PM Janša Declares Trump Winner, Starts A Dumpster Fire

It doesn’t take a lot to do a horribly bad take on Twitter these days. But to do a bad take, have it go viral internationally and then double down on it, only to get slapped with a disinformation label, that takes special skill.

This, you know by now, is exactly what PM Janša has done on Wednesday after US presidential elections, when – to the disbelief of many – congratulated Donald Trump on winning the vote. Only that Donald Trump by then hadn’t won the vote. And it doesn’t look good for him at the time of this post, either.

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Slovenian Lessons for Trump’s Election Delaying Antics

 The collective hand-wringing on Twitter that followed Donald Trump’s tweet about possibly delaying election due to potential voter fraud with mail-in voting is – as per usual – more or less unnecessary.

Trump channeling his inner Janša

As enraging as it is, Trump’s tweet is only the latest in the long line of distractions, a crude attempt to divert attention from his car-crash of an interview on Russian bounty for US soldiers and the fact that US GDP in Q2 dropped off a cliff.

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Clearly, No-one Was Thinking (part 5: Contra-Iran)

As the shit was brewing in the Middle East over the last few weeks, one man was especially tormented over what his next course of action should be.

Karl Erjavec with Chief of the General Staff, Maj. Gen. Alenka Ermenc (r) (source)

You might suspect pengovsky is thinking of Donald Trump or Ayatollah Khamenei, but you’d suspect wrong. The tormented person in question was none other than Slovenian minister of defense Karl Erjavec.

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For François Fillon, Notes From A Former Province

Many well-placed observers expected François Fillon, the French centre-right presidential candidate to finally pull the plug on his beleaguered campaign as news of him being put under formal investigation finally broke. After all, that was what he promised to do.


Janez Janša and François Fillon being all statesman-like and shit (source)

But it appears the ties betwixt France and Slovenia, the proud observer in La Francophonie, the former Ilyrian province of the French Empire and one of the few European countries other than France to have fond memories of a certain Corsican corporal,  are more than just historic and/or cultural. In particular, they seem to include a former French prime minister heavily copying the playbook of a former Slovenian prime minister.

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State of Presidential Play

With 2017 slowly settling in, it is high time pengovsky takes a look at the biggest political event scheduled this year in Slovenia. Namely, the presidential elections. While unimportant on the larger scale of things, especially with looming French and German elections and whatnot, the popular vote on the largely (but not completely) ceremonial post is still interesting as it will function both as a large scale public opinion poll as well as a prequel to the parliamentary elections, expected to take place some time in 2018. So, to get one’s bearings and to provide some light entertainment, here is the lay of the presidential land in Slovenia.


Who will piss in Borut Pahor‘s pool? (source)

In Slovenia, the President of the Republic has limited powers. Arguably, his biggest role is nominating candidates for top positions in the state apparatus. Specifically, he nominates candidates for prime minister, constitutional judges as well as governor and vice-governors of the Central Bank. However, his nominations require the approval of the parliament which often-times means that the president is (at worst) merely rubber-stamping horse-trading between parliamentary parties or (at best) is actively involved in finding a consensus candidate, which usually does not translate into the best possible candidate. But such is life.

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