Category: Slovenia

Transfer Window

Since the hubbub on the impending #Grexit has, for now at least subsided or – at the very least – morphed into #Agreekment, a short update on the sordid sorry state of Slovenian politics beckons. For it would seem that we have entered the Transfer Window.

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To be honest, what was and still is happening is peanuts compared to the sabre-rattling which occasionally threatened to break up the coalition, mostly along the privatisation fault lines. And although a full-scale political crisis was never a real possibility (not with the current distribution of power, at least), there was enough bad blood accumulated that some sort of a fallout was inevitable. Curiously, however, these tremors are not limited to the government of Miro Cerar only but are, for now at least, equally present in the opposition as well.

It takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-re-rat

The big shocker was the parting of ways between former eternal foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel and his political home of the last decade, Janez Janša‘s SDS. Rupel, a long-time LDS cadre under Drnovšek famously switched sides in 2004 and crossed over to SDS where he continued his diplomatic exploits. After Janša 2.0 government was toppled, the man fixed himself a cosy cushion to land on, having the outgoing government appoint him Consul General in Trieste (a prestigious but not all that demanding a position). However, he was axed from the position by his successor at the foreign ministry, one Karl Erjavec, following the letter of the austerity legislation, passed by Janša’s government (oh, the irony!) which stipulated that all civil servants over the age of 67 must retire, unless their superior finds a particular use for them. Needless to say Erjavec found no particular use for Rupel.

In fact, even before Teflon Karl started wielding the axe, Rupel and his supposedly coveted black book of contacts have been declining in demand. Which sort of made everyone think the man has finally thrown in the towel and limited himself to lecturing on a faculty of, shall we say, wanting reputation. After all, he clocked in his forty and should be able to enjoy the fruits of his long and illustrious career (give or take). Which is why it came as a complete surprise that he publicly announced his parting ways with the SDS. Quitting the Party is not small potatoes, because it was long assumed that if you in the Party, you in the Party.

Not so for the old fart Dimitrij. The Party, reeling from the massive haemorrhaging of resources to defend the Leader (that be Ivan) from the subversive communist abuse of the judiciary (that be The Patria Affair), just launched its shadow cabinet, a.k.a. SDS Council of Experts. Now, Rupel was apparently aiming at chairing the Foreign Policy Committee, but was passed over for Milan Zver MEP. This infuriated Dimitrij to the point of packing his shit up and leaving. He claims he was being punished for a recent interview in Reporter magazine where he (let’s be honest) failed to praise the Leader and swear to his infallibility. Instead, not only did Rupel had the guts to speculate on the post-Janša future of the political right, he even had the balls to state that there was, in fact, a period in Slovenian history where Milan Kučan (Janša’s arch-enemy) played a positive role. The nerve!

However, one could be excused for not entirely buying into Rupel’s self-righteousness. He is probably the only politico in this country which could possibly lay claim to have done a proper Churchill. Because anyone can rat. But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat. Which is exactly what Rupel has done vis-a-vis Janša, parting ways in 1994, only to rejoin Janša in 2004 and now, another decade or so later, parting ways yet again. The conclusion here is simple: if Rupel is in search of a new political master (possibly Miro Cerar’s SMC), then the SDS is indeed in deep trouble since Rupel, one of the great survivors of Slovenian politics, apparently sees no further use for it. And parties which Rupel discarded himself of as un-prospective soon turned out to be politically marginalised and – ultimately – dead. Case in point every of his previous political dwellings: Slovene Democratic Union (SDZ), Demokrati Slovenije (DS), the once-mighty LDS and now SDS.

If political bellwethers such as Rupel are anything to go by, then the SDS should start worrying. However, one should not have high hopes for the SDS to change course any time soon. In fact, regardless of some pretty obvious intra-party opposition, the party proper is by and large committed to its president, increasingly creating a universe of its own and interacting with the reality the rest of us are experiencing only when need be. And before either of the two readers of this blog start pointing out the @prenovljenaSDS (reformed SDS) Twitter account it should be noted that the account might just as well be a ploy of Janša to see who follows the account and thus single out the descenders within his ranks. Just sayin’ 😉

Tr00 fans only

Not that the SDS is overly concerned, it seems. Because, although they’ve lost Rupel, they’ve gained (for all intents and purposes) Aleš Hojs, nominally one of the VPs of the ChristDem NSi, but in reality a tr00 JJ fan. Namely, after the NSi declined to join SDS shadow cabinet, continuing on their own course (an approach which served them well ever since they found their spine a couple of years ago), they poached Hojs and co-opted him as shadow defence minister, thereby sticking a wedge in both NSi leadership as well as rank and file where Hojs does have a certain amount of clout.

The NSi is, for the time being, choosing to ignore the issue and Hojs nominally still remains a member of the NSi senior structure, but they will have to get rid of him expeditiously. The bad blood between the former S/M partners of the political right keeps on accumulating and the NSi with its new-found confidence and a couple of policy scoops under its belt (notably, the recently passed law on post-WWII grave-sites) will not be able to tolerate in-party insubordination and impunity.

Bruised egos

But such solo acts can last surprisingly long. Case in point being Bojan Dobovšek, until recently an MP for SMC of Prime Minister Miro Cerar. Namely, Dobovšek quit the party months ago, citing “continuing old practices” in filing governmental positions, hinting and cronyism and corruption. But you could not be blamed for thinking Dobovšek was – not unlike Rupel – sore for being looked over when booty was split. In this case, he was widely tipped to become the minister of interior.¸But the spot went to Vesna Györkös Žnidar, while Dobovšek quit the party but remained a member of the SMC parliamentary group. Which is technically legal, most unhygienic and sure to generate a lot of media attention. If you catch my meaning.

However, about two weeks ago Dobovšek quit the SMC parliamentary group as well, thereby changing the internal relations within the coalition. Because with him gone, the Social democrats, most junior of coalition partners suddenly started to make a difference, as they provided the votes necessary for the coalition to claim a majority. While Dobovšek was on-board, the SMC and DeSUS themselves had 46 votes with SD more or less simply providing the body-count.

But with the man gone, SD leader Dejan Židan started boasting how the party will now claim its rightful spot, prompting DeSUS main honcho Karl Erjavec to tell Židan to get off that horse and not get ahead of himself. At that time it seemed as if Teflon Karl is (finally) suffering from a case of bruised ego. Little did we know the old trickster was about to do some political poaching of his won. Late last week Peter Vilfan of Alenka Bratušek’s ZaAB announced he is switching allegiances and crossing over to DeSUS.

Transfer window

Vilfan, former professional basketball player (hence the title of the post) started out as an unlikely politician in Ljubljana city council, first elected in 2005 on the coat-tails of Zoran Janković’s sweeping mayoral victory and then – in similar vein – to the parliament in 2011. He quit the city council in February 2014, officially due to corruption charges against Janković, but was rumoured to have ulterior motives in a real-estate deal that a city council vote on a news zoning plan about that time would enable and wanted to avoid unseemly appearances.

Anyhow, Vilfan resigned as MP a couple of months later as well. He was involved in a traffic accident, hitting a pedestrian with his car and was a DUI suspect. To his credit Vilfan did not try to skirt the issue but quit almost immediately and paid the hurt senior citizen a visit in the hospital. Luckily, the victim only suffered a broken arm and a lab analysis showed Vilfan was not intoxicated while driving. In a sense he kept to a standard of political hygiene that one would expect from a representative of the people. Which, sadly, is news in Slovenia. But it probably also helped Vilfan get re-elected in 2014 snap elections as one of four MPs of Alenka Bratušek’s fledgling party ZaAB, which splintered off from Jankovič’s Positive Slovenia. But soon after AB’s failed Euro-bid, things went south there as well, culminating for now in Vilfan switching teams.

Adding insult to injury, DeSUS not only picked up an MP, bringing their total to eleven, they also again marginalised the SD, giving enough votes to PM Miro Cerar to marginalize the most junior coalition partner and – not to be overlooked – being able to drive an even harder bargain protecting their particular interests in an already sluggish privatisation process.

Now, it seems plausible that Vilfan jumping ship on Bratušek will start an exodus from the party group. Well, exodus might be overreaching a word since after Vilfan’s departure the ZaAB party group is down to three MPs, a minimum required to actually be a parliamentary party group rather than just a set of independent MPs and enjoy the perks that come with it, such as participation in committee memberships.

Exodus

But the point is that remaining ZaAB MPs may well be on the market as well. Save former PM Alenka Bratušek herself, although given the egotistical lows she performed after successfully bringing the country from the brink in 2013, it is not entirely inconceivable she’d quit her own party group, too. But that’s just pengovsky being evil. More realistically, rumour has it that Mirjam Bon Klanjšček is to follow in Vilfan’s footsteps and make DeSUS male/female ratio look better come Autumn, the big question is just what exactly will Jani Möderndorfer do.

The man with a plan, the other great survivor of Slovenian politics, he hasn’t placed a bad political bet in his life. At the very least ever since he helped start a rift in the Ljubljana section of LDS in 2002 which ultimately led to the party breaking up and emergence of Zares (of which he, ultimately, was not a member). He then stuck with Janković all the way to the parliamentary elections in 2011, emerging as leader of the largest parliamentary group. But when things came to a head within the party in 2014 and Janković came to collect, Möderndorfer chose PM Bratušek over Janković. Wisely so, it transpired, since Janković’s Positive Slovenia proper did not make it above the 4-percent threshold in 2014 elections, while Bratušek’s ZaAB did, just barely.

Therefore, it will be interesting to see if Möderndorfer jumps ship as well or will he go down with it for the first time. From where he stands, both are equally legitimate. The interesting part is that he now faces a dilemma not dissimilar to that of Dimitrij Rupel: does he quit politics and gets a job (he is, among other things, a certified sign-language interpreter), or does he make another leap, possibly finding himself on the same boat as Rupel – as a member of the SMC.

Politics indeed makes for strange bedfellows.

Tele-kom, Tele-go

The supervisory board of the Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SDH) is expected to finally end the sad saga of the sale of Telekom Slovenije today. The state owned telco was put up for sale as a part of the deal then-PM Alenka Bratušek and her FinMin Uroš Čufer made with Brussels in 2013 to avoid a bailout that would send Slovenia into the special Olympics category together with Greece and Cyprus (as well as Ireland and Spain, to a lesser extent).

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Telekom Slovenije management might get new bosses soon (source: The Firm™)

To cut a long story short, the company was put up for sale soon after the SDH was formed and when it became clear that the new Slovenian government will go ahead with the attempted sale, despite PM Cerar’s vocal reservations during the election campaign, all hell broke loose. Cerar’s government nearly went tits-up with the SD threatening to quit the coalition (but didn’t and wouldn’t, because gravy train), there was a very public and very loud stooshie between the PM and his defence minister Janko Veber of SD, who was then relieved of his duties. And in general, as the days passed, the debate on Telekom was becoming ever more charged.

But in the end Deutsche Telekom, the supposed bogeyman in this story did not even place a bid, leaving Cinven, a British fund to go at it alone. Which was a bit of a #wtf moment, especially for opponents of the sale as it became clear that people are not exactly queuing to snap up the company. And after much wrangling the final offer was around 110 euros per share with additional 20 per share later on if certain conditions are met and benchmarks achieved. Yesterday, Telekom Slovenije (TLSG) traded at 98 euros per share. And in the end it was all about whether the SDH will accept Cinven’s offer. And this is where the fun really starts.

The issue is so charged both politically and emotionally that any politician with at least a half-developed survival instinct would rather walk away from it or find a way to maintain status quo. And every so often even PM Cerar gave the impression that he would rather see the Telekom problem simply go away. But it didn’t and in the end, the SDH management OKd the Cinven deal and kicked the issue upstairs, to the supervisory board. Which after much deliberation OKd the deal as well but kicked it upstairs to the government, acting as SDH’s shareholder assembly. And after even more deliberation (an eight-hour cabinet meeting on Sunday last), the government decided to kick the issue downstairs, to the SHD supervisory board, saying they’re paid to do it and that it’s their job.

Thus an interesting situation was created whereupon the SDH management, its supervisory board and government green-lighted the deal, and now everyone is looking around, waiting for someone to say “sold!”. The Board is apparently scheduled to meet later today as to catch a deadline set by Cinven. The fund is threatening to pack-up and leave should the deal be nixed or final decision somehow delayed yet again.

But on the fate of the deal hinges the internal dynamic of the coalition. Namely, should the deal go south at the very last moment (and that at the moment seems unlikely, despite the massive pressure from anti-privatisation camp), the SD, now barely hanging on would probably score massive points, overtake United left (ZL) at the top spot in the polls and probably start calling the shots within the coalition. Most of them, anyway. Because not only is the SD fighting a politically symbolic battle, the outcome will have massive repercussions for the party in terms of access to resources, influencers, decision makers, and the party’s own political prospects.

Watching very carefully will be Karl Erjavec of DeSUS, who is mostly sitting this one out, but is gearing up for a similar fight over Zavarovalnica Triglav, the largest insurer in Slovenia. If Miro Cerar and his SMC prevail, then Teflon Karl better start preparing a different strategy to keep Triglav in state hands and, by extension within his sphere of influence. If, however, the Telekom is not sold, then Erjavec can simply cash in the support he gave to the SD prior to election, divide the spoils and live happily ever after.

Not that the anti-privatisation camp is throwing in the towel, either. While the SD will probably not leave the coalition over the Telekom (not that it could, with its six votes, anyhow), they are trying everything else. Thus yesterday evening an 11th hour attempt was made at derailing the deal. Mladina weekly ran a story about a due-diligence, commisioned by a potential bidder which supposedly showed Telekom shares are worth as much as 190 euro.

Now, under normal conditions would have been a bombshell. But these are not normal conditions. The pressure brought to bear in this case is beyond anything we’ve seen in recent history. At the very least, this is the first time the wrangling, arm-twisting and threats are done out in the open, at the highest level of politics and public life in general. Therefore, the first question that begs asking is why is it then the British fund is the only bidder? This phantom bidder could have made an offer of say, EUR 150 per share and still make a deal of the decade. But it didn’t. And that’s all that matters.

At any rate, whatever the fuck the SDH supervisory board decides today, will probably mark the end of a period. Not just for Telekom Slovenije, but for Slovenian politics. The fallout will be massive. If the deal falls through, what little credibility Cerar’s administration gained at home and in Brussels, will have disappeared as the PM will be seen as being shoved around easily. If, however, the SDH board does finally OK the sale, Cerar’s problems are far from over. Not only on account of DeSUS holding a baseball bat to fend of privatisation of Zavarovalnica Triglav but also because the anti-privatisation camp nearly succeeded this time around and will be anything but disheartened in the next round.

And while early elections are not in the cards any time soon (not yet, at least), life in the ruling coalition will become increasingly difficult as the SD seem to have found their voice (their only problem being that it is the same voice the ZL is using, only much more effectively). With this in mind, the possibility of a coalition expansion or even reshuffle seems plausible.

 

 

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Of Morons and Ministers

After the parliament voted to dismiss defence minister with a 68-11 vote, Janko Veber’s very own Social Democrats predictably decided not to leave the ruling coalition, regardless. And while the debate, most of it held behind closed doors under the pretext of confidential information being used, proved that security issues were indeed secondary and that the real fight was about sale of Telekom Slovenije, the whole political clusterfuck amounted to little more than a storm in a very leaky tea-cup. Namely, the company in question is not as sought for as some wanted and other feared. On Monday, only one binding offer for Telekom was submitted and – adding insult to injury – it wasn’t the Jerrys. It was, in fact, a British investment fund Cinven.

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Telekom Slovenije (TSLG) share in the past year (source: Ljubljana Stock Exchange)

In all honesty, this was in fact more than just a political dust-up as tensions did flare high and the parliament debated Veber’s dismissal. The exact content of the debate is unknown, that being closed session and all, but word on the street has it that Veber and Cerar were ripping each other a new one. Which also explains why the public was excluded. Apparently, there was next to nothing confidential info mentioned in a five-hous-plus long debate but the whole thing was an ugly sight to see and the coalition, especially the SMC wanted to avoid that. But in the end, this was not the coalition-toppling earthquake many have speculated or indeed wanted it to be.

Implosion of Janko Veber

Politically speaking, this was a marginal victory for PM Miro Cerar. Not because he would have done a marvelous job of treading this particular issue, but mostly because Veber fucked up only days before the parliament session. Just as he was gaining some ground on Cerar, he threatened the prime minister with criminal charges on a count of destabilizing country defences, basically telling the PM he should be put on trial for high treason. With that Veber went into self-destruct mode, just revving up the rhetoric and not substantiating it with, well, anything. To put it in Top Fun terms, his ego was writing checks his body couldn’t cash.

Veber’s spectacular implosion overshadowed a just as equally embarrassing event. Namely, just as Veber moved to defenestrate Veber, the newly minted science, sport and education minister Klavdija Markež stepped on a landmine in the form of her masters’ thesis being mostly plagiarized. Which turned out to be true and prompted her immediate resignation, only five days after she had been nominated to the position. A huge embarrassment for Cerar as Markež’s predecessor Setnikar Cankar was dismissed for excessive earnings, tainting the clean image of PM Cerar and his party.

But in the end, it was the SD which blinked. And for good reason. If the party followed the path its VP had set, it would have found itself in opposition together with the United Left (ZL). Which would be bad news for SD as the ZL has the same number of deputies and are much better at being the rabid opposition party than the SD ever was. Not to mention the vast ground-network the SD has to maintain which costs money. Not to mention all the debt the party has incurred over the years and is now struggling to repay. And it’s much harder to do that when you’re in the opposition. Just as the once-mighty LDS. What’s left of it, anyway.

Minister for agriculture and defence

As a result, Slovenia is now in a mildly bizarre situation where it’s government in effect has a minister for agriculture and defence as Dejan Židan, SD’s main honcho temporarily took on defence portfolio as well. Technically, this set-up can last six months at the longest (three months, plus one three-months extension, as per law).

This is not the first time defence department was attached to another sitting minister, however. Years ago, under one of Drnovšek governments, the legendary PM, during one of his defence-minister-voes simply appointed science minister Lojze Marinček. An overall joyous character, the professor-turned-politician took the role in stride and went around official functions (which usually included then-president Milan Kučan) running around asking “has anyone seen my Commander-in-Chief?” and generally making light of the embarrassingly protracted situation.

To their credit, the SD said they will come with a suitable candidate sooner than in six months. although what passes as a “suitable candidate” in this day and age is debatable, to be honest.

Homo homini minister (of defence)

But as if one (former) defence minister making a fool out of himself wasn’t enough, his predecessor (many times removed) had to add his two cents. Or whatever the fuck his measure of monetary value is. Namely, while Veber, or more precisely, his social media manager was doing his best to make his case on Twitter (and failing badly), at some point he responded to a tweet by Janez Janša who accused Veber of lying with regard to secure locations used by the army. Veber replied with some sort of  rebuttal upon which Janša replied with calling Veber a moron. Literally.

While Janša might have actually had a point (at the very least is takes one to know one) the ease with which elected officials, senior political leaders at that, dig new lows in public communication is flabbergasting. Perhaps this is the result of Janša slipping ever more into irrelevance and being unable to do anything about it, but it does explain just why exactly fewer and fewer people want to have anything to do with him. Case in point being the NSi, which stands to reap benefits from what has since been dubbed The Veberkom Affair.

Last week Janša floated the idea of a shadow government, inviting anybody who would join, to well, join. The “everybody” was of course limited to the NSi, the only other opposition party on the political right-wing and the NSi said “thanks, but no thanks”. Janša took the rejection badly (as he always does) and threatened the rejectors will pay a heavy price for it. The truth, however, is that the NSi can in the long run only profit from its newfound spine. Indeed, they will most likely push for some sort of concessions from PM Cerar on issues dear to them. This will probably include but will not be limited to legislation regarding post-war grave-sites, an issue Cerar has already hinted he is willing to meet them at least half way.

And all of a sudden, nobody is in a hurry to sell the Telekom. Even the NSi, disappointed that there was only one offer (more likely: disappointed Deutsche Telekom did not bid), now say it might be prudent to halt the sale. The PM’s office, wisely, is not commenting on the ongoing procedures, but it seems that the political parties at large see the sale of Telekom in terms of short-term income, either for the budget or for party coffers and not in terms of what is best for the company.

For what it’s worth…

In fact, the current political elite is behaving as your average Slovenian small-time entrepreneur, valuing his business by the time and money he invested and not by what other people are willing to pay for it (i.e. it’s market value). As if we learned nothing from the numerous false starts of sale of Mercator retail chain resulting in the final price-tag being only a fraction of what it used to be or from the so-called Brewery Wars, which have led to rise and fall of Boško Šrot of Laško Brewery and, ultimately to the sale of the company for only good 50% more what Laško paid for Union ten years ago to monopolize the beer market in Slovenia.

Thus, the expectations that the value of Telekom Slovenije will rise on its own, are naive at least and the share price reflects that. It has been in a free-fall for the better part of the last two weeks and has rebounded slightly only today. A company which has not released an innovative product of its own for the better part of the decade, has spread itself too thin across the region only so see itself rolling back Balkan operations in the past few years and is being dragged through courts for allegedly abusing its market positions will require much more than just responsible management and ownership to increase its value. Since the state has, unfortunately, repeatedly failed to provide either (with a few notable exceptions far between), there is no compelling reason for the sale not to be realised, pending negotiations.

Unless, of course, the political elite suddenly wants to prove Janko Veber right.

 

 

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Social Democrats Between Cerar And Veber-y Hard Place

in 1994, then-defence minister Janez Janša, refusing to quit office over Depala Vas Affair was removed from office by a parliamentary majority in what was probably one the most tense periods of Slovenian statehood. A defence minister using military spooks against civilians to his own needs is never a good idea, let alone in a fledgling democracy. And in an ironic fuck you by Mother History itself, twenty-one years later, almost to the day, Slovenia is again faced with a defence minister running amok and refusing to stand down. This time, however, it’s not Janez Janša, the now near-fallen leader of the SDS, but rather Janko Veber, of Social Democrats (SD) who directed OVS, the military intelligence service, to poke around the sale of Telekom Slovenije. Namely, he defied PM Miro Cerar and refused his calls to resign. AS a result, the PM will now ask the parliament to replace Veber.

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Picture related

Now, drawing parallels between Janša and Veber only goes so far, although a nasty one pops up on a seemingly unrelated question of handling the issue of Roma family Strojan some years ago. This time around, there is no danger of the select army units being deployed to “secure key installations”, no thousands of protesters in front of the parliament sporting pitchforks and shovels and threatening to do generally unpleasant things to deputies if defence minister goes. But one would think that the political class would have advanced both in style as well as content in the past twenty-odd years. Especially political veterans such as Veber who definitely have enough mileage to know better.

As a result, a clusterfuck of reasonable proportions is now brewing inside the ruling coalition. The SD is, for the moment, standing firm behind Veber with party boss Dejan Židan (who doubles as minister of agriculture) going on and on about Veber doing nothing inappropriate and that SD will defend ministers who do their work. On the other hand, Cerar’s demand Veber step down won him a round of applause from the opposition NSi and SDS, while coalition member DeSUS is apparently still calculating how to profit from this as of today on the same boat with Cerar.

The thing is that although technically his boss, PM Cerar cannot simply dismiss Veber. Because constitution. The ground law namely states that ministers are nominated by the PM but appointed to office by the parliament, hence it is only the parliament which can dismiss them. This stipulation has caused trouble more than once, with mixed results. Amazingly, back in 1992, during his second administration, Janez Drnovšek tried to replace Jožica Puhar of what is now the SD (!) but failed. Puhar later resigned of her own accord, while Drnovšek went on to become one of Slovenia’s iconic political leaders.

The same conundrum, albeit with much more melodrama attached, was faced by PM Borut Pahor in 2010, when he demanded that DeSUS leader Karl Erjavec resign as minister of environment due to a damning report by the Court of Audit. Teflon Karl refused, forcing Pahor to call upon the parliament to remove Erjavec from office. Only then did the man give in and resigned, saying he wanted to spare the PM further embarrassment.

And this is quite possibly the scenario we are facing today. Not unlike DeSUS in 2010, the SD in 2015 can, despite reportedly a strong faction in the party to do so, ill afford to quit the ruling coalition. Because resources. You see, the party is but a mere shadow of its former self. It won 30 seats in the parliament in 2008. Six years later it hardly mustered six. And it fared only marginally better on municipal level. The only asset it really still has is its organisation and ground network. But that needs to be supported somehow, mostly by influence exerted on various levels to either bring in financing or to please the right people. Preferably both. And you can not do that when in opposition.

So while PM Cerar might be faced with an undesirable prospect of a single-vote majority in the parliament (SMC and DeSUS combined can put together 46 votes), going back to square one, reopen coalition negotiations and try to lure Alenka Bratušek’s ZaAB to join in on the fun or even give a shot to a minority government rule, the SD is faced with a much more fundamental question of its survival. Of the party as a whole, not just survival of its current leadership set and the gravy train attached to it. The on

The only thing going in favour of the SD is the vast amount of experience it can draw from. The SMC is still well-versed in the intricacies of political maneuvering and is prone to trip over things that need not being tripped over. One such thing is the SD trying to shift the blame for the current situation on the SMC, saying the PM is not adhering to the coalition agreement by speeding through the motions to replace Veber. But Cerar really doesn’t have any other option. Even before the whole thing escalated to boiling point it was clear the PM can not simply let this one slide. There he was, faced with a minister who clearly stepped is bending over backwards trying to explain why, of all the possible agencies, bureaus and directorates did he have to pick army spooks to assess the sale of Telekom. Furthermore, why the bleeping bleep did that he, while claiming to have acted in the interests of national security, exposed the inner communication of military intelligence which – if nothing else – showed that the service was just as divided on the issue as the rest of the country. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a security risk. And Veber trying to explain all that was a textbook definition of a shitty job.

If Cerar ignored the issue or even supported Veber, he would have not only condoned Veber’s actions but – just as importantly – empowered the SD to the point of near-invincibility, because if you can get away with abusing military intelligence for political purposes, you can get away with anything. And before the faithful jump citing Veber’s concern for national security, we should not forget his party chief Židan who yesterday more or less plainly told the newsmedia the true casus belli was not national security as such but rather control of the Telekom. And this evening, Veber upped the ante, echoing Židan and even implied that while he was working in the interests of the country, Cerar wasn’t. Which is stopping just short of accusing the prime minister of high treason. And that’s a statement that’s very hard to walk away from. So the question do jour is whether the SD will walk away from Veber or from the government.

If pengovsky were a betting man, he’d bet on the former. Especially since there are other big companies for sale as well and if the SD quits the government, they relinquish what little influence they will have over the issue after the dust settles.

 

 

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Referendum On Same-Sex Marriage Blocked But Not Over And Done With

Slovenian parliament yesterday voted to block the referendum on same-sex marriage by an overwhelming majority od 53 votes in favour nad 21 against. This comes after the SMC ironed out the problems they had with the move by the United Left, SocDems nad Alenka Bratušek‘s ZaAB, which called a special session of the parliament to block the referendum on the grounds that it would put a human rights question up for a popular vote.

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Final vote in favour of blocking referendum on same-sex marriage (source: RTVSLO)

The SMC initially said it would not impede the referendum, causing much furore in the LGBT community among the progressive part od the society in general, especially since they voted in favour of the law. But as pengovsky wrote days ago, there was much more to their misgivings than a simple flip-flop on the issue.

You see, the story does not end bere. In fact it is entirely possible that the referendum will be held nevertheless.

Namely, what happened yesterday was that a new constitutional provision allowing for blocking the referendum was applied for the first time ever. And now the ball is in the petitioners’ court, giving them a chance to challenge the parliament move in the Constitutional Court. Aleš Primc & Co. will obviously do exactly that. Especially since they’ve apparently already collected the necessary 40.000 signatures.

And as usual in Slovenia, this constitutional provision, enacted during Janša government 2.0 was not followed up with necessary legislation. This existing legislation on popular initiative is to be applied in analogy which leaves even more room for manoeuvre that there was meant to be in the first place.

So, the way things stand now, the whole same-sex marriage issue will land in front of nine judges of the constitutional court. The judges have 30 days to decide but they have anything but a consistent record on such issue. Both as an institution and as individuals. In fact, given past experience, it not at all unfathomable that they will allow the referendum to go forward, be it on procedural ground, be it on substance.

And if you’re not worried yet, try this on for size: in the constitutional court, the deck is stacked against proponents of same-sex marriage. Because technically the defendant is the National Assembly as an institution and not political parties which voted in favour of blocking the referendum. This means that the actual legal argument for blocking the referendum will be laid out by the parliamentary legal service. Which in itself is not a problem, since the said service sports some of the best lawyers in the country. The problem is that the parliamentary legal service can by its very definition only make a legal argument.

In all probability, the argument in favour of the referendum will be made by more or less the same legal team which is heavily affiliated with the NSi and by extension the Catholic church and which already has a couple of constitutional victories under its belt, most notably the case against the naming of Tito Street and, more recently, a case against discriminatory funding of private schools with regard to state schools.

But the question at hand is not just legal, it is also ideological and emotional. And nothing prevents the judges to look beyond the mere letter of the law. In which case the odds for green-lighting the referendum increase dramatically.

And should this happen, the petitioners will have been inadvertently given an enormously powerful weapon in the referendum debate. Namely, it goes without saying they would claim that even the constitutional court thinks that same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Which of course wouldn’t be true, but they would go ahead and say it anyway. Because the more doubt they can sow in the people’s minds, the better. And the proponents of same-sex marriage, an already wily heterogeneous group, would face even more of an uphill battle, demanding even more discipline and consistency.

All of that in a debate on an issue where emotions will ultimately decide. So, while the vote in the parliament was a politically bold move, the issue is far from settled. And until then, the law allowing same-sex marriage is on ice.

 

 

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Vexating Veber

Defence minister Janko Veber landed in a massive pool of boiling water. Last week the parliamentary intelligence oversight committee made a surprise inspection of the OVS, the military intelligence service. The inspection uncovered that the OVS, acting on Veber’s orders, was making inquires about the sale of Telekom Slovenije, the state-owned telco which is in the final stages of privatisation of its large part. Since Veber, a senior official of the coalition SocDems has a bit of a history of loudness regarding the sale (before being appointed minister he decried the intended sale as high treason) and since the SD as such is less than lukewarm on privatisation of the company, all hell broke loose. The SDS and the NSi, the latter in the form of its young-and-stellar MP Matej Tonin were quick to claim Veber was abusing office and using the intelligence service to derail the already protracted sale. And to be honest, Veber didn’t do a particularly good job at proving them wrong.

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Defence minister Janko Veber is in the spotlight these past couple of days (source)

The whole thing has a couple of dimensions. First, there’s the fact that Veber did a shitty job at explaining himself. He first claimed to have been within his rights and indeed duties and that he only asked the OVS to check the effects of selling Telekom on critical military, intelligence and first-response systems under the assumption that threat prevention would be harder if Telekom was foreign-owned. Which of course begs the question just how easy is Telekom making it for intelligence services to wire-tap, collect and retain data while it is state-owned. To put in other words: could be be that in a post-Snowden world a privatised Telekom Slovenia would actually be good thing from the standpoint of an average Slovenian‘s privacy?

Because based on a report initially released by the ministry of defence after the story broke, the analysis showed that most of Slovenian first responders, civil defence and natural disaster management services use Telekom infrastructure and commercial services and that quality of those would diminish if the company would become foreign, possibly German-owned. However, the report has a couple of problems. It’s not really an analysis but rather an amalgam of second-hand reports, mostly from Croatia, where Deutche Telekom snapped up their state-owned telco and statements that existing quality of service needs to be maintained even after the sale is completed. While legitimate concerns, these aren’t exactly rocket science and you don’t really need military intelligence service to come up with a two-page report.

And secondly, the report pre-dates Veber’s order to OVS upon which the parliamentary committee “stumbled”. At that point calls for Veber’s resignation were mounting and despite his initial defiance he soon realised that his was a precarious position as PM Cerar did not exactly run to support him. As a result and at insistence of the NSi the defence minister admitted to existence of a second, more detailed report which he even declassified although it is still a working paper, not a final document. This report shows various sections of the OVS have a different take on the effects of the sale. The predominant view seems to be that the ownership of the company does not matter and that there are no reports on potentially harmful effects of the sale, but the OVS did not yet make a final conclusion.

This report has a problem, too. And that is that Veber, although he claims all along that he was only acting in the interests of national security, declassified a working paper which pointed out a division within the OVS and did so without batting an eyelid the moment his political survival was at stake. This, of course, gives some credence to claims by Tonin that Veber was following a political rather than a national-security agenda when he issued the order.

But then again, the parliamentary intelligence committee, too, didn’t just stumble upon the relevant documents. The inspection party, which besides Tonin included MPs Branko Grims of the SDS and Matjaž Nemec of the SD, knew exactly what it was looking for. At the very least, Tonin and Grims did. Tonin later claimed they were pointed in that direction by an OVS whistleblower. But for a person to become a whistleblower, he or she must go public with the information if not reveal his/her identity. What Grims and Tonin came up with was an inside leak by an informant within the secret service. Which smacks of precisely the same abuse of intelligence service they are accusing Veber of.

So what we are looking at, in fact, is amateur night of attempts to make political gains over sale of Telekom, market value of the company be damned. The MPs obviously knew what they were after, which makes this a political raid rather than a proper parliamentary inspection. And yet, at the same time Veber is stumbling over his own legs trying to come up with some sort of plausible explanation for his misconduct. Because misconduct this was.

The last, and most worrying dimension of the whole issue is the fact that Veber ordered military intelligence to poke around a civilian issue. This country was built on re-establishing civilian control over the military and anything that smacks of things being the other way around. OVS is not the only government service to use Telekom infrastructure. It is also not the only one to wire-tap its cables. In fact, SOVA and possibly the CrimPolice are the only government inteligence agencies that can legally and legitimately make inquires into deals about Telekom. Even more, they can do so in behalf of the OVS as well, leaving the military spy-service well out of it.

This appears to have dawned on the SD as well. Namely, earlier today Siol.net (ironically, a news portal in part owned by Telekom) reported that the freshly minted party gen-sec Dejan Levanič threatened the party will quit the coalition should PM Cerar demand Veber’s resignation. But Levanič later claimed he was misunderstood while party boss Dejan Židan said Veber’s dismissal was only a hypothetical posibility and reiterated Veber was victim of a smear campaign.

Perhaps. But the fact remains that he asked a part of the military to busy itself with a civilian matter. And he is doing a very poor job of explaining himself. If this drags on much longer, the OVS report might become less of a problem than a defence minister who is turning into damaged goods.

 

 

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Same-Sex Legislation (Predictably) Not Yet Home Safe

Remember when pengovsky wrote that the new same-sex weddings legislation is not yet home safe? Well, guess what…

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Modern Centre Party – SMC (source)

The SMC seemingly flip-flopped on the issue, saying they will not challenge a referendum initiative which would yet again put up the same-sex weddings issue to a popular vote. Naturally most of the supporters of same-sex weddings went apeshit and the SMC was served a proper Twitter-storm. Its intensity was probably confounded by the fact that in the eyes of many people the SMC finally saw the light by voting in favour of the legislation (and doing so en bloc) but has now retraced its steps and found itself on its pre-election neither-nor position.

And, admittedly, it did not look good. Even since Aleš Primc and his band of merry men initiated yet another referendum bid to strike down this harmless but ideologically very loaded piece of legislation, it was more or less the accepted wisdom that the parliament will use the recent changes to the constitution to their fullest effect, prevent the referendum on the grounds of this being a human-rights matter and then let Primc fight it the Constitutional Court. Well, apparently not. At the very least, not just yet. Namely, the ruling SMC stated they’ve no intention of denying the people a vote on an important issue. Later they’ve signaled the decision may be revised but at any rate this turn of events made a lot of people unhappy and they sure let the SMC know.

There are a couple of ways to digest this. The most obvious one is to say that the SMC flip-flopped on the issue or – even worse – that its support for the legislation was not genuine but rather a price they had to pay to join the ALDE (liberals) political group on the european level. This is possible, especially if reports from some months ago are correct and UK LibDems did indeed take issue with SMC sitting on the fence on this prior to elections. But one would like to think that European parliamentary groups take themselves slightly more serious than that and that a true about-face on same-sex weddings would have wider recriminations for the offending party.

So chalk that one to “possible, but not likely” column. A bit more likely is the possibility of the SMC parliamentary group not being entirely on the same page on the issue. There are thirty-six SMC MPs, most of them with little political experience and – understandably – of 50 shades of liberal ideology. So the decision not to go against the referendum head-on (not yet, at least), might have something to do with that. Keeping 36 people on-board on a highly divisive issue while they’re all lobbied and bombarded with arguments from all sides is not an easy task.

And finally, it could be the party simply got scared of its own power and what it can do with it. With great power comes great responsibility and never in the history of Slovenia did such a greenhorn party with such a politically inexperienced leadership hold so much power. And it seem probable, to pengovsky at least, that the moral imperative of ethical policy making simply got the better of them. As a result, Slovenia will once again be the battleground of rational-but-useless arguments in favour of same-sex weddings, opposed by emotional outcries backed up by manipulations, fear mongering and blatant lies by the opponents. The rhetoric is already there. Now it will only get worse (Slovenian only).

But the referendum rules have changed since the Family code was struck down two years ago. Which brings us to the fun part.

Because while the SMC said it will not impede the referendum initiative, there are unofficial signals it might back the bid to prevent the referendum. And while the (centre-)left parties are pushing forward with the bid, they can do didly squat without votes of the SMC. The way this works is that once the petition to hold a referendum is filed, the parliament can decide by a simple majority the referendum is illegal as it deals with basic human rights which then leaves it to the petitioners to challenge the decision at the constitutional court. And with the current composition of the constitutional court suggesting anything but a clear dismissal of the referendum, it seems reasonable to expect that the legislation allowing same-sex weddings will be challenged on a referendum one way or another.

And if there is a referendum, the new rules stipulate that the legislation is struck down if a majority votes against it, but only is this majority represents more than 20% of all eligible voters. Which means about 340.000 people will have to make the effort and cast their “no” vote on referendum day. Which is quite an obstacle.

With this in mind, other dimensions open up which put the SMC decision into a slightly more nuanced perspective. For example, it is not entirely clear whether the special session of the parliament can already be called. Namely, if you wanted to truly dot the i’s and cross the t’s (as lawyer-heavy SMC is probably inclined to do) it seems reasonable to wait and see whether the referendum petitioners will actually collect the necessary 40.000 confirmed signatures. While they’ve done it before, this is a condition that should not be taken for granted. If by any chance Primc & Co. fail in collecting the signatures, then the whole brouhaha will have been in vain and the SMC will have been vilified for nothing. Politically, at least. At the very least, this means the party still has about three weeks to decide whether to fight the referendum in court or not.

But the last – admittedly most wildly optimistic – scenario is also the most interesting. What if, just what if the referendum is held without being challenged in court and fails? What if the majority of the people votes in favour of the law or at the very least decide same-sex weddings are a non-issue and don’t bother to vote, thereby helping the legislation to survive? If that were to be the case, the SMC would suddenly be in the position to claim it gauged the public mood much more accurately than any of the left-wing parties. And even if their reasoning did not go this far, a favourable referendum outcome would give them back much of the political credibility they’ve lost in the past couple of weeks.

At any rate, there are a number of ways this story can unfold and not all of them are negative. But as pengovsky was warning even as the left was celebrating, the hard work had only begun.

 

 

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