unit level (and then on national level).

But there is another twist. In the mean time, Anton Zakrajšek switched parties and is now a faithful member of SDS (the senior coalition partner). So by Zakrajšek winning the draw, SDS got one vote more in the parliament and NSi got a vote less accordingly. The law, namely, stipulates that a replacement MP is chosen among those who ran on the same ballot on election day.

NSi obviously went apeshit, especially their pitbull-in-chief Jožef Horvat, MP, who decided that “meticulous” is the word-de-jour and said that Majda Zupan got 14.1403 % of the vote, while Anton Zakrajšek got 14.1356 percent of the vote and thus Zupan should get the parliamentary seat by a meagre .0047 percent of the vote.

There is one problem, though…

In case of 3rd voting unit the percentages received by each candidate were already rounded up to two decimal points at district level, which enabled Mojca Kulcer Dolinar to beat Majda Zupan by .5 percent on unit (overall) level. If the percentages were meticulously counted from the start, Mojca Kucler Dolinar would not win the vote in the first place.

I mean… I understand that NSi will defend its number of parliamentary seats tooth-and-nail, but they’ve got a serious credibility issue to deal with first. Luckily for them, the decision on a replacement MP actually rests with the state electoral committee which has the final say on the matter.

UPDATE: The State Electoral Committee has annulled the draw and declared Majda Zupan as the replacement PM.

Slovenia has a new political party. Zares (literally: For Real) is promising just a little less than kingdom come. Specifically: politics done in a new way. Which would all be fine and dandy, of course, if the core of the party weren’t made of people who have already twisted and shaped Slovenia and its politics.

Gregor Golobič, former gen-sec of LDS, now president of Zares (photo: www.zares.si)

Now – as Winston Churchill already noted, anyone can rat (but it takes a certain amount of ingeniuity to re-rat). So forming a new party, albeit on the left side of political spectrum is nothing new. It has been done before. As a political scientist and analyst I warmly welcome the entrance of yet another player in the political arena for it spells interesting times ahead.

I do, however, have several misgivings about this new party and its platform. I must stress that these misgivings are mostly based on previous experience and history of several key players of the new party. But that does not mean that I’m condeming the party as incompetent from the start or that I’m not giving it a benefit of the doubt. It only means that – like any other player in the political arena – it will not get any breaks. Not from me, not from anyone else.

Probably the single most important person of the new party is its freshly-elected president Gregor Golobič. If you are following Slovene politics only for a short time or from afar (or both) you might not have heard of him, but this man is considered by many as one of the most brilliant political strategists this side of the border. He reached the peak as secretary-general of the Liberal Democrats under the leadership of Janez Drnovšek, where Golobič was seen by many as the guy who actually runs the show – basically LDS’s No.2 man (a claim he never really disputed). Think of him as Slovenian Karl Rove of the late 1990s.

The comparison with the loathed US Republican mastermind might even be well in place as Golobič was LDS’s gen-sec during a period of very strong “partitocracy”, where certain (economic, media and even political) fiefdoms were created and given – delegated, if you will – to would be Slovenian oligarchs. That trully was the period when (like today under Janša‘s rule) one could not achieve anything of importance if one was not at least heavily connected with key people in LDS. Now, it could be that Golobič did not directly control these “fiefdoms”, but being the “almost-top dog” makes him wholely responsible for the situation which – as it happened – led to the removal of LDS from power and its later near-demise.

Not that Golobič stuck around to witness the demise, of course. As soon as he saw that the party was about to enter a downward spiral, he bugged out and kept to the sidelines until last Saturday when he became the top dog of the new party.

The new party tries to drum up the hype of late 80’s, early 90’s when Slovenia was abuzz with new political ideas, when (to put it romantically) men were men, women were women and politicians were heroes (and three-breasted whores from Eroticon VI were three-breasted whores from Eroticon VI). It, in short, is trying to rekindle the flame of political invention which once burned within the Organisation of Socialist Youth (ZSMS), where the drive for democratic and social change in Slovenia actually began.

There is only one problem, though. These people (and Golobič in particular) are not kids anymore. If twenty years ago they were considered brats, pests and new kids in town (all at the same time), they are now established politicians with a more or less old-school liberal agenda. Twenty years ago these people have promised politics done in a new way. And today they are promising it again. Same old, same old.

On that note, let me just add that on-line media Vest is – according to Vuk Čosić, one of its creators, trying to drum up the same feeling of late 80’s (see comments to this post), and that a re-launch of Vest as we know it today took place only a couple of weeks before Zares held its first conference. A coincidence? 😈

As a political analyst I almost see it as my duty to dispell the notion that politics can be done in a different way. It can’t. You can bitch about it, curse it, do whatever you want, but in the end any politics will have to compromise, will become a purpose unto itself, arrogant, corrupt and ineffective. That’s why we have elections and a supposedly democratic system of government with at least a theoretical set of checks and balances. And while Zares and its people may promise to do it differently, it will end up doing it exactly the same way as everyone else did. As they once already did it.

But Zares also brings a shitload of new faces (both in the media spotlight and behind the scenes), one might say. I fear that most of these faces will be used, abused and then rejected as they will have outlived their usefulness when and if Zares gains momentum and power. Then there’s another possibility – that Zares doesn’t make it. In that case I suspect that Golobič would be quick on his feet to leave the party saying that the exepriment failed (perhaps adding that Slovenia isn’t ready for them just yet.)

In any case, Zares does not bring about a promise of a political revolution, let alone instant advent of better days. To do anything, it will have to be in power. And that requires adheering to rules of classic politics. And just to illustrate my point – in an interview in 2004, Golobič said that “when someone who claims to be clean and incorruptible comes to power, this spells a rampant corruption and clientelism ahead” (in Slovene only)

As the Serbs would say: Ne možeš da jebeš, al’ da ne udješ (you can’t fuck if you don’t stick it in)

Believe it or not, but one of the main war criminals of the WWII, specifically of the Holocaust, was in fact – Slovenian.

Odilo Lotario “Globus” Globocnik

Odilo Globocnik (originally probably Globočnik) was a Waffen-SS officer who was instrumental in the Anschluss of Austria in 1933, but his true horrific self became notoriously obvious in 1939-41 when he was (among other things) personally responsible for the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto.

He was arrested by British commando troops and killed (or commited suicide) on May 31 1945, somewhere in Southern Carynthia, Austria – close to Slovenian border. It is said that he spoke Slovene during his arrest.

Should Slovenes appologize to his victims? I don’t know. I’ve always maintained that today’s generations should not be held responcible for crimes of their grandfathers. But the whole thing most certainly does make me feel uncomfortable.

Janša to the rescue!

I must admit that I’ve been unfairly critical of the government of Janez Janša in the past few months. I was so blinded by left-wing ideology that I failed to realize the masterplan for lightning progress of this country which was set in motion by Janša and his visionary political allies. And yet it is quite simple. It all started with anti-tobacco legislation which will undoubtedly improve the overall health of the nation. As people will get healthier in general, public health will be sustainable much longer, whereas private health insurance companies will be able to pocket even larger profits, adding to overall GDP growth.

Furthermore, Slovenia’s bars and pubs will now have to attract non-smoking crowds, and according to ministry of health, the way to do it is to start selling fresh, natural juices. And so the estimated 75 percent of non-smoking Slovenians will all of a sudden flock to bars for that shot of fresh carrot/avodaco juice with a slice of orange and sprinkled with cinnamon. But since that will not happen immediately, the government is pumping up inflation to keep people out of bars which had to increase prices of (mostly) alcoholic beverages. This is yet another step aimed at improving the nation’s health, as keeping the people dry will lead to a sharp decrease in liver chirossis and other alcohol related diseases.

This will of course lead to a sharp drop in DUI offences, cutting police work almost by half, which also means that the cops will not need all those resources. The visionary government and its fearless leader foresaw this long ago, and so they decided that Slovenian police will no longer drive expensive cars like Fords, Golfs or even Renaults, but will instead go about policing the nation in Dacias. And while there will be no more drunk drivers, there will be no more speeding either, because people will actually stop to get a better look at an unforgettable sight: A Slovene policeman in a Romanian Dacia. Truth be told, there is a health hazard connected to this: people may die of laughter.

But – moving on – we can now tell that the 15-20% increase in prices of milk and meat Slovenia is experiencing this week is actually a clever ploy by the government to make the nation adopt an entirely vegan diet (much in line with president Drnovšek’s wishes), which will sharply reduce Slovene dependency on intensive farming and promote development of bio-farming, enabling Slovenia to survive the looming energy crisis relatively unscratched.

And so Slovenes will be healthier and will live longer, which means that they will work both longer and harder, and will thus save the pension fund from bankrupcy, all of this while increasing country’s GDP and making it the beacon of the 21st century.

Just like Janša said a year and a half ago.