Category: Slovenia

Parliament Reports President Pahor To Prosecution Over TEŠ 6

In what was not an entirely expected turn of events, the parliament yesterday unanimously adopted the committee report on the TEŠ 6 (Tower Six of Šoštanj coal power plant) corruption case. In addition, the parliament also voted to approve a virtually unprecedented move to report to the police the suspicion of gross negligence in execution of public office, a criminal offence carrying up to three-year prison sentence (Article 258 of the Penal Code).


TEŠ 6 (photo by yours truly)

The report concludes that the whole project was tailored to the needs of the coal lobby with specific MPs acting as stooges and pushing its agenda. The document blames every government from 2004 until 2012 for being needlessly careless and allowing the project to balloon and eventually derail. But while there is plenty of blame to go around, the report singles out and pins the largest share of the blame on then-PM Borut Pahor, his finance minister Franci Križanič and economy minister Matej Lahovnik for either actively looking the other way (Pahor) or even facilitating corruption (Križanič, Lahovnik) when it was already obvious the whole thing was going tits-up but disaster could still have been prevented.

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Notes On Slovenian Recognition of Palestine (Part 3)

Well…


(source)

In a completely predictable (and, indeed, predicted) turn of events the much-hyped initiative to recognise Palestine by Slovenian foreign minister Karl Erjavec unceremoniously petered out earlier today as the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs failed to vote on the motion, thus freezing the entire process and for all intents and purposes killing it.

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Designated Survivor: Slovenian Edition

Shocking journalists around the world Europe who after more than a decade again had to struggle with the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia, prime ministers of both countries tendered their resignations yesterday within hours of each other. Pengovsky being pengovsky, however, we’ll skip Slovenia Slovakia and just do Muddy Hollows where Miro Cerar resigned on the heels of a court annulment of results of the referendum of the second line of the Koper-Divača railway.


…with apologies to Kiefer Sutherland

The gist of it is that while the government won the vote back in September of last year, it failed to win the constitutional challenge of the result, owing to some very weird and novel interpretations of the constitution and referendum legislation. Be that as it may, the Supreme Court, following the decision of the Constitutional Court, decided that the campaign was not fair (specifically, the government’s role in it) hence the result is invalidated and the vote should be repeated. However, there’s more to that than meets the eye.

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In Which Leader Of The Opposition Bullies A Private Citizen

Say what you will about the current crop of Slovenian leaders, but their blandness does have an upside. As boring and forgettable as they are, they’re also several orders of magnitude more civil and restrained in their public communication as their immediate competition. Not that the bar is particularly high, though…


(source)

Case in point leader of the SDS Janez Janša who seems to have developed both a knack for uttering things beyond the pale as well as a surprisingly thin skin. Days ago, for example, he picked on a private citizen, an entrepreneur who took issue with one of his more absurd and incendiary Facebook posts of late.

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Notes On Slovenian Recognition of Palestine (Part 2)

Remember the excitement that followed the announcement of imminent Slovenian recognition of Palestine? Well, guess what…


Slovenian ministry of foreign affairs (source)

Turns out Newton’s Third Law applies to diplomacy as well. Foreign minister Karl Erjavec made a big splash about it, declaring that the time is right, that Slovenia will press on with this regardless of support (or lack thereof) within the EU and that it’s about time this country shows it can craft and independent foreign policy. Only a week later his foot is dangerously close to meeting his mouth.

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Notes On Slovenian Recognition of Palestine

One has to feel sorry for the Palestinians these days. Not only are they being roundly fucked over (again) with the US now not even pretending to be an honest broker any-more, they’re also being used as a campaign prop in Muddy Hollows. And you can tell by the photo below Abu Mazen is none too pleased about it.


Karl Erjavec and Mahmoud Abbass (source: Slovenian MFA)

Namely, Karl Erjavec, leader of pensioners’ party DeSUS who also doubles as foreign minister announced yesterday that Slovenia is ready to recognise Palestine as a sovereign country even without concerted action on the part of the EU and has indicated the parliament could vote on this in March or April. What Erjavec hasn’t indicated, however, is the fact that Slovenia will hold parliamentary elections in late May or early June.

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Half A Rock From Prijedor

Pengovsky did some punditizing for media outlets which really should have known better in the last couple of days and weeks which means it’s time both readers of this blog be brought up to speed on the recent developments in Muddy Hollows. Which, fairly or not, have for the past ten days or so been focused on the loan-taking habits of the largest opposition party.


The Glorious Leader holding half a rock.

Namely, it transpired that SDS in order to finance the upcoming election campaigns took out a funny-looking EUR 450.000 loan from Dijana Đuđić, a 32-year-old Bosnian Serb woman. As the story broke, the faeces met with the proverbial rotating air blades apparatus, providing for a spectacular shitshow.

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