Category: World Affairs

Yesterday Slovenian President Danilo Türk signed the Law on ratification of Croatian entry into NATO. This ended almost two months of speculation which started after Janez Janša refused to support the entry if the coalition didn’t support a cooked-up version of 2007 Annual Account. This was followed by a referendum petition which brought together serial petitioners, hooligans and self-proclaimed defenders of Slovene border and nearly caused a major international embarrassment for Slovenia, despite the fact that Croatian government did a lot to prove the petitioners’ point.

In any case, the referendum petition failed spectacularly as Party of Slovene Nation (the petitioners) collected only around 1100 signatures supporting their bid, which probably causes top echelons of Slovenian politics to give an audible sigh of relief. The whole episode was enough, however, to re-ignite the debate on referendum legislation where things are far from over.

All that’s left now is Croatian EU bid, where Slovenia and Croatia have a slightly bigger problem.

The ratification process is over for us, after Greece ratified the Croatian NATO accession protocol on Tuesday night (..) NATO cannot wait to see if anyone in Slovenia would ask for a referendum and I expect the Slovene president will sign the ratification document.

Croatian PM Ivo Sanader in Ankara, Turkey, 18 February 2009

The above statement shows that Croatian PM is still painfully unaware of the fact that the only road to NATO leads through Slovenia. Croatia will not become a NATO member unless Slovenia completes the ratification procedure which – as of yesterday – looks set to include a referendum on the issue.

These are facts which cannot be avoided and Croatian PM would do a great service to his country if he would shut the fuck up and stop provoking idiots on both sides of the border. One of the (admittedly) more petty reasons for Slovene Nazi-wannabes to cook up this referendum shit is the continuous (and I mean non-stop) behaviour of consecutive Croatian governments as if Slovenia didn’t exist. I agree that grown-ups in Ljubljana should be able to brush off childish comments by Croatian PM, but by making them he is only proving the point proponents of referendum are trying to make and is making life all the more difficult for his Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor, whose ruling coalition is bending over backwards to build some sort of fragile consensus which would make SSN (Party of Slovene nation, the Nazi-wannabes) withdraw the referendum proposition.

Instead of lecturing Slovenians that they are too unimportant to bother Croatia, PM Sanader would do well to restrain himself to phrases of him having “complete confidence in the ability of Slovenian voters to discern between questions of international security and bilateral issues between the two countries” or something like that.

Not that there is any guarantee that Slovenian voters will be able to discern between the two. Yesterday Slovene parliament adopted a declaration saying that Slovenia controlled all disputed border areas and that any Croatian legislation to the contrary is null and void.

Despite the seemingly hawkish text of the resolution, this has only limited value, since a) Croatian legislation is invalid in Slovenia anyway (we have our own legislation) and b) once the border is settled, there will be no disputed areas where a conflict of legislations could occur. This did not go unnoticed in Zagreb, where the foreign ministry was quick to say that the resolution has no international ramifications. Which was precisely the point. Strong wording of the resolution, however, did not yield the desired result. Marjan Podobnik did back down, saying that he was satisfied with what was achieved, but that left the SSN and its president Zdenko V. Vincenc, the formal petitioner for the referendum, who is making additional demands, saying that Slovenia should demand Croatia dismantles one of the disputed border crossings.

As I write this, PM Borut Pahor is making an 11th hour attempt at persuading Vincenc to back down. Personally, I think he has very little chance of success, but who knows, maybe Vincenc will get it into his thick nationalistic head of his that he is hurting rather than helping Slovenia with his antics. Why?

-Because the referendum would portray Slovenia as an unreliable member of NATO with little regard for international security.
-Because Slovenia will have lost credibility in blocking Croatian EU negotiations, where it does have legitimate concerns
-Because if Croatia and Albania don’t make it into NATO, then the whole NATO enlargement process is stalled at the very moment when it should actually pick up pace and start including the rest of Balkan countries
-Because if NATO does not integrate the Balkan states, war will break out again in 15 years.

EDIT: Talks between Pahor and Vincenc have collapsed, with Vincenc resigning as SSN president, citing health reasons and pressure. The referendum is still on, in line with the decision of party council. This is starting to look like a cat-and-mouse game and I’m beginning to think that someone else is running the show, with SSN acting like stooges.

The government of Borut Pahor (who, BTW, has already earned the nickname Borat) found itself in a race against time as the ratification of Croatian NATO membership was sabotaged by Podobnik & Co. yesterday.

Ivo Vajgl, the man who has to come up with a plan (source)

Since 2500 signatures appear to have been filed correctly, president of the parliament Pavle Gantar must declare a 35-day period for the proponents of the referendum to collect 40.000 signatures which would require the parliament to declare a referendum on the issue. The thing is that almost no one in top echelons of Slovene politics wants a referendum, save Zmago Jelinčič of SNS, but the extent to which he counts as top echelon is debatable.

Croatia and Albania (where the Prez is visiting these days, incidentally) were supposed to be welcomed to NATO on 3 April, requiring member states to deposit ratification documents with the US government no later than 23 March. Which means that the signature collecting period would have to start today, which is legally impossible. It can start tomorrow at the earliest. Thus, we are faced with three possible scenarios:

1. There is some sort of agreement reached today and Podobnik backs down

This is what Pahor’s government is aiming. According to Delo daily, the coalition left it to Ivo Vajgl, the president of the foreign relations committee to broker a deal. The thing is that Podobnik demands that parliament passes a resolution citing three specifing border areas where Slovenia will not compromise on. He doesn’t seem to understand that this implicity means that Slovenia is willing to compromise on everything else. A similarly disastrous mistake was made by Dimitrij Rupel in early 1990s when he said, referring to Italy, that Slovenia is willing to negotiate on anyting but borders . And Italy said “fine, let’s re-negotiate Osimo treaty“.

Additionally, even if the parliament gives in to Podobnik’s demands, there’s no guarantee he’ll back down. He is not really what one might call a reliable party.

2. The signature-collectign period is declared, but Podobnik fails

If the first scenario fails, this one isn’t very likely, because you will always find 40k morons in this country who think that they have to take it out on Croatia no matter what. Additionally, is signature collecting starts, things will get ugly, with PM Pahor actively discouraging people from signing, whereas the opposition will probably be split, with SDS abstaining, not willing to help Pahor, but unable do support the referendum since they supported the ratification. The nationalistic-bordering-on-neo-Nazi element will be excited to the point of continuous multiple orgasm and it will be very hard to keep the heads cool on both sides of the border.

But in case Podobnik does fail and does not collect 40k signatures until 24 March, he sill has a week to present the results, which means that Slovenia will be able to send ratification papers to Washington no sooner than 2 April. In time for the NATO Summit, but whether this could affect the accession timetable is unknown at this time.

3. Podobnik succeeds and the referendum is actually held

Then the result is anybody’s guess. At the moment public opinion polls show that most people support Croatian NATO entry, but the problem with referendums in Slovenia is that the turnout is frighteningly low. Usually in the low thirties percent-wise, but – as you will no doubt remember – the referendum on regions saw only 11% turnout.

With such small turnout numbers it is impossible to say what would happen if the referendum is actually held. Furthermore, even with the shortest of time-tables the referendum cannot be held sooner than the first half of May, which basically puts Croatian and Albanian NATO entry off for at least six months.

The negative effects of a referendum would be numerous, but more on that tomorrow.

Marjan Podobnik, the shit-monger from Slovene-Croatian border yesterday filed for a referendum on Croatian (and Albanian) NATO membership. In this he was assisted by a marginal and non-parliamentary Party of Slovene Nation. Together they collected 2500 signatures which – if filed correctly – require the president of the parliament to declare a 35-day period during which the proponents of referendum must collect 40.000 verified signatures. The thing is that this period ends a day after the NATO summit where Croatia and Albania were to be welcomed into the alliance

Marjan Podobnik and his Blut-und-Boden friends (source)

The history of Podobnik Bros., Joško Joras, Slovene People’s Party and the Croatian border was well covered on this blog and I will not go over it again. Time and again attempts to solve the border dispute have been sabotaged either by political or para-political forces on both sides of the border.

This time, however, a sort-of-consesus seems to have been reached in top echelons of Slovene politics, that Slovenia would block Croatian EU entry until Zagreb revokes maps which set the border in the middle of Bay of Piran and possibly solve the border dispute altogether. The consensus was held hostage for a few days by former PM Janez Janša who wanted an imaginary budget surplus to be confirmed, but in the end the decision to ratify Croatian entry into NATO was confirmed by 75 out of 90 MPs.

The point Pahor’s government was trying to make is that Slovenia does have a problem with Croatian EU entry border-wise, but that this has nothing to do with Croatian NATO entry. Namely – if Croatia had managed to sneak maps defining the borders into EU negotiation process, then these maps would become part of the common European legislation, basically legalising two decades-long series of Croatian unilateral actions in this field. Croatia thought it could fuck Slovenia but instead Slovenia fucked Croatia.

NATO, however, does not have common legislation. It does have common standards (sort of) but no common legislation. Therefore even if Croatia presented faked maps, it would have little to no effect on Slovene negotiating position. Slovenia would therefore show that it knows to pick its fights and that it can distinguish between a bilateral disagreement and international security.

Hell, even Janez Janša and his SDS were on-board, albeit at a price.

And then an unruly mob of nationalistic wannabes marches in with 2500 signatures and sabotages what was probably the best attempt since Drnovšek-Račan agreement at solving a long-running dispute.

If you ask me, this is tantamount to high treason.