Alenka Bratušek met @pontifex today (or maybe it was the other way around) and the fashion police were out in full force. As if that were the main problem this country has. Admittedly, she does seem to have a penchant for tiger/leopard patterns, but surely a politician’s ability to carry out his/her office outweighs whatever fashion no-nos he or she might have committed. At the very least, it way better than having a PM who looks like he walked out of a Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue but is prone to committing diplomatic gaffes.
Alenka and Francis, earlier today. (source: Delo/AFP)
Anyway, the thing is that while AB sported a leopard-pattern skirt while meeting her Italian counterpart, she put on a nice black outfit for her date with Francis (veil included) and was apparently toeing the line of the diplomatic protocol. So, everyone should be happy.
What is more important, however, and what we probably will never know, is what exactly they talked about. After all, the Maribor Diocese still has the 800 million debt hanging over its head and basically went tits up. Just for comparison, only days ago, the state OK’d recapitalisation of two largest banks, NLB and NKBM for a combined amount of 900 million. So you can see that the Roman Catholic Church has a bit of a problem in Slovenia. Which is probably one of the reasons the local clergy did not go ape-shit over the proposed real-estate tax which – according to a government leak – would encompass Church-owned real estate as well. That, and the fact that the local clergy is more Ratzingerian than Bergoglian and are probably still getting their bearings vis-a-vis the pop-Pope.
Also, it was reported the entire real-estate assets of the Slovenian Roman Catholic Church amount to – you guessed it – 800 million euro. Repossession, anyone? No? Too heavy?
Point is that there are serious issues at play here. Bratušek government is about to start selling a batch of state-owned companies as well as start transferring toxic assets to a bad band bank. In short: the landscape of Slovenian economy is about to change dramatically very soon. But here we are, as a nation, talking about the size and colour of the PM’s skirt.
Really, maybe we deserve the shit we’re in.
