Category: Slovenia

Last Monday Slovene Parliament again voted on the 2007 Annual Account, which – as you will remember – was confirmed in its original form regardless of the fact that the Court of Audit found that the Account wrongly presents a budgetary surplus rather than a deficit which Janša’s government created really. However. Since the former PM started sulking and threatened to boycott all votes until the Account is passed in the original form, the current government bit the bullet and quickly gave in. The reason? It needed Janša’s votes to ratify Croatian entry into NATO.

The Two Amigos

The speed at which Borut Pahor‘s government swallowed its pride astonished many. One minute there they were, tearing apart Janez Janša‘s handling of public finances and using creative accounting techniques, whereas the next minute they were told they’ll have to support it for the greater good. You can imagine it didn’t go down well with them. In fact, some people went positively apeshit. Understandably so. The memory of Dimitrij Rupel being resurrected from the political oblivion is still very much fresh, as are attempts of cuddling with the opposition in some sort of partnership, as if running the coalition was not difficult enough. And now this. Somewhat surprisingly though, the most fiery piece of criticism came from a somewhat unexpected direction. Slavko Ziherl, the man who resigned over Rupel wrote an open letter to PM Borut Pahor (pengovsky goes: “sounds familiar?“) where, among other things, he wrote:

Why do I write this? Because I want to benevolently warn you of the current political situation, which you – partly because of your good will – don’t see for what it really is. Because I want you to be my and our prime minister at least until 2012. Because I’m afraid that you will not last until then because you are paving the way for Janez Janša to regain power.

…and goes on to add…

They say that a mature person doesn’t feel the need to please everyone. It is enough for one to be respected by those close to him/her. It is especially important for a person in a leading position to be aware of that. Among Slovenian leaders you are the most important one at this moment. Had you realised this you’d have shown your maturity and political wisdon. Had you realised that. But as things stand, you produce exactly the opposite effect by looking for consensus with Janez Janša and at the same time neglecting your coalition partners. You are the laughing stock for Janša and his lot, you’re publicly making a fool of yourself, all the while losing support of us, who are your political companions and who share common liberal and human values.
Proof of this is Janša blackmailing you with the 2007 Annual Account.

Ouch. Very ouch. This was probably the most scorching attack from within on a Prime Minister in the history of independent Slovenia. And – truth be said – a lot of what is written (I’ve only quoted a couple of sentences) is true. Especially Pahor’s obsession with bi-partisanship and compromise, which often does leave us wondering just who the hell won the elections really.

However. As is usual in such cases, the letter says just as much about the person who wrote it. And in my opinion the letter shows a level of political naiveté usually seen only in the Peoples’ Party (SLS). Yes, Pahor was way too cosy with Janša. Yes, he is a bit to eager in trying to come across as a generally likeable guy. But he didn’t become the PM just because of that. Apparently, when push comes to a shove he is able to distinguish between long-term political objectives and petty politicking, a distinction which seems to be lost on Ziherl.

Namely: by giving in to Janša’s demands over Annual Account, Pahor took the issue off the table before it grew into a serious political problem. Moreover, he secured ratification of Croatian NATO entry, which was vital if Slovenia is to maintain a status of a credible partner in the border dispute, effectively saying “yes, we have a beef with Croatia, but we won’t let it endanger international security”. Sure, Janša scored a late goal in that particular game and Pahor has only himself to blame, but instead of being dumbfounded he quickly adapted to the new situation, weighed the odds and decided that losing face in Slovenia is preferable to losing face internationally.

The new PM, seems to have learned his lesson, however. He answered Ziherl’s open letter/blog entry with an open letter/website post of his own.

Don’t get me wrong. Political unity at any price is a funny illusion. Almost a dangerous one. According to their different mandates, people in a democratic society have different roles and responsibilities. My readiness to consult and even cooperate with political rivals never has nor ever will circumvent relevant institutions or roles we hold within these institutions. Afterall, we’ve had experience with this. So far, we’ve had four opposition/coalition agreements and none of them ever destabilised our legal and political system. They have, however, contributed to easier attainment of great goals. Goals we might not have reached had there not been for such cooperation.

..and adds

Your letter is critical of me. My position requires me to accept criticism as an everyday occurrence. I do not expect congratulations. My work in politics has always been and remains to be the belief that what I do, I do for common good

A lot of naivete there as well, one might say. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that what we are seeing is a carefully crafted image of a seemingly bi-partisan PM, who is actually rather ruthless in achieving his political goals which may or may not be those of his coalition. Be that as it may, one wonders why did Ziherl write the letter in the first place. It’s not as if we learned anything new. Furthermore, since Ziherl resigned his post and quit the government because of Rupel, he already said that he will have nothing to do with Pahor’s cabinet. Pahor noted the objection and moved on, appearing somewhat arrogant. But now, it is Ziherl who comes across as a slightly spoiled brat who will do anything to get attention.

Unless…

Unless the true target of this letter is not Borut Pahor. Ziherl appears to have gone rouge rogue and wrote the letter without consulting the party. Which is all fine and dandy, had it not been for the small matter of him being LDS vice-president. Which automatically gives his letter an air of an official party line. Which LDS president Katarina Kresal was quick to deny, saying that the party has no position on the issue. Which in turn means, that she is having difficulties controling party’s top echelon. And again, we are faced with two most likely explanations. Either Ziherl is so politically naive that he is not aware of consequences of his actions, or this is a part of a plot to remove Katarina Kresal as LDS president. Could it be that she has outlived her usefulness?

Oh, and if you’re wondering what happened to the Croatia NATO vote? The threat of a referendum still exists. Even more, the National Council (the sort-of-but-not-entirely second chamber) is threatening to veto the ratification, which would require yet another vote by the MPs, again needing a two-thirds majority. And after that, the SLS is threatening to call a referendum, unless the parliament passes a motion saying that Slovenia does not recognise any and all Croatian legislation which violates Slovenian sovereignty. Pengovsky will, however, debate the idiocy of these ideas if and when they become a reality.

Milan M. Cvikl shot to Slovenian political prominence with the Patria affair. He served at various government posts, most notably as State Secretary to Finance Minister Tone Rop during 1996-2000 government of Janez Drnovšek, where the two created a budget every year by employing a brain-washing process known as “Cviklature”, which – so it is said – was not unlike a very sophisticated interrogation/torture technique. Usually a minister (say, a minister of health) would be called to some remote government building, locked up in a room with both Rop and Cvikl, and the two would proceed to explain to the unfortunate minister why his budgetary requests are totally inappropriate, irresponsible and follow wrong goals altogether. Apparently Cvikl came down so hard that Tone Rop, whose communications skills are on a par with a hungover pit-bull on a bad day, was considered the one with a soft touch. Nobody is willing to say exactly what was going on in there, but ministers would invariably emerge back into daylight with a completely different budget proposal which they would defend tooth-and-nail.

Milan M. Cvikl (source)

After Slovenia joined the EU in 2004, Tone Rop (now PM) made Cvikl his minister of European Affairs, as the previous minister Janez Potočnik became European Commissioner for Science and technology. Cvikl didn’t exactly excel at his job, in fact he was seen a bean-counter way out of his depth. But he got enough exposure to get elected as MP on LDS ballot in 2004, when Janez Janša took over as PM. When Janša’s government proposed its first budget, it fell on Cvikl to discuss it during plenary session of the parliament. He did so in a four hour speech, tackling every possible aspect of the budget, tearing it to bits. Even though the budget was passed, MPs were hurting. For most of them it was their first experience of Cviklature, which turned out to be a combination of a loud, nervous and slightly nasal high-pitched voice, incredible stamina and anal retentiveness.

But Cvikl (by then already a member of Social Democrats) really made a name for himself during Partia affair where he chaired the parliament investigative committee and was once again able to employ Cviklature on people whom he called for hearings. He was doing it for three years and was apparently making a lot of people in Janša’s government (as well as the man himself) very nervous, since Janša’s coalition employed a trick by calling his as a witness in front of another investigative committee, effectively removing him form chair of Patria committee.

(on that note: It seems that the Patria investigation is stalled as Finnish investigators have problems tracing money from Austria to Slovenia)

In 2008 elections Cvikl didn’t make it into parliament. Despite his media exposure he wasn’t very popular, which is not at all surprising since he always appears to be in attack mode. He made some tabloid headlines in 2007 as he divorced his wife of god-knows-how-many-years and shacked up with Jerca Legan, a PR specialist who in the past advised CEO of Sistemska tehnika, company which lost the arms deal to Patria. Nevertheless, Cvikl remained in high politics as the new PM Borut Pahor made him secretary general of the government, a very powerful position overseeing the functioning of the entire government.

And it is in this new function (which he so far seems to enjoy) that Cvikl is becoming the centre of a new scandal. News broke (no doubt leaked by himself or his staff) that there was one photocopier too many in the governmental building and that people emplyed by the previous government copied sensitive documents and that the whereabouts of some of these documents are unknown. Cvikl’s predecessor Božo Predalič denies any wrongdoing, but Cvikl is not the one to let go of a piece of meat he just sunk his teeth into. Not that the whole thing will necessarily amount to much.

Just to that I give you a heads-up.

There’s one outstanding debt to settle. More than a week ago news broke of police bringing writer Goran Vojnović in for questioning. Due to shitload of work and other excuses, pengovsky failed to write it up, but some ten days ago Patrick brought it up in comments. Even more to the point, St. Luka has an excellent post on this, unfortunatelly in Slovenian 🙂

Cover of Vojnović’s book

Goran Vojnović is a writer, a columnist and author of a critically acclaimed and somewhat successful book “Čefurji raus!” about difficulties young people of ex-Yugoslav descent face in Slovenia. The book is a work of fiction and its main character Marko is a “čefur” (a derogatory term used by Slovenians for people from former Yugoslav republics), who – beside having trouble of fitting in, facing racism and other social issues – also has a problem with the police, which he refers to by a plethora of other derogatory terms. Pigs, tit-heads, bacon, coppers, scum… it was all there (well, Slovenian equivalents of those phrases, actually). Apparently the book was so succesful that someone in the Association of Police Officers actually read it and was insulted by all the colourful language and promptly filed criminal charges against Vojnović.

Needless to say that this came as a shock. There were already cases of police officers suing writers for libel in work of fiction (which is a contradiction in terms, but hey…), but after some curious legal decisions in favour of the plaintiffs/police officers, where judges proved that they too suffer from a lack of imagination, it was up to the Supreme Court to set the record straight and strike down rulings in favour of the suing police officers. But never before in Slovenia were criminal charges filed against an author for writing a book.

A mild shitstorm ensued, especially since it transpired that the charges were acted upon by Matjaž Šinkovec, who shortly after became Acting Director General of Slovene Police. At that point the new interior minister Katarina Kresal, who appointed Šinkovec, stepped in and denounced actions by the police. Humiliated, Šinkovec stopped the investigation and offered to resign. He also apologised for his poor judgement, whereupon minister Kresal refused his resignation.

So, all is well that ends well? Not exactly. OK, so the Slovenian police (or at least part of it) lacks imagination and a sense of humour. Too bad. But the problem arises when the only organisation which can legally use force against a citizen starts using these powers to curb freedom of speech,thought and artistic expression. Sure, file a libel suit against a writer for writing a work of fiction. Make a fool of yourself. But treating a work of fiction as a criminal offence is dangerous.

Šinkovec got away with a slap on the wrist. Lucky for him. I think that from now on cops should be made to read at least two works of fiction per year as a part of their training. It’ll do wonders, I’m sure.

P.S.: regarding the title of the post (I’ve used it before): it refers to a legendary children song Milicija trenira strogoću (Police Trains for Toughness) written by Goran Bregović, which – performed by a kid – can be understood as a nod to the cops until you realise that it is actually a snub. Yugoslav cops never got it.

Last Thursday Slovenian parliament was due to vote on ratification of Croatian and Albanian NATO membership. Not EU membership, but NATO. Slovenian constitution requires that the parliament ratifies such treaties with a two-thirds majority of MPs present, a rather smart proviso which requires at least some sort of political consensus on such questions. This proviso was put in place especially for Slovenian accession to both EU and NATO in 2004, but has – logically – remained in place ever since. There were some initial hold-ups with this particular ratification process, as the more rabid element of SLS (which in this case stands for Sacred Land of Slovenia) demanded to check if Croatia didn’t by any chance join NATO based on the same maps which Slovenia disputes in the Croatian EU bid. It didn’t and especially since Janez Janša‘s SDS declared to vote in favour of the ratification, things looked bright and sunny for Croatia at least in this department.

What’s 1 plus 1, punk!?

Or so it seemed. Preceding the ratification vote was a vote on Annual Account for 2007 budget, which was drawn up and fully executed by the previous government, led by Janez Janša (due to elections in September, the 2008 budget was – in it’s last month – executed by the new government of Borut Pahor). Now, according to 2007 Annual Account, prepared by Janša’s government, the budget boasted a surplus. Even back then pengovsky wondered how was that possible. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one. After the Court of Audit poured over that particular budget and found that instead of a surplus, Janša’s government created a deficit. Due to Court’s misgivings (which in essence said that Janša’s government cooked up the numbers), and possibly out of malice as well, the coalition MPs rejected the Annual Account until it was amended in accordance with the Court’s findings.

As a result, The Quartet MPs voted to reject the Annual Account, after which all hell broke loose. SDS MPs went apeshit and called an obstruction by leaving the chamber, saying that until the parliament approves the Annual Account in present form, they will not take part in any vote whatsoever. Including the vote on Croatian NATO membership. They of course fully realised that without their vote there is no ratification. Shortly after, on a crisis meeting, the Quartet buckled and send the Annual Account back to the parliament in its original form, without Court of Audit’s amendments.

In all fairness and slightly OT, two things should be said: One, that such creative accounting techniques were employed before as well, always to Court’s dismay. And two, that the Court issued a qualification for 2007 Annual Account, meaning that it gave it a passing mark, but only barely, with instructions how to rectify all the mistakes. But it must also be said that this was the first time when creative accounting was used to display a surplus (to be spent), whereas every other time the numbers were cooked to lower the deficit (to be repaid). In other words, before 2007 the government was minimising its outstanding debt, whereas in 2007 it was creating imaginary money.

Back to the matter at hand. Janez Janša fucked The Quartet by withdrawing support for a key foreign-relations vote just when Slovenia desperately needs to come off as a credible country which does indeed have a beef with Croatia, but will not act irresponsibly when matter of international security are on the table. Remember, that was the same Janez Janša who held the EU presidency only seven months ago and who ran the government as little as two months ago. But now he seems to be concerned only with protecting his record and public image. Last time around he sued people who said that he didn’t do an exactly brilliant job. Since suing the Republic of Slovenia would probably be a bit too much even for him, he rather took his buddy Croatian PM Ivo Sanader a hostage and is now blackmailing the coalition into approving the obviously imaginary surplus.

If I cooked up the numbers in The Firm™, I’d have the Tax Admin all over me in an instant, carrying a hefty fine and possibly jail time. If former PM cooks up the numbers, he gets to hold a press conference and say that the Court of Audit doesn’t know its maths.

And since in politics 1 plus 1 does not necessarily equal 2, the Parliament will any day now vote on and approve the 2007 Annual Account which states that a) Slovenia sported a surplus on 31 December 2007 and b) that the Court of Audit does not know its maths. As a side efect, however, PM Pahor’s idealistic notions of bi-partisanship in Slovene politics took a serious beating. Whether this constitutes a reality check or just a “minor setback” however remains to be seen.

I think it was James Earl Jones in “Clear And Present Danger“, that Reaganesque comedy featuring Indiana Jones, who said “Watch your back, Jack”. Why? Because even though members of a particular administration are suppose to on the same team, they constantly plotting against each other, striving for more influence while limiting others in achieving that same goal. Call it the dark side of checks-and-balances.

Sean Connery and Harrison Ford (source)

In case of the new Slovenian government, it is Gregor Golobič‘s Zares which appears to have taken the early lead. Given the party’s modest result (with respect to Social Democrats, the senior partner in The Quartet, that is), Golobič has positioned his party in all the right places. With Matej Lahovnik as the minister of economy the party has direct (political) influence over handling the economic crisic. With Golobič himself as minister of higher education, science and technology, it holds control over the area where major increases in spending were promised. With Irma Pavlinič Krebs as minister of public administration, there’s direct influence on the entire bureaucracy and – finally – with Majda Širca as minister of culture, there’s direct influence on future media development, where a shift from provincial 19th century “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” mindset to a more liberal and urban one is already apparent.

The above does not mean that things are OK just because they are the way they are. It only shows great political skill of Gregor Golobič, who has played his hand more or less brilliantly. However, his political power is far from unlimited (a stark contrast from, say, ten years ago) and he was soon playing defence, when PM Borut Pahor – not to be outdone by his coalition partner – started building a parallel power-structure. And I don’t mean stuffing (sorry, staffing) his office with Dimitrij Rupel. No, PM Pahor was about to create a sort-of-advisory Council on Energy which would report directly to him. The trouble was that energy is part of the economic portfolio, which is why minister Lahovnik of Zares saw this as Pahor pissing in his pool. The backlash was imminent, there was even talk of Zares quitting the coalition and Pahor backed down.

However, Zares will not be able to able to withstand the pressure indefinitely. Rumours are aplenty and – depending on who you listen to – there is talk of Social democrats’ MPs switching over to Zares as well as at least one Zares minister not being happy with her position (pengovsky goes:whoops, me and my big mouth :oops:). So while they wait for Borut Pahor to come crashing down on them again, possibly with great vengeance and furious anger, Golobič and the rest of Zares team are redistributing power between them. At the moment this is taking form of various directorates being transferred from ministry of economy to other Zares-held ministries. These transfers are not a bad idea unto themselves, but their political benefits cannot be ignored either.

So, (to continue with Tom Clancy theme) in the words of Sean Connery: “Once more they play their dangerous game. A game of chess.…” And at the moment only Zares and SD are playing. LDS made the only move it could, exchanging their good behaviour during coalition negotiations for a man at the helm of state owned NLB bank, while DeSUS‘s Karl Erjavec spent his moves on getting the defence portfoilo – and lost.