SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Janez Škof is an exceptional Slovenian actor who can say a thing or two about Slovenes and this nation’s proverbial small-mindedness and self-importance. But there are ways to go about it and then there are ways to go about it, if you catch my meaning. Janez Škof captured this in an intro to a song about “human fish”, which was gold at first and – according to the song – only became after it bit half an arse off a young beauty. But this is Slovenia, and in Slovenia some things are more important than others 🙂 Enyoj – I hope the lyrics are audiable.

Ladies and germanies! Welcome to Slovenia! Slovenia is very, very, very, very… small country. But there are very very very very high mountayns! Very white in the wintertime, with a lot of highland anim-als, who… which are making stinking of them! Yes!

There is the lake, there is some very natural Slovenian spring water. And it that springy Slovenian natur-el water, without any bubbles. There is really one very special anim-al. And she is da fish. But she is not a normal fish. Because she is da human fish. And this is da story about how human fish become human fish…

I added the transcription, because Disablez and venerea pointed out that a lot of the lyrics are muffled. Just some pointers: “Lubadar” is “mountain pine beetle”, “klop” is a “tick” and Jamagrotecave is a local joke about Postojnska jama (Postojna cave), where every road sign said “Jama – Grotte – Cave”, and when kids read the road signs, everyone naturally said “jamagrotecave”

Like most other election campaigns, the current Slovenian one is full of big words, bigger promises, even bigger denunciations of political enemies and “the-world-will-end-if-you-don’t-vote-for-me” approaches. What is lacking, though, is a bit of heatly recklesness, something to burst the bubble, to give politicians floating two inches above groung a bit of a reality check. And although I took them apart a couple of months ago for exactly the above reasons, Zares party did pull of a rather nice political stunt on yesterday Tuesday.

Gotcha! Majda Širca to Janez Janša (source)

When he was still deep in the oppostition, Janša used a number of approaches to try to undermine LDS-led governments. One of the more effecitve ones was petition “Nekaj je treba storiti” (Something Must Be Done) (Slovene only) in early 2003. Among other things, the petition decried the fact that “Slovenia is facing an unprecendented conentration of political, financial and media power in the hands of the government and its network and this concentration is already threatning the foundations the democratic balance. The parliament had become a voting machine, unwiling to listen to oppostition, let alone consider its proposals serioulsy…”

and it goes on to add that

“…The government must provide for a pluralism of opinions, criticism and control of its actions, and prevent political and other monopolies, even its own. Failure to do that will lead to a dictatorship”

Remember, this was written in 2003. During Tuesday’s debate on tycoons, however, Majda Širca, a Zares MP, proposed that the parliament passes an ammendment to the proposed resolution. The ammendment first noted that “Slovenia is facing an unprecendented conentration of political, financial and media power in the hands of the government and its network and this concentration is already threatning the foundations the democratic balance. The parliament had become a voting machine, unwiling to listen to oppostition, let alone consider its proposals serioulsy…” and went on to propose to the parliament to call upon the government to “provide for a pluralism of opinions, criticism and control of its actions, and prevent political and other monopolies, even its own.“.

Coalition deputies – surprise, suprise – voted against the ammendment, putting themselves in a rather curious position of voting against the very words they cried five years ago.

Now, to be sure, this is nothing more than a slightly childish PR stunt, but a very effective one. It shows that SDS is just about as arrogant as LDS was just before it was voted out of power. But truth be said, this was before Comrade Janša came to the parliament and told the opposition how and what to think.

Yesterday’s “tycoon” session of the Parliament was a quick excercise in cultural clash and marxism. As I noted yesterday, exactly four years ago then-opposition leader Janez Janša convened a special session of the parliament where he took appart the policies and apparent unwillingness of Tone Rop’s government at tackling the ever more apparent corruption, nepotism and cronyism in this country as well as the influence Rop’s and previous government were ecxersising over media.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? 😈 (photo: Robert Balen/Večer)

That was before Janez Janša (now as PM) changed the law on national radio and television, increasing government influence over both institutions and even before Janez Janša struck a deal with Boško Šrot and Igor Bavčar to sell them a controling share of Mercator to Laško Brewery and Istrabenz to remove Zoran Janković as Mercator CEO and have his people named into Delo’s supervisory board and management team.

Today, Boško Šrot is trying to control the game (which will in the long term quite possibly prove to be his undoing), while Janša is crying foul and trying to once again prove that the fact that Boško Šrot and Igor Bavčar are – between them – worth some 3 billion as for a few weeks ago is actually the fault of previous governments.

Marx was right. History presents itself as a tragedy, and then repeats itself as a farce.

The special session was called by Janša’s Slovene Democratic Party. The mere fact that the ruling party is conveening a special parliamentary session to debate something that they promised to eradicate four years ago speaks volumes of this government’s incompetence, lack of ideas and – yes – panic. Therefore they’re turning to their usual tricks, which might even yield results. But there’s more. If anything, this session showed the way this government (in general) and Janša (in particular) feel this country should be run: Janša talks while others listen.

Janša’s address to the parliament was a prime example of the cultural clash I’ve tried to shed some light on Sunday. The debate was already raging for a better part of ten hours, with the level of dialogue dropping as the hours were passing. There were even accusations of glue-snififng, for crying out loud! And then, as if sent from heaven, at eight in the evening the Prime Minister descends upon the parliament in one of those “surprise visits” we see Western politicians making in Iraq or Afghanistan. The opposition MPs have already spent the time alloted for the debate and there was noone to oppose the Prime Minister who apparently addresses the parliament at will (something Boško Šrot wanted to do, remember?).

And so Janša talked. He told the MPs that they should be more careful when uttering accusations of widespread corruption, because most of today’s escapades have started under previous governments. He denied that he sold Mercator to Laško and reiterated (as he had already done during confidence-vote session in November) that Delo is an anti-government newspaper. The fact that he spoke after the opposition had already spent their time alloted speaks of the fact that Janša did not want to hear any arguments against his twisting of fact.

He did not want to hear that it was his deal with Boško Šrot and Igor Bavčar that allowed both to climb the final (or in Bavčar’s case – all) steps to ammasing an incredible fortune of billions of euros in a country where average salary does not exceed 900 euros. He did not want to hear that both Boško Šrot and Andrijana Starina Kosem blew the whistle in Mercator-Delo deal and that Delo was hijacked by Danilo Slivnik-Peter Jančič duo (CEO and Editor-in-Chief respectively) who temporarily turned Delo into a Slovenian version of Völkischer Beobacther (this proud title now belongs to Slovenski Tednik). He did not want to hear a zillion of other things, big and small he should face criticism for. Instead he had the last word, denying any oppinion to the contrary. Just as we demonstrated in this post.

And in the end – yesterday’s session also showed that this country is ran by a bunch of people with an 70s-apparatchik-mindset whose only connection to the 21century are fancy suits and mobile phones. The largest party in the parliament called a session so that its president could tell the parliament off and instruct it how to go about its business and en passant state a case for another term in power. And the reason is – as in any good Communist scenario – that although this government has had some successes in tackling the economic and social issues , they’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg, since previous governments left the country in shambles and we must practically start anew.

People with a bit of a penchant for history will remember the phrase The revolution goes on. It sound frightnigly familiar.