Tag: Janez Janša

PM Bratušek Resigns, Looks To *Early* Early Elections

Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek resigned from office earlier today. This was the end result of a coalition pow-wow on Saturday where apparently cooler heads prevailed in the post-PS-congress fuck-up and realised it don’t matter a pair of dingo’s kidneys if the government holds on for a few more months and agreed to hold early elections ASAP.

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AB’s letter of resignation (source)

While president of the parliament Janko Veber said in a statement about an hour ago that 22 June is not feasible as election date, other summer dates are being looked at. The “problem” is that school recess starts that weekend as well which might pose a problem from a constitutional point of view (a bit more on this later on).

It all went tits-up

That the ruling coalition went tits-up became apparent a week ago, when Jay-Z ousted Bratušek as PS chief. Disintegration of the party followed, with the PM quitting PS and taking half of the parliamentary group with her, while Zoran Janković was left to pick up the pieces.

Thus a curious situation ensued, where the PM is fact a political apatrid (EDIT: although she is apparently in the process of forming her own party), while president of one of the coalition parties apparently wasn’t even invited to partake in the huddle. Namely, Zoran Janković was reportedly overlooked when invites for the meet were sent out which technically makes even more of a mess of the whole thing. Which gives enough of a glimpse of the clusterfuck we’d have experienced if Bratušek administration were to try and continue in the current setup.

The word “fugly” would not even begin to describe it. Just to give you an idea: Although Bratušek left the PS, Janković insisted the congress gave her full support to stay on as Prime Minister, while voting him in as chief of the party. How he came to this conclusion remains a mystery, as congress didn’t vote on the issue. Bratušek on the other hand fulfilled her promise to quit the party and the premiership if she loses the congress vote, putting Slovenia in the classic “what happens if an unstoppable force meets an immovable object” conundrum. Luckly, that particular scenario was avoided. Temporarily, at least.

That it not to say that Jay-Z will not have a say in the way things unfold. Even though the PS parliamentary group split down the middle and the party under Janković is left with 13-or-so MPs (out of 29 they began the term with), it will take a nod from Janković as well to try and cut a short-cut to early early elections.

The procedure

Namely, the procedure that is triggered by resignation/fall of the government calls for at least three rounds of attempts to find a new majority in the parliament, with ten MPs having unlimited options to put forward their candidate. Thus, theoretically both PS and the SDS as well as any other group that could muster ten MPs (say, the SLS-NSi combo with its newfound happiness) could delay elections for a considerable time.

This, however, will not be the case, apparently. While the SDS remains suspect (pun very much intended;) ), there seems to be a consensus, albeit grudging one, that no parliamentary party will seek to put forward their PM nominee. For his part, president Borut Pahor already said he will not be putting forward a nominee as well, which basically covers all the bases and open the theoretical possibility of elections as early as summer.

Having said that, things will probably not go smoothly. Aside from the fact that summer early elections clearly favour only current parliamentary parties as their alternatives outside the parliament (such as once-parliamentary Zares now led by Pavle Gantar or the up-and-coming Verjamem of Igor Šoltes, Solidarnost or the United Left) need more to get their operations running, there is also the possibility that time will simply run out.

Due date

Elections are normally not held during the summer break (last week of June to mid-August) nor are they called in a manner which would mean the campaign would be held during the break, although the latter is more of an accepted convention than anything else. And since elections can be held forty days from the act of calling them at the earliest, this means that if anything is to happen, it has to happen by next Tuesday. Failing that, we’re most likely up for elections in late September.

Additionally, there is the factor of a possible constitutional contention of the election date, especially since the Constitutional Court seems to have acquired a taste to meddle in policy questions, case in point being the real-estate tax and the archive referendum, where they nixed May 4th as voting date on a marginal but politically prominent question of UDBa archives, courtesy of the SDS.

But even though we can reasonably expect the party of Janez Janša to stall things a bit (well, quite a lot in fact, since they’re again talking about impeachment of Alenka Bratušek), they’ve apparently started to prepare for a period without Janez Janša as their point-man. Following the upheld conviction of the SDS leader who is to serve two years in prison for corruption, SDS MP Romana Tomc resigned as vice-president of the parliament. Officially it was done in protest over “politically motivated conviction against Janša”, but it is quite possible she is designated to replace Janša at least temporarily.

Romana Tomc, SDS’ Alenka Bratušek?

Tomc was rumoured to have been considered a replacement for Janša during the 2012-2013 winter uprisings which called for his resignation as PM. Nothing came of it as a new coalition was formed under Alenka Bratušek, but Tomc has been near the limelight ever since. With no immediately apparent political baggage she just might be the person SDS is looking for to fill the void Janša’s (temporary) removal from inner circle of politics will bring.

Since SDS is in a good position to win the parliamentary elections as things stand, an apparently moderate interim leader, not unlike Alenka Bratušek (both gender- and rhetoric-wise) might just give that extra boost the party needs to climb all the way to the top, which has eluded Janez Janša but once for the last quarter of the century.

Anyways, as of today, Slovenia is in election mode, level 999 and will remain so until mid-autumn when local elections are held. Between today and then, however, we are to cast our votes in EU elections (25 May), archive referendum (rescheduled for 8 June) and early parliamentary elections. God forbid the President were to resign.

On second thought… :mrgreen:

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House of Cards: Janković Splits Party, Janša Guilty As Charged

Janez Janša is guilty as charged. This, apparently is the ruling of the Higher Court in the Patria case. The verdict of the district court was thus confirmed as was the two-year prison sentence against Janša.

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Together with Janša, Tone Krkovič and Ivan Črnkovič saw their prison sentences (twenty-two months each) confirmed as well. Walter Wolf fled Slovenia presumably to Canada with an APB issued against him while Jože Zagožen passed away before trial concluded.

Janša maintains the whole thing was a show-trial and a political set-up (he would, wouldn’t he?), but fact of the matter is that at this stage Janša has to serve his sentence even if he files an appeal with the Supreme Court.

It’s a conspiracy (again)!

Granted, for sentences under three years, prison can be commuted for community work or “weekend-prison” where the convict spends only weekends in prison while going about his daily life during the week, but the point is the leader of the opposition is guilty as charged. At least as far as regular courts are concerned.

This of course puts an entirely different perspective on the prospect of early elections which as little as two days ago Janša welcomed warmly and teased the ruling (ex-)coalition that it wouldn’t dare call them. Now, with him being charged, tried and convicted, things don’t look all that well. In fact, the prospect of him called to serve the sentence while campaigning is, well, undesirable.

Janša, obviously, puts it all down to conspiracy, saying Milan Kučan is behind all of it, including the drive to early elections…

…although he himself favourited elections and a change of the voting system as late as Friday night when results of Bratušek/Janković fight came in

On that note, since Berufsverbot was not part of the sentence, there is no law to prevent Janša from running in the next parliamentary elections, get elected and see his mandate confirmed. Which means that even if he is denied a commuted sentence, we are liable to see him roll around in the media for the forseeable future. The law only kicks in after his (hypothetical) election when a provision kicks in, stripping elected officials of their office if they’re convicted to more than six-months prison sentence.

But hey, you can always count on president Borut Pahor to do what’s best for Janša. Namely, only hours before news of the verdict broke, Pahor said, responding to situation in Positive Slovenia going tits-up that “things were still salvageable”. While Pahor probably didn’t play this one to please Janša, the move reeks of his inability to face the reality in 2011 when his own government was crumbling at lightning speed while he maintained everything was going to be OK. We all know how that ended.

Positive schism

Because early elections are virtually a given as of Friday when Zoran Janković ousted Alenka Bratušek as chief of Positive Slovenia. Jay-Z’s return to the helm caused a deep rift within the party and prompted a string of high-profile walk-outs, more or less splitting the party in half.

Specifically, this now means that the party as such is pitted against its parliamentary group, majority of which support Bratušek. Speculation is rife about what the PM is about to do, but it seems inevitable that she will tender her resignation in a day or so. This means she would continue as PM in a caretaker role until a new government is sworn in and since there is plenty to be taken care of, little would change in the short-term. But since yields on Slovenian bonds are already shooting up courtesy of political volatility, elections should be called as soon as possible.

Because the other scenario, of Alenka Bratušek forming a new party and having most of PS MPs cross over thus forming a new, albeit weaker majority with existing coalition parties is simply ludicrous. Not only would this mean she would be ruling with a single-vote majority or even a minority government, but would also make her look as if she’s attempting a Pahor-like hold on to power and make lose what little credibility she accumulated over the last year or so.

As for Zoran Janković, he will undoubtedly start to reaffirm his grip on the party with lightning speed and deal with those who turned their backs on him one way or another. However, Janković paid a steep price for his victory on Friday. Among people who supported Bratušek are at least two of his city councilmen/women, namely Maša Kociper and Jani Möderndorfer. While there is no automatism, since PS was formed after Janković and his “Zoran Janković List” won a second term in Ljubljana, the soured (severed?) relations might very well mean that Janković is down to a single-vote majority in the city council.

If more people quit, mayor Janković might suddenly find himself looking for a (temporary) coalition to pass city ordnances. Six, nay, five months before local elections the price-tag for this one might be substantial.

Suddenly, it all comes crashing down

Within a matter of days, things in Slovenia went from fairly predictable to complete flux. Alenka Bratušek and Zoran Janković are meeting with MPs and the party executive council respectively, on what to do next, while Janša is scheduled to address the media on the verdict tomorrow. Also tomorrow Bratušek is scheduled to meet with president Pahor and resign as prime minister.

Francis Underwood once said that nothing is permanent. Houses of cards eventually do come down.

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Pro-Moscow Post-Communists Running EU And NATO, Apparently

To say that Slovenian government was caught off-guard by the Ukraine crisis is an understatement. It has, in fact, provided ample proof that for a while now Slovenian top-level diplomacy is running on empty, moving only on inertia of past successes, relatively able (but limited in scope and reach) middle magament and occasional strokes of luck.

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Janez Janša addressing the EPP Dublin Summit (source)

While Karl Erjavec and his simpleton-diplomacy were taken apart on this blog already, the man is by no means alone in this enterprise.

Roman Jakič and the Sochi controversy

The embattled defence minister Roman Jakič found himself in a middle of a controversy at the beginning of all of this when he travelled to Sochi as head of the Slovenian Paralympic team. Namely, Jakič’s son Gal Jakič is the only Slovenian contestant in Winter Paralympics and Roman Jakič spends inhumane amounts of time and energy to be there for his kid who became disabled some years ago through no fault of his own and help him partake in various sporting events. For that, Roman Jakič deserves all the praise in this world.

The problem of course arises when the super-dad happens to be a defence minister of a country whose official position is that Ukraine’s territorial integrity was violated by the very country which is hosting the Paralympic games. A visiting defence minister in whatever capacity he may be, just might send the wrong signal. To his credit, Jakič (who is under criminal investigation for his role in the Stožice project and is getting a lot of political flak over it) tried very hard to show that the office he holds has nothing to do with his being in Sochi. He even took annual leave and (apparently) paid the cost of the trip out of his own pocket. But senior public officials do not hold office from nine to five. A defence minister is a defence minister 24/7 and neither rain not sleet nor snow can change that. So, technically, Slovenia, a NATO member, has a senior government official present in Russia. Go figure.

Erjavec strikes again

But the woes of Roman Jakič pale in comparison with Erjavec digging an ever deeper hole for himself. Thursday last, while sparring with Dimitrij Rupel on national television (and trumping him in the process), he tried to spin his “Slovenia should mediate between EU and Russia” fuck-up. Admittedly, he did a half-decent job although no-one really believed him. But hey, he tried (for the record, he used the old they-only-published-a-part-of-my-statement gambit). OK, so he overdid it when he told the audience that US Secretary of State John Kerry told him his initiative was “subtle”. Really? Was Karl’s sarcasm detector off-line or what?

Be that as it may, all that was water under the bridge when Erjavec, foreign minister of a NATO and EU member, managed to say that Slovenia supports territorial integrity of Ukraine and conceded in the same sentence that Crimea will in all likelihood become part of Russia. Get it?

I mean, even though Erjavec most likely told what everyone else was thinking, a EU foreign minister simply does not say things like that. Such statements show Russians they’ve achieved what they wanted, namely to create a “new reality on the ground” and that the West is intimately apparently pondering telling Ukrainians to simply go along with it. This translates into EU a) not giving a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys about borders in general, opening up a plethora of highly unwelcome scenarios all across the continent, most likely in the Balkans and b) apparently forgot the 1938 Munich lessons.

Janša criticises Merkel

The above, however, is nothing, and I mean nothing compared to the address by Janez Janša at the EPP Summit in Dublin the other day. Namely the nominal leader of the Slovenian opposition single-handedly discovered there are “post-communist and pro-Moscow forces at the head of EU and NATO member state” and added that all of this could be avoided if only Georgia and Ukraine were admitted to NATO in 2008.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is warmongering and paranoia of the first order. Admittedly, it takes a lot of guts to go up there and tell Auntie Angela she fucked up. Because it was her who blocked NATO enlargement to include Ukraine and Georgia. And today she’s (apparently) the only foreign leader Vladimit Putin will talk to with some sort of frankness. Which makes her a pro-Moscow element. Not to mention the fact that outgoing president of European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso was a Maoist in his student years. Talk about post-communists running the EU. The question therefore is, did Janša really mean what he said or is he getting just more and more desperate and is running short on enemies to throw into the fire, supplementing them with friends?

The reality (that be the thing Janša is working very hard to ignore) of course is that NATO could very well have found itself in the middle of a shooting war with Russia in August 2008 had Georgia been invited to the alliance some months before and NATO membership of Ukraine would probably only have sped up the events that are unfolding today. But what you see on the video above is vintage Janša. The only difference between that and the version we get at home are levels of cynicism (apparently beyond him in English) and occasional graphs depicting the communist conspiracy.

And post-communists, as we all know, are everywhere. Even in the EPP, apparently. One of them, a proud platoon leader of a 1977 Yugoslav military march commemorating Marshal Tito, addressed the Dublin Summit. But, admittedly, he’s not running a EU/NATO member state. Not anymore, that is.

PM Bratušek Down A Minister. Just Not The One SDS Was Aiming For.

Late last night, after a 15+ hours of debate, the parliament voted to reject the bid to oust finance minister Uroš Čufer. The motion was filed by SDS of Janez Janša and the two basic charges against Čufer were that he backed the Bank of Slovenia plan for a “controlled liquidation” of Probanka and Factor banka, two small sort-of-investment banks which were mainly vehicles for financing ventures of their owners (although Probanka had a small contingent of “ordinary” customers) as well as the fact that he dismissed Andrej Šircelj, an SDS MP, from the board of the yet-to-become-operational Bad Assets Management Company, a.k.a. bad bank.

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Two ministers: one in resignation, the other one not so much. (photo: Aleš Černivec/Delo)

Now, the move-to-oust, or “interpelation” as it is known around here was filed some time ago and it went without saying that the SDS, which was alone in this venture with NSi and SLS watching carefully which way the wind blows, threw at Čufer everything they could get their hands on. Which mostly meant lecturing him at how he should run state finances.

Which is all fine and well, after all this is a democracy of sorts with a relatively well-thought-out system of checks and balances. The same goes for the interpelation instrument. However, what we witnessed yesterday was not so much a case of oppositional oversight as it was a degenerated filibuster where the goal was not to prevent a measure being passed but to drag the proceedings for as long as possible, hoping that somewhere along the way the coalition would drop the ball and fail to produce a majority vote. In fact, this was nothing short of a shit in political tactics. Namely, about a week ago we’ve seen practically the same approach when the parliament debated the 2014 and 2015 budgets. In a multi-day session which culminated in a Thursday all-nighter, the final vote was cast on Friday at 6 in the morning.

The good old days of touch and go

Now, all-night-sessions are not unknown in this part of the world. When shit was hitting the fan while Yugoslavia was disintegrating and the whole Slovenia situation was touch-and-go we used to see them regularly. In fact, one could argue that all-night sessions of the parliament or another high-ranking body were the hallmark of the era. And it seems as if the opposition is trying to bring back the aura of emergency and instability.

Not that there was any lack of urgency to begin with and until the budget was passed, the Bratušek administration sure as hell couldn’t be filed under “stable”. But ever since Janez Janša was toppled he was looking for ways to undermine the current government in any way possible. True, the ruling coalition is perfectly capable to undermine itself (as we’ve seen time and again in the past months) but it would appear there’s some movement in the right direction.

One could argue that Bratušek and Čufer achieved with this budget what Janša and Šušteršič couldn’t. Namely, get at least half a nod from the EU and effectively take threat of the Troika descending off the table at least temporarily. And as demonstrated in the previous post, for Janša the equation is simple: no Troika, no return to power any-time soon. And a derailed budget or a toppled finance minister are not to high a price to pay, apparently. Not to mention inevitable relegation of Slovenia to protectorate status in case the Troika materializes.

Again: Slovenia is not out of the woods yet (not even close) but a hint was given we’re on the right path. And that is not good news for Janša.

It’s about management, stupid

But as someone recently told pengovsky, this country doesn’t have as much of a financial problem as it does have a leadership management problem. Both in government and in business. Which is one of the reasons we find ourselves in the shit we’re in. Case in point being minister of economy and technology Stanko Stepišnik, who was forced to resign yesterday evening over a repeated issue of his tools-manufacturing company Emo Orodjarna applying for and being awarded government grants while he was in office.

Now, there’s a caveat to this: until recently, there was a strict prohibition of companies (co-)owned by public officials applying for tenders with the institutions their owners worked for. I.e.: a company a minister or a member of his family owned (at least partly) could not apply for a grant within his ministry’s purview. Some years ago there was even a complete prohibition for such companies doing any business with any government institution, but that was struck down as unconstitutional. But even this watered-down prohibitive clause was too much for some and was reduced even further by the last Janša administration (albeit at the behest of the SLS) and now stipulates only that people with a conflict of interest should remove themselves from the decision-making process.

And when it transpired that Stepišnik’s company did in fact apply for a government grant at Stepišnik’s ministry, it was all perfectly legal, since Stepišnik did in fact remove himself from the decision-making process. And yet, it failed to dawn on him that simply is not the way things should be done. It took further revelations of his company applying for additional tenders and – this clinched it – apparently falsely stating there are no possible conflicts of interest in one of the tenders for Stanko Stepišnik to finally realise he is in an unsustainable position.

However, since Stepišnik was an MP for Positive Slovenia before assuming ministerial duties, he is bound to return to take his parliamentary seat, making the situation no less more agreeable. Now, arguably, Stepišnik’s resignation is a good omen as it is the second minister in Bratušek administration to resign over a similar conflict of interest (Igor Maher having done so after only 12 days in office) and it shows this government does have a sense of appropriateness. Also, Stepišnik was widely tipped to be let go once PM Bratušek wins the vote of confidence, so there’s no real harm (political or otherwise) in him being replaced.

The necessary vote of confidence

But it does show that – despite the fact some people were mocking Bratušek for tying it to passing of the budget – the recent confidence vote was much more crucial than most people thought. It finally gave her the leg to stand on politically and rallied the coalition around her, at least temporarily. And it appears finance minister Čufer is one of the cornerstones of her political credibility. Which is why she took the somewhat unusual step of the PM addressing the parliament and defend her minister during an interpelation.

This, of course, did not go unnoticed and you can be sure Čufer will find himself the target of much more elaborate attacks and insinuation than just a case of a disgruntled opposition MP who – due to a legal provision, mind you – lost his 6k EUR monthly paycheck in the bad bank which came on top of his 4k monthly MP salary.

 

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Troika Democracy And The EPP

Although there’s shit going on daily that would warrant a well aimed rant in its general direction (as always in this sorry little excuse for a country), pengovsky has a month-old axe to grind. Not surprisingly, this connects to more recent events, including the European People’s Party trying to meddle with the judicial process and demanding Janez Janša be exempt from whatever fallout (political or otherwise) there may be from the Patria Affair. But parallel to the Passion of Ivan – and very much caused by it – for the past two months or so, the political right is producing a steady stream of calls for the Troika to descend upon Slovenia as soon as possible.

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A masterpiece by Matej Avbelj, PhD (source)

Now, that Slovenia is in economic omnishambles is hardly news anymore. But just as they have done for years, part of the political class is still refusing to recognise the reality and is playing hide-and-seek regardless of the cost. You see, back in 2008, when crisis loomed large on the horizon Janez Janša in the last days of his 2004-2008 government famously said that “only an aspirin is needed while the left-wing wants to prescribe an antibiotic to the Slovene economy”.

Well, five years later Slovene economy is in the middle of open-heart surgery while Janez Janša, since conviced of corruption (appeal pending) is saying that we’d all be better off if we just let the Troika handle things from now on. This, of course, has precious little to do with the economy (of which Janša still doesn’t understand didly squat) but rather with that elusive thingie called election victory.

Namely, it goes without saying that Slovenia’s formal appeal for a full bailout would most likely mean yet another early elections, which Janša might actually have a chance of winning (more on the current public sentiment some other time). But to do so, he’d have to paint the current government as a) incompetent and b) illegitimate. In this enterprise he is helped by a plethora of people of various intellectual prowess, not in the least by Matej Avbelj PhD, dean of a small Faculty for State and European Studies which – contrary to its name – mostly offers courses in public administration. A month or so ago Avbelj published a column on a law-oriented portal titled “Troika as a Catalyst for Democracy” (Google translate here).

In the text, Avbelj basically argues (from a supposedly academic point of view) that Slovenia is a state, captured by special interest and dark powers and that elections don’t really count for anything. “Anything” in this case of course translates to “Janša in power”. Because even when Janša was in power and Slovenia witnessed an unprecedented blitz against the media, economy and other sectors, thus paving the way for many a folly we witnessed in the past ten years, the man still claimed Slovenia is run by communists and if he couldn’t find them it just meant he wasn’t looking hard enough. Thus, even when Janša is/was in power, there’s an ongoing conspiracy against him, preventing him from doing the good things.

Well, the reality is there is no conspiracy. Whatever Janša was doing in power wasn’t good on the whole, but he was good at doing it. Sure, this can be said for a couple of other administrations as well, but the difference is that Janša was and still is motivated mostly by perpetuating and increasing his power, politically and otherwise. In this, he often resorted to abusing democratic instruments and occasionally tinkered with undemocratic ones, claiming to have “protected democracy” all along. This goes for calling for Troika as well.

Avbelj, in his texts, assists Janša in this enterprise. The Troika may be many things. but is not a tool of or for democracy. It is comprised of representatives of institutions whose democratic potential ranges from “miniscule” to “none”. The European Commission is a body agreed upon by the EU member states and although approved by the European Parliament, it is hardly subject to a serious checks-and-balances mechanism. The ECB is a monetary, not a representative institution. The IMF doubly so.

Secondly, the way the Troika operates is anything but consensual. In its purest form – as witnessed in Greece time and time again – it is a Godfather-type ensemble which simply dictates terms (how does one say “we’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse” in German?) And even if Slovenia were subject to Troika-light, things would still be a couple of orders of magnitude uglier than they are now.

One of the effects being that it wouldn’t matter a pair of fetid dingo’s kidney who is in power. Even today Slovenia is reportedly (and those reports have not been denied) under daily scrutiny from EC experts (again: unelected!) and right now to a large extend ours is only a pretend economic and political sovereignty. But if the Troika is hell, then Slovenia is purgatory at the moment. We can still hope to get out. With the Troika in the house, not so much.

And so, the logical conclusion is that Janez Janša will stop at nothing to regain power, even if only as a puppet leader with no autonomy whatsoever. Such is the lust – or rather – the need for power. Because Janša as PM stands a much lesser chance of having a verdict against him being upheld than citizen Janša does. This, at least, is the subtext of yesterday’s resolution by the EPP on Slovenia which among other things states that Janša should not be excluded from the political process until final verdict is passed.

In reality, the political star of Janez Janša is fading fast. It is, however, very worrying that a generation of intelectuals has been bread that will happily continue politics done Janša’s way. The only difference being that with him it was a survival tactic, whereas they’ve objectified it into a legitimate political tactic.

EDIT: only minutes ago Janša suggested the government “avoid the Troika by requesting a bank bailout”. QED as far as I’m concerned.

 

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The Survivalists

A social network diagram of Slovenian governments is making rounds on the interwebz these days. Posted over at Virostatiq, it is an awfully nice presentation of how the “six degrees of separation” are cut down to, well, only a couple. If you’re Slovenian, you surely know somebody on that list, or at the very least, you know somebody who knows somebody on that list.

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Social network diagrams of Slovenian governments between 1991 and 2013 (source)

The diagram claims to show different levels of loyalty between members of various ranks of government officials, ranging from prime ministers down to the level of state-secretaries (the level immediately below a ranking minister). The fact that author Marko Plahuta wrote it up in English is also commendable. However, while mighty interesting and potentially useful, the diagram as it is now is only partly relevant.

Don’t get me wrong. Pengovsky is going ga-ga with excitement, because something like this was long overdue. Also, it hits close to home since distribution of political power was part of my thesis at the university and I know from first hand experience that one soon hits a brick wall of non-transparency when trying to find rhyme or reason when compiling a “who’s who” of movers and shakers (not that it can not be done, as it will be shown later in the post).

And this is exactly the point where the diagram fails. Among other things. So, my two cents on the entire thing, hoping the author finds them useful:

Loyalty of ministers

Loyalty between PM and the ministers is a much more fragile category than the diagram would have us believe. Indeed, some ministers are utterly loyal to the PM, while others much less so. To put it graphically and using the current government of Alenka Bratušek as example, we can say that ministers from Positive Slovenia (Bratušek’s party) are much more loyal to their prime minister than ministers from Citizens’ List or (perhaps even more so) ministers from SocDems quota.

So, ministerial loyalty indicator could be augmented a) by party affiliation and b) by the influence/power the party wields in the parliament/coalition/government. Actual ponders would have to be worked out, but a good rule of the thumb would be this: Unless a minister is a member of PM’s party, then the larger his or her party or the more ideologically different, the weaker a minister’s loyalty towards the PM.

The above is a direct result of a multi-party coalition system we sport in Slovenia, where a government’s agenda is the highest possible common denominator of all the coalition party platforms.

Loyalty of state secretaries

The author assumes state secretaries are a lot less loyal to their ministers than ministers are to the PM. Even if we neglect the varying degrees of ministerial loyalties demonstrated above, pengovsky contends that – if anything – state secretaries are more loyal to their ministers than ministers are to the MP.

Again, once you delve into the issue, it becomes a lot more muddled. The role of state secretaries changed dramatically over time. When the new public service hierarchy was developed, the role of state secretary was indeed meant to be that of the highest ranking bureaucrat, a link between political agenda of any given minister and a running public service, impervious to political squabbling and special interest.

Riiiiight….

Parties soon realised the position of a state secretary is arguably even more important to their agenda than that of a minister and it wasn’t long before positions on this level of administration were heavily fought for. This resulted in inflation of state secretary positions and At one point a sort-of-compromise was reached where one state secretary was politically appointed, the other supposedly for his or her expertise in a given area.

This was later abolished because and now state secretaries come and go with their respective ministers. Which is why in pengovsky’s opinion their loyalty factor should a) be increased overall to reflect dependence on their minister and b) corrected downwards on individual basis during the period where one state secretary was a political appointee, the other expert.

Also, the above sort of invalidates the claim that state secretaries are loyal to each other. Since their appointments are inherently political ans their primary role is to serve as a liaison between politics and public service (with their secondary role being lightning rods and scapegoats for high-level fuck-ups), the horizontal loyalty rarely goes beyond professional courtesy.

People who are not in the picture but should be

When we’re talking about distribution of political/social power in Slovenia, we can not by any means neglect political parties themselves. And this is where the diagram is noticeably lacking. Government officials, especially ministers and other political appointees are often caught between solving problems of their specific field and catering to their party’s interests. For “caught between … and….” you might want to read “neglect…. in favour of…”, depending on your point of view.

@Spovednik has an excellent blogpost on this phenomenon. In Slovenian only, I’m afraid.

But to continue and find an example at random: when the field of education was redrawn under the Janša 2.0 administration, minister Žiga Turk and especially the ranking state secretary Borut Rončević did undertake some necessary steps, but quite a few of them were directed to the ultimate end of state forking out money for private scholarly institutions close to Janez Janša‘s SDS party. Again, this is by no means the only such example, but it is a telling one, especially since it had the “added value” of being done under the guise of tackling the crisis.

In this respect, party officials who are not elected by popular vote, also sport great power and should be included in any such diagram. Again, the general rule of the thumb is that the bigger the party, the more important party people are, since at some point party leader(s) need to delegate decisions down the ladder.

Additionally, until recently, the name of the game in Slovenia was that party leaders are also government ministers or, at least, have some other high-ranking function. Not allowing the trend to continue was – among other things – the reason Zoran Janković failed in his PM bid in 2011. But with advent of the Bratušek administration, this is no longer the case as a) Igor Lukšič of SD chose to pass on a ministerial position and b) Ljubljana mayor still plays a big, although diminishing role in national politics (a blogpost is pending, fear not).

Therefore, while the diagram explicitly deals with members of the government only, this is by far not the entire scheme of distribution of political power in Slovenia. In the last twenty-odd years we’ve had a number of individuals who have exerted power over specific government decisions from beyond the limits imposed by this diagram. To increase its relevancy, this should be rectified.

The above does not include only party heavyweights, but also elected officials from other branches of power, especially since we are starting to see a trend of people starting in one branch and then continuing to another. Off the top of my head, the diagram would have to include the president of the parliament, leaders of parliamentary groups and (optionally) leaders of parliamentary committees. Also, in pengovsky’s opinion, the office president of the republic should be included in the diagram.

And although this might be stretching it a bit, the diagram begs consideration as to what exactly happens when a person is no longer part of the government. Does his/her influence stop immediately? Perhaps a diluted factor of loyalty could be allowed for a selected period of time? After all, every change in government produces more or less serious shifts in top layers of power.

The mysteries

Based on the graph, Virostatiq makes a number of erroneous or incomplete conclusion. One of them is the apparent surprise at the fact that governments of Janez Drnovšek and Tone Rop are the most similar. Well, they had to be. Not only was Rop finance minister in Drnovšek’s last government, there was also a tacit agreement that Rop, upon being sworn in as PM, will not replace ministers and other cadre Drnovšek picked only two years earlier. In retrospect, this was probably the single biggest mistake that led to Rop’s LDS having its ass whooped in 2004 elections. Therefore, while the similarities of Drnovšek and Rop clusters are undeniable, the reason for this is not their ideological likness, but rather pure political necessity.

Furthermore, when viewed from the point of view of various institutions, the analysis of the graph states that “prime ministers like to keep close Department of Defence, Department of Finance and Department of Internal Affairs. People close to these offices are the movers and shakers.”

Again, had the graph included party positions, distribution of power would quite possibly be markedly different. Also, the fact that a department shows up close to the PM, doesn’t necessarily mean the people in it are the big kahunas in town. Rather, this depends very much on the style of governing of a particular prime minister.

It is no secret that during the Andrej Bajuk six-months-long administration Janez Janša was the main honcho. Since he was the minister of defence at the time, the analysis might even seem correct in this case. The only problem is that you won’t find ministry of defence anywhere near Andrej Bajuk on the graph. Alternatively, saying that Janez Drnovšek kept ministries of defence and internal affairs close is a huge misrepresentation of the situation. On the other hand, he was indeed very much into the daily operations of financial ministry, but one could argue that he ran the show there rather than having people on the ministry run him. Ditto for ministry of foreign affairs which by all accounts should come up very close to Drnovšek, but doesn’t.

The survivalists

However, the Virostatiq diagram is far from non-usable. In fact, the most obvious but perhaps unintended result is seeing who are the great survivors of Slovenian politics. There are a couple, but on political/ministerial level you will not be surprised to find that the greatest survivors of Slovenian politics are Dimitrij Rupel and Karl Erjavec. Curiously enough, they’ve both held the post of foreign minister. Go figure… :mrgreen:

So, to wrap up. The diagram has limited use for the intended purpose. But with a little work this could become an awesome tool. But it desperately needs to include additional data. Just a hint: Ali Žerdin recently published a Omrežja moči, a book on social networks in Slovenian politics and economy. I’m sure it would provide a useful resource.

 

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Karma Is A Bitch

Yesterday, Igor Bavčar and Boško Šrot were sentenced to seven years and five years, ten months prison sentence for their role in takeover of Istrabenz. While both are expected to appeal the verdict, this event, coming on the heels of Patria verdict marks an important milestone.

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Igor Bavčar and Boško Šrot (source via this)

As you know, the Bavčar/Šrot affair goes way back to 2005, when their respective MBO attempts were part of a larger scheme in which Šrot and Bavčar were given the go-ahead to take over Mercator and then went about taking over the companies they ran by employing a series of what at the time were seen as ingenious business moves, while Janez Janša and his government were given undue influence if not operative control over Delo, the nation’s largest broadsheet daily.

All these grand schemes have now crumbled to sand-dust and the symbolism of this cannot be overstated. On one hand we have nothing short of collapse of the grandeur of Slovenian independence. Sure, one could argue that the supposed virginity of this nation’s statehood was lost at least when the scope and systemic nature of the “erasure” became known, but still. Janša and Bavčar, two of the architects of Slovenian independence, who sought and were usually granted cult status, have now been found guilty of abuse of powers. The mighty have truly fallen.

If Bavčar and Janša represent the new political elite, then Boško Šrot is the epitome of the new economic elite. The nouveau riche of Slovenia. Having been hand-picked sucessor to Tone Turnšek, the guy who made Laško a serious player in the drinks industry, Šrot (who played a big role in Laško takeover of Ljubljana-based Union Brewery) went about wrapping up Laško’s hold on much of Slovenian economy: drinks, retail, media… You name it. Together with Bavčar’s Istrabenz which (to use a hase popular at the time) “consolidated” the foods industry, there was little he couldn’t do. Including help Bavčar try to take over Istrabenz.

Instead it all ended in tears, with Šrot now poised to join the ranks of fallen “pillars of economy”, construction bosses Hilda Tovšak, Ivan Zidar and Dušan Černigoj as well as former big retail kahuna Bine Kordež of Merkur, who was just recently locked up for six years on a similar charge.

Combined with the swift fall from grace experienced by Dimitrij Rupel, who in this constellation of the fallen represents those feel are simply entitled to powerful and prestigious positions, what we have here is a fairly quick disintegration of an important part of the ruling political class.

As for reasons for this, we can safely point the finger at the winter popular uprisings. It seems that apart from removing Janša from power, those were instrumental in breaking the spell politics had on various other sub-systems of the society. This includes the judiciary which was under nearly constant attacks over its incompetence and – truth be told – as time passed, these claims seemed to have ever more merit. But as if the uprisings showed that things can indeed be achieved if you try hard enough, the judiciary appears to have applied the principle of the rule of law primarily to those, who have gamed it for years on end and who – perversely – were the first to point out its inefficiencies whenever it suited them.

Just as in Janša’s case, the verdict against Bavčar and Šrot will in all likelihood be appealed at the Higher Court (OT: go see Rolig’s comment on “innocent until proven guilty”) But on the whole, the old adage has once again been confirmed: Karma is a bitch.