investigation | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Immovable KPK Meets Unstoppable Golob

It has been over two weeks since PM Robert Golob was slapped with a KPK ruling over his actions in the Bobnar Boondoggle. Pengovsky was going to write it up soonest but there were things to see and people to do. Also, adulting is hard. Be that as it may, the intervening days have shown that Apex Avian had developed some remarkable survival skills. Not really Teflon, because he is not out of the woods yet, but remarkable nevertheless.

A Who Would Win meme featuring Slovenian PM Robert Golob and KPK, the country's anti-graft commission, investigating the PM for corruption and conflict of interest. — *A meme for (of?) the ages*

The most remarkable thing about it is that Gibanje Svoboda is keeping the pace with SDS of Janez Janša. This, despite the fact that the opposition is in full offensive mode. Whisper it, but GS may even closing the gap slightly, depending on which pollster does the polling. It seems that whatever bad juju this story was going to generate, it was already priced in by Golob’s supporters. At this point they simply don’t give a flying fuck anymore. Does that remind you of anyone?

Stupid Before The Storm: Ghost of Bobnar Past

Remember this story? Or this one? Or the one before? In the Muddy Hollows history of stupid, PM Robert Golob and his falling out with interior minister Tatjana Bobnar will hold an infamously prestigious spot. The story simply refuses to go away and like the ghost of Christmas past, keeps haunting the PM.

Tatjana Bobnar and Robert Golob, back when this whole thing started and she accused him of abuse of office. Now the state prosecution and the courts are involved. — *Tatjana Bobnar and Robert Golob, back when this whole thing started*

In this latest iteration, the prosecution filed for a judicial investigation into whether the Apex Avian abused office with regard to appointing the chief of police back in 2022. And now the coalition is rankled and the opposition is calling for Golob’s resignation.

Stupid Before The Storm: Golob Hit By Bobnar Boondoggle

Initially, this was going to be the write up of PM Golob and his role in the magnificently messy end to the NATO referendum pissing contest. But stupid just kept coming. Plus, there was vacay, and things to see and people to do and… well, here we are.

Robert Golob probably feeling it, probably (source and source)

Slovenian political class did us all a solid and finally departed for their vacation. However, they are also about to return to Muddy Hollows, interfrastically, In the mean time, they’ve set some ticking time-bombs that are set to explode at the height of upcoming campaign season. What follows is a short series to catch up with stupid before the storm.

Wither Hojs

What pengovsky first predicted about a month and a half ago finally happened on Tuesday: Aleš Hojs resigned as interior minister. Hopefully, the door won’t hit him on his way out. Or even if it did, this scribe couldn’t really give a flying fuck.

Interior minister Aleš Hojs (left) and police chief Bojan Travner, both freshly out of their jobs *(source)*

With Hojs’ resignation a period of internal affairs portfolio being headed by an abrasive, belligerent and uniquely incompetent politician comes to an early end. But while the move was apparently triggered by a police raid chez minister of economy and SMC leader Zdravko Počivalšek over his role in the PPE procurement snafu, the root causes of Hojs getting canned run deeper.

Parliament Reports President Pahor To Prosecution Over TEŠ 6

In what was not an entirely expected turn of events, the parliament yesterday unanimously adopted the committee report on the TEŠ 6 (Tower Six of Šoštanj coal power plant) corruption case. In addition, the parliament also voted to approve a virtually unprecedented move to report to the police the suspicion of gross negligence in execution of public office, a criminal offence carrying up to three-year prison sentence (Article 258 of the Penal Code).

TEŠ 6 (photo by yours truly)

The report concludes that the whole project was tailored to the needs of the coal lobby with specific MPs acting as stooges and pushing its agenda. The document blames every government from 2004 until 2012 for being needlessly careless and allowing the project to balloon and eventually derail. But while there is plenty of blame to go around, the report singles out and pins the largest share of the blame on then-PM Borut Pahor, his finance minister Franci Križanič and economy minister Matej Lahovnik for either actively looking the other way (Pahor) or even facilitating corruption (Križanič, Lahovnik) when it was already obvious the whole thing was going tits-up but disaster could still have been prevented.

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Report Implicates President, Leader Of The Opposition in TEŠ 6 Clusterfuck

Friday last the National Assembly adopted an interim report by the parliamentary committee on TEŠ 6 coal power plant in Šoštanj. And it is a bit of a bombshell. Namely, the report deals with procurement procedures in the project which ballooned from an estimated EUR 600 million to almost 1.4 billion and states that the contract to build TEŠ 6 should have been offered via public tender and that active steps were taken to prevent that from happening, thus keeping the project non-transparent and a fertile ground for corruption.

The Šoštanj coal power plant (source)

However, unlike most committee reports of the kind, this one goes further and actually names names. The principal enablers of the TEŠ 6 fiasco according to the report were: prime minister (now president) Borut Pahor, prime minister (now MP and leader of the largest opposition party) Janez Janša and ministers of finance and economy in both governments: the late Andrej Bajuk and Andrej Vizjak in Janša’s administration as well as Franci Križanič and Matej Lahovnik in Pahor’s government. The kicker? The parliament adopted the report with a nearly 2/3 majority (59 votes out of 90), with no-none voting against.

Continue reading Report Implicates President, Leader Of The Opposition in TEŠ 6 Clusterfuck

President Pahor Mounts a Reaganesque Defence in TEŠ 6 Investigation

Vacation, as per von Clausewitz, is a continuation of stress by other means. And while pengovsky planned to post extensively during the vacay it turned out that another von (Moltke, in this case) was right when he observed that no plan survives the initial contact with the enemy. Which makes one wonder just what exactly President Borut Pahor’s plan was yesterday when he faced off with former coalition partner and former leader of now-defunct Zares party Gregor Golobič as they both testified in front of the parliamentary committee investigating the clusterfuck that is the TEŠ 6 power plant in Šoštanj.

Gregor Golobič and Borut Pahor (right) (source: RTVSLO)

Now, sitting presidents in Slovenia don’t often get called to testify in parliamentary investigations. In fact, the last one to have done so was Milan Kučan, testifying in 1995 on the circumstances on the JBTZ affair in 1988, one of the key events in emergence of multi-party democracy in Slovenia and its drive for independence. Additionally, this was – by pengovsky’s admittedly perfunctory count – the very first instance of a sitting Slovenian president facing off with a contradicting witness. This alone makes yesterday’s a truly remarkable event. Then there’s the fact that it was Golobič vs. Pahor, a former and a current political heavy-weight respectively who used to bat for more or less the same team as coalition partners in Pahor’s 2008-2011 government (later brought down by Golobič for reasons including but not limited to TEŠ 6). And secondly – or thirdly, for those keeping count – the mere fact that the showdown at OK TEŠ 6 took place less than two months before the first round of presidential elections makes this a rather extraordinary occurrence.
Continue reading President Pahor Mounts a Reaganesque Defence in TEŠ 6 Investigation