President Pahor Calls Election And Tampers With Rules Of Engagement

President Pahor dropped his hankie last Wednesday and called the 2022 parliamentary election in Muddy Hollows. The date of the vote is set for April 24, the first possible date in a six-week period. This means that the rubber now finally meets the road and the mad dash for the finish line begins.

President Borut Pahor signing the order calling the 2022 parliamentary election.
The Prez signing the order calling parliamentary elections (source)

This also means that The Prez was not under pressure to backtrack on his earlier commitments to this date. Or, to be more precise, this meas that the Glorious Leader is just fine with the date. The only one who was making noises on this was nationalist party leader and a walking business project, Zmago Jelinčič.

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Robert Golob And Political Analogies

Robert Golob took the plunge. The now-ex CEO of Gen-I electrical power provider took over Z.Dej, a small green party founded by Jure Leben and renamed it to Gibanje svoboda (Freedom Movement). Thus he inserted himself into the political arena. The move was long roumored so overtly indicated for the past week that even pengovsky got the hint.

Robert Golob and PM Janša's tweet.
Robert

This is bad news for Speaker Igor Zorčič and his newly-minted LIDE party. He can now only hope the remnants of pensioners’ party DeSUS will go all cougar on him. Golob, however, got precisely what he needed. An empty political vessel, devoid of an ambitious president and sans all the bureaucratic jumping through hoops that forming a political party entails.

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Janez Janša And The China Clusterfuck

Every time pengovsky does a series of posts on the state of things in Slovenia, shit happens to interrupt the regular programming. And this time, boy did the excrement hit the oscillator. The story of course is PM Janša’s recent interview for an Indian state TV. The whole things a sight to see, but money-quotes include the Glorious Leader lambasting China for its handling of the epidemic and standing up for Lithuania after the EU member opened a trade office in Taiwan.

PM Janša in a TV interview, talking about China and Taiwan, among other things.

So far so good. The part about the pandemic is a bit impolitic, but OK. He went on to say that Slovenia will follow Lithuania and open its own office in Taipei. Which… um… Right? But then he said “he’d support the sovereign decision of the Taiwanese people to decide for themselves how they want to live”. Not surprisingly, the Chinese foreign office blew its stack. Thus Glorious Leader landed Muddy Hollows in another diplomatic dumpster fire.

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The State of Muddy Hollows Play, part 2: Who The Fuck Is Robert Golob?

In Part Two of pengovsky playing catch-up (click here for Part 1), it is finally time to introduce Robert Golob. To outside observers, his name popped up suddenly in a series of opinion polls, scoring a cool fifteen-to-twenty percent from the get-go. And many people went “the fuck is going on in Muddy Hollows?”

Robert Golob, now former CEO of Gen-I, who upended political scene in Muddy Hollows.
Robert Golob (source)

In a nutshell, it is a function of a lot of people wanting someone, anyone, to sort out this fucking mess. Call it a reverse messiah complex. That is not to say that Robert Golob does not have his own agency and ambitions. Which he clearly does. But right now, he still lacks pretty much everything else. But the turntables….

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The State of Muddy Hollows Play, part 1: Party Like It’s 1939

It has been… checks notes… more than a month since pengovsky posted anything on the state of play in Muddy Hollows. There were things to see and people to do and whatnot, but still apologies are in order. So, yeah..

Slovenian PM Janez Janša during a meeting of the coalition that kind of runs the show in Muddy Hollows
The Glorious Leader at a coalition pow-wow (source)

But shit did not stop going down in Slovenia and both readers were pleading, nay, screaming for an update. Which turned into an update series. Because who wants to read a five-thousad-words blogpost? Anyway, it so happens that said updates include pigeons, turncoats and rebrandings. They will also introduce a shitload of new parties, suspicious public opinion polls and overt hints to a Trump playbook. Oh, and a letter from the Glorious Leader.

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In An About-Face, PM Janša Continues EPPO Shitshow

No sooner than pengovsky thought the madness had abated somewhat, the Janša government went full retard once again. Mere days after it had briefly reconnected with reality and acknowledged the two Slovenian delegated EPPO prosecutors, the administration came up with a draft law that would effectively revoke the nomination and put the government in charge of the process.

PM Janša and justice minister Dikaučič on an EPPO logo.
PM Janša had justice minister Marjan Dikaučič rubberstamp EPPO volte-face

The main takeaway here is, of course, that Janša government is aiming to extinguish prosecutorial independence. The rule of law is for liberal pussies, and all that. But what is really galling is the brazen manner in which the regime of the Glorious Leader floated the idea. Namely, this head-on attack against the rule of law came less than 48 hours after justice minister Marjan Dikaučič survived a no-confidence vote.

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Borut Pahor And Election Deflection

Some ten days ago, president Pahor announced his intention to schedule parliamentary election in Muddy Hollows for Sunday, 24 April 2022. Ordinarily, this would have been huge fucking news. And it was. For about fifteen minutes.

Ballot box used in Slovenian elections.
The ballot box. The image is not yet purely symbolic.

Careful observers, however, noted almost immediately that the language Pahor used was, well, Pahoresque. That, in fact, the announcement was not really an announcement. Rather, it was an announcement of an announcement of an intention. That is was, en bref, a load of bullshit with the sole aim of deflecting heat off the back of PM Janez Janša.

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