Ljubljana | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Has Janković Had Enough?

Days ago Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković for the second time this month dropped a hint in the passing which none of the news media seems to have picked up. Namely, that this will be his last term as mayor of the capital. At the start of a new school year Zoki, while cutting the ribbon at the new building of Ljubljana Waldorf school said that any further expansion projects will be overseen by the new mayor. While there were a few gasps in situ nobody made a big deal about it. Ditto two days ago, when upon unveiling the concept of a new housing project, he announced the new head of City Administration (to take over soonest) and told her that she will have to see that the next mayor will provide funds for the project as well.

Tired? Fed up? Bored? Or just having fun… (photo by yours truly)

Now, Zoki being Zoki, this could mean absolutely nothing. He can change his mind in split second, again full of zest and vigor and carry on as if nothing happened. On the other hand, he does seem a bit, well, fed up. Also, things are not going especially well for him. After being subjected to a year-long tax audit, his case was now referred to the state prosecution which will decide whether or not to press charges. No points for guessing what the decision will be.

The list goes on. In some circles he is constantly being mentioned as a possible “technocratic prime minister”, a sort of Slovenian Mario Monti (but much less sombre), but in pengovsky’s opinion those are just wet dreams of people who still think in terms of getting to the power first and thinking about everything else second. Janez Janša and his government are a fine example of this approach and the disaster it brings about.

All things considered, it seems extremely unlikely that Janković will (again) resign before his term is up. But if he really intends to make this his last term as mayor, political parties in the capital should start getting their asses in gear, because right now not a single one of them can produce a person with enough clout to cover all the bases in the city. Autumn 2014 may turn out to be plenty of fun.

Phone Hacking Slovenian Way

If you by any chance thought Slovenia is some sort of rump quasi-democracy with a crackpot neolib government, then you have the wrong idea, mister! In fact, this sorry little excuse for a country has everything big guys have, although you’re allowed to go pas assez cher, mon fils.

In fact, in certain aspects we’re very much like the United Kingdom. Not only did we have an allowances scandal, we have a finance minister who is forced to do an epic U-turn on matters of state finances and as of recent, just like United Kingdom we also have out very own phone-hacking scandal.

The incriminating text message. Interestingly enough, the background is red (gasp!) (source)

Interestingly enough, about a month ago, an article appeared on Slo-Tech.si community (fairly good Google translate), detailing vulnerabilities of several Slovene mobile operators and provided proof of concept about hacking ~~the entire GSM grid~~ individual phone numbers and the possibility to fake text messages and phone calls.

Days ago several members of Christian democratic NSi, a junior coaliticon party, received abusive text (SMS) messages calling them traitors and saying they’ll burn in hell for their position vis-a-vis the red star symbol. As both readers of this blog know, it has been the semi-official position of this government that the red star is a symbol of the tyranical communist regime and occupator Yugoslav army which fought to quash the fledling Slovenian state in the 1991 War of Independence. As such, the goverment went, the red star should be outlawed or at the very least excluded from the collective memory and remembance, especially from any and all official celebrations of Slovenian statehood.

Nevermind the fact that the Partisan guerilla fighters liberated Slovenia in 1945 under the red star banner, making the one of the few home-grown armed forces to defeat the Nazi and Fascist armies, hell-bent on erradicating Slovenes from the face of the Earth. Nevermind the fact that under the red star banner Slovenia was able to claim Primorska region as its sovereign territory, previously held by Italy as booty for switching allegiances in World War I. Nevermind the fact that under the red star banner, Partisan units were considered a part of Allied forces in World War Two, helping hundreds of US, British and other airmen, downed on their sorties during bombing campaigns over Nazi Germany.

Never even mind the fact that today Heineken brewery is using a red star as a part of its logo or that Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) football and basketball clubs from Belgrade are doing the same, as are countless other companies around the world, including (but not limited to) Texaco, Macy’s and even the State of California.

And last, but ceratinly not least, the only military compound in the capital Ljubljana was recently renamed from Franc Rozman Stane (commander of Partisan forces, killed in an firing-range accident in 1944) to Edvard Peperko who was the first military casualty of the Battle of Trzin (outside Ljubljana), one of the largest fire-fights between the JNA (federal army) and Slovene paramilitary Territorial Defence in 1991. The fact that defence minister Aleš Hojs, who decreed the renaming is a member of NSi, which troubled itself to defeat the (admittedly ill-concieved) designation of a new Ljubljana avenue after the late Josip Broz Tito only adds gravity to the issue. Which is why plenty of hoopla was raised when days ago prominent members of NSi received those abusive text messages. But the twist is that Jernej Vrtovec, Matjaž Longar and Andrej Cimperšek got these texts either from each other’s phone numbers or (in case of Vrtovec) from their own alternative number.

Obviously all hell broke loose, Vrtovec, Longar and Cimperšek denied the possibility of simply sending texts to one another and a police investigation was launched while Telekom Slovenje conducted an investigation into phone hacking allegations. Well, guess what: turns out their phones were not hacked but rather various web-services were used to emulate any given phone number. ~~That such a feat is possible in the first place speaks volumes of the security measures within this specific cellular network in the first place~~ (edit: apparently, this is something local mobile operators can not block. Thx @gbozic). But even more importantly this sheds new light on a similar incident months before last year’s elections.

Back then Melita Župevc MP (previously, of SD now of PS) SAID a call was made to her mobile phone using her own phone number. Given the fact that Župevc was at the time head of the parlimanetary inquiry on financing pro-SDS free “newspapers” prior to 2008 elections, she cried murder, claiming that she was being threatened and pressured. Almost immediately she became the laughing stock of the political right wing, with some even insinuating she’s delirious and hallucinating. And when their phones get allegedly hacked, they raise living hell as if it never happened before.

This government, despite facing a daunting task of handling the financial, economic and social crisis brought about by the 2008 crash, is making it its business to rewrite history and chase ghosts. Not only by banishing the red star wherever it sees one, but also by renaming army instalations which held the names of prominent Partisan leaders and screaming bloody murder when someone (perhaps even one of their own) does unto them what they laughed at when it was done unto others.

In fact, if you think Slovenia is a rump quasi-democracy with a crackpot neolib government, chances are, you’e not that far off.

A Day In A Strike

Those of you who follow The Firm™ on Facebook (hint hint!) probably already saw this, but nevertheless: Some 100,000 public sector employees went on strike today. Schools, kindergartens, libraries and some faculties were shut, policemen, firemen and customs officials were down to skeleton crews and performed only basic duties. Ditto for nurses and several other public services. As every branch of every union had to vote on whether to jon the strike, there were exceptions: journos for state TV and radio did not join the strike, altough they supported it. Some faculties voted against the strike, some didn’t even have a union branch organised. But after all was said and done, this was still the largest strike in the history of this country.

Most of the people were on strike at their place of work. Some, however, joined protests in cities all around the country, the largest of them being held in Ljubljana, where it is estimated that some ten thousand people poured in front of the governmetn and the parliament building. Pengovsky was there for your viewing pleasure.

More on austerity measures planned by the government of Janez Janša and what they lead to here and here, gallery below.

The Return of the Jay-Z

Zoran Janković is to be sworn as mayor tomorrow and I still owe you a run-down on his victory on mayoral by-elections on 25 March, so here it goes: While the result was a virtual no-brainer, the whole episode is slightly more interesting than it may seem at first glance. As you very well now, the sole reason for these by-elections was the fact that Janković was elected MP on 4 December parliamentary elections and had to relinquish his position as the Big Kahuna of the coty. After being outmanoeuvred by Janez Janša and had the premiership snatched from under the nose, Janković was faced with quite a dilemma: whether he should continue as MP and a nominal leader of the opposition, or whether he should leave the parliament and try to – as schizophrenic as this may sound – succeed himself as the mayor of Ljubljana.

Just to make sure everybody’s on the same page, pengovsky would like to remind both readers again that these were mayoral by-elections which had no effect on the composition of the city council itself with Zoran Janković List having an absolute majority of 25 out of 45 councilmen, so there was a theoretical possibility of a cohabitation. But in all honesty, the result was never in doubt. Ljubljana is Zoki’s turf and with the political right being continuously unable to mount a serious challenge to win since 1994 municipal administration reform which established Ljubljana as a single entity, the question du jour was not if Jay-Z will win, but by rather by how much. In the end the metre stopped at 61%, which is a) a repetition of his election results in 2006 and 2010 and b) still pretty awesome.

Having said that, additional and equally important issues were raised by these elections: a) why can’t the political right put up a decent fight in the capital and why it tried in vain to do so, b) what’s with the left side of the spectrum and c) what will Janković’s move from National Assembly to the City Hall mean for him and for the parliamentary opposition.

The Empire

As you know, right wing parties put forward two challengers to Zoran Janković. Mojca Kucler Dolinar, a joint SDS/NSi candidate and Matjaž Glavan, who stood for SLS. While Glavan scored a neglible 1% which is in line with that SLS got in municipal elections in 2010, Kucler Dolinar scored marginally better than she and Zofija Mazej Kuković did year and a half ago when they ran solo for NSi and SDS respectively.

But the real question is why did Kucler Dolinar run for mayor the second time knowing she’d lose. Pengovsky tried to answer this in his post running up to the elections (hoping for a reward down the road), but there are other factors to consider as well. Most of all the fact that for all intents and purposes Mojca Kucler Dolinar is now a spent force. She lost to Janković twice in a row and although one could claim that she did pretty well, she came nowhere near forcing Janković into a second round, let alone endangering him directly. This does not exactly do wonders for her political career as she has little to show for in terms of achievements. Also, word has it the joint SDS/NSi ticket was her idea but that the SDS had to formally extend the invitation since Kucler Dolinar’s NSi was strongly opposed to what they probably saw as a lost cause.

Bottom line: whatever political ambitions Kucler Dolinar might have had before 25 March are now probably up in smoke. She was probably hoping to re-enter national politics (she served as a higher education minister in the first Janša administration) but given lack of success on her part and the minute role NSi is playing the current Janša set-up, her chances are virtually nil. Ditto for any master plan she might have had to take over the party.

SDS came out of this mess virtually unhurt. From their point of view it doesn’t really matter who made the initial offer, fact of the matter is that by having Kucler Dolinar as a joint candidate they made at least a pro-forma challenge to Janković while not throwing away a name and a face they’ll have to send into battle in two-and-a-half-year’s time.

But even then they will still be faced with the same dilemma: Why can’t they win in Ljubljana? Well, the marginally younger, more urban and slightly more left-wing orientation of the population helps, but the reality is that the political right has been re-active. In other words, they always campaigned on »not doing stuff like the previous administration did it«. And had Zoki not burst on the scene in 2006, that might have just been enough. But he did and it wasn’t. As a result, they (as well as most of the other political parties) are hopelessly aping his platform which is broad enough to have encompassed most of the challenges this city will be facing in the next decade or so, as well as trying to beat him at his own game of setting goals and achieving them (or at least coming close enough). And when that doesn’t work, they fall back again to »promising not to do it like the previous guys did it«. It’s a vicious circle, which will only be broken if and when Janković (again) decides to quit the mayorship. Be it to return to the national lever, be it for good.

The Rebels

On the other hand, things are not exactly dull on the left, either. The suprise of the day was a relatively strong showing by Vito Rožej of Zares, who scored slightly above four percent of the vote, which was quite a feat for a party which barely registered with voters across the country only months ago in parliamentary elections and did only marginally better in 2010 local elections.

But before people start opening bottles of Dom Perignon ’58, we should make a few things clear. To an extent Rožej did get his four percent on account of being a relatively fresh but recognisable face on the scene (he did serve as councilman in city of Kranj and as MP in the previous parliament). Then again he was also active in the campaign for the Family Code, which must have helped. But most importantly, he had the good luck of SD, DeSUS and LDS opting not to enter the race with their respective candidates, so it is safe so say that Rožej got a fair amount of their votes as well. Just so we’re clear on that. No champagne yet, I’m afraid.

And while we’re on it: some of those votes must have gone to the lone ranger on Ljubljana politics Miha Jazbinšek, who scored a record 6 percent of the vote.

The return of the Jay-Z

So, the one last thing that remains to be answered is what will the return of the Jay-Z mean for the situation on the parliament? In the short term, nothing good, really. Sure, Janković didn’t exactly loiter in the parliament and his people had to do without him on occasion. But the fact that he will be physically gone will have its repercussions. If one is to judge by the situation in his city council group upon his leaving, Janković will have to make damn sure that MPs for Positive Slovenia don’t lose focus, motivation and go for each other’s throats. Because once the Big Kahuna is gone, a lot of small and mid-sized Kahunas will try to impose themselves unto their colleagues, despite the fact that the parliamentary group is headed by Janković’s former vicemayor and still-serving Ljubljana councilman Jani Möderndorfer. He will have his work cut out for him once Zoki is gone.

As for the left wing in general, things will become much more interesting. It is no secret that litlle love is lost between Janković and leader of SD Borut Pahor. That much became plainly obvious after the SD gave a cold shoulder to Zoki when he tried to rally all left wing parties some days ago and everyone save the Social Democrats and SMS-Green Party attended. The SD implicitly accused the re-minted mayor of trying to take over the left and impose himself unto others and they might have even been correct to an extent. But fact of the matter is that the SD finally started settling in-party scores and is locked in a bitter power struggle between Borut Pahor and Igor Lukšič, with the latter pulling no punches (and having no reason to, sice Pahor sidelined him early in his premiership for no apparent reason).

If Janković really wanted to unite the left under a common banner, he should have waited a couple of weeks, two months at best, for the shit to hit the fan witihn SD and for the defeat on the Family Code referendum to really sink in and he’d have almost all of the left eating out of his hand. But as things stand, he jumped the gun again (just as he did immediately after his election victory) and came out more or less empty handed.

But be that as it may, with Zoki in the City Hall as of tomorrow, a new centre of political power on national level is starting to emerge and it could very well be that the end result will be a situation not unlike in Austria, where nothing happens on the political left unless the all-powerful Vienna mayor Michael Häupl OKs it. And – funnily enough – Janković always said how he considers Häupl to be his role model. I guess he meant it…

The Government Break-In

Wait, what? A group of perps repotedly broke into a government parking lot over the weekend, vandalised several government vehicles and spray-painted some hate graffitti on the walls, the whole thing totaling to about 6k euros in damage. OK, tough shit, you say and a good excuse for the government to buy some new wheels in times of crisis. But there’s a catch. A couple of them, actually…

The government building in downtown Ljubljana. Parking lot marked with arrow (image via Google Maps)

First and foremost: the perps apparently made their escape. Sure, a quicky, you say. In-and-out, no sweat. The only problem is that the parking lot in question is walled from all sides. Pengovsky’s line of work took him to that particular building on quite a number of occasions and although it’s no Guantanamo, the security is pretty heavy. Not in the least in the form of steel automatic door which can only be opened from the inside by the guard. In fact, in addition to a security detail just beyond the door, there are uniformed cops on both sides of the building (that would be norht and south on the photo above) not to mention the CCTV system. Although the latter was apparently conveniently out of order.

Yup, you read it correctly. The executive centre of the country (well, half of it, the other half is across the street to the south) was without CCTV surveillance for an extended period of time. Officially since August, no less. Which is weird. Doubly so since this was not leaked (not to mention publicly known) even though the previous government in it’s dying days was leaking sensitive information by the bucketful. And if you really want a full serving of bullshit: the CCTV system was down “due to a lightning strike”.

This is the point where alarm bells start ringing. A lightning strike? Really? Call me stupid, but I thought lightning strikes the taller buildings. This particular piece of late 19th century architecture only has two storeys while a couple of buildings in the immediate vicinity… no, scratch that… all buildings in the vicinity are markedly higher than that. Not to mention that the Ljubljana Twin Towers, both of them reaching fifteen storeys high are only two hundred metres away. Lighrning strike was almost surely not the cause of the outage.

Ready for more? The cars were vandalised with granite cubes, not unlike the ones that were hurled into the parliament almost two years ago. Theories have been floated since that the outbreak of violence back then was not so much alcohol-induced but a carefuly orhestrated attack by right-wing extremists which have infiltrated the protest, while the blame was then shifted onto left-wing activists (some of whom now comprise the local branch of Occupy movement). Point being that the MO is similar and that the parallels are drawing themselves.

So, to recap: a government compound, walled from all sides in the center of the city in a well guarded goverment quarter, with uniforms outside and (supposedly) a security detail inside, under CCTV suveilance (conveniently out of order) was broken into, cars and walls vandalised and no one saw a thing?!.

This bears all the hallmarks of an undercover operation, not unlike the series of incidents in 2007, some six months prior to presidential elections, when the target of a similar operation was the late President Janez Drnovšek. And curiously enough, the building to which the said parking lot is attached also houses the Office of the President. And we’re up for presidential elections later this year.

You do the math…

UPDATE: The website of SDS-owned Demokracija magazine claims that “leftist extremists” are behind the incident. QED.

Slovenian Elections: The Janković Upset

In what was described as a shock win by the Beeb, Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković won yesteday’s early elections in Slovenia. His fledling party Positive Slovenia won 28.5 percent of the vote, narrowly beating Janez Janša and his SDS, which won 26.3 pecent. The turnout was around 65 percent.

The presumptive PM (photo by yours truly)

The upset was only hinted at on the last day of the campaign by the very last result of a tracking poll conducted by Mladina weekly, which did in fact note a slight downward trend for SDS. Every other poll missed by a mile. It wasn’t that Janković’s support surged all that much, but rather that Janša bled just enough votes to push Janković over the top. As it seems that the last few days were crucial, it can be said with a degree of certainty that Janša hurt himself too much by a) fumbling the question of his real estate, b) avoiding the last debate on state television and c) acting as if the election result is a foregone conclusion.

a) Documents

Janša couldn’t help himself. In what was essentially “game over” for Janković, he went on the offensive and pressed Janković (and by extention Pahor and Virant) to disclose their financial and real estate documentation. Borut Pahor and Gregor Virant obliged promptly, Janković – who was already under media pressure on this – dragged his feet, but did produce (almost) complete documentation, challenging Janša to do the same. The SDS leader – unexpectedly – came under fire himself due to somewhat misterious ways of his real estate deals and took much longer than expected to hand over his papers. And even after he did so, it turned out the package is incomplete (he published the complete documentation on his Facebook page early on the last day of the campaign).

More importantly, his party blamed a broken-down scanner for the delay in producing the papers which instantly brought about unpleasant memories of the Archivegate. Voters’ memory is indeed short, but some people seem to remember.

b) Debate avoidance

Both Janša and Pahor canceled their appearance on the last debate on RTVSLO (state television) opting to appear on cable-only Info TV instead. While Pahor’s motives are unclear, it was more than obvious that Janša did not want to face Janković for the third time in a week and in a setting, where he would have to share time with “lesser” candidates. It was a snub both to his fellow candidates as well as to the viewers, who had to settle for Patrick Vlačič (SD) and Zvonko Černač (SDS) instead. While Vlačič was his usual acceptable self, Černač perfomed poorly, being unable to go beyond buzzwords and the general SDS mantra. It was not a good conclusion to the otherwise professionally conducted SDS campaign.

c) Foregone conclusion

Pahor and Janša on Info TV was meant to generate the appearance of the outgoing and the incoming prime minister having a civil chat on the pressing issues, possibly undoing the damage Janša suffered during a mano-a-mano with Janković on the said TV station. This, however, was Janša’s crucial mistake. His demeanor throughout the campaign was one of calmness and composure. Janša was already meeting with labour unions, EU ambassadors and was receiving support from fellow right-wing party leaders throughout Europe (including ill-concieved support from the jailed Julia Timošenko of Ukraine and Victor Orban of Hungary). In the end, it might have done more harm than good, probably convicing some of those who would have otherwise voted for him to support other parties. Either because it seemed game, set and match for Janša, or because the whole thing spilled over into arrogance.

The aftermath

Janković won, Janša lost. But winners (in their own particular way) also include DeSUS (the pensioners’ party) of Karl Erjavec, who seem to be disaster-proof, regardless of the clowning demeanor of the party president and Christian Democratic Nova Slovenija of Ljudmila Novak, which scored the unprecedented success of being the first party in history of Slovenia to make it back into the parliament. There is certain logic to it, as it is against the general order of things not to have the Catholics in the parliament in a country which is nominally 57% Roman Catholic.

The same logic applies to the apparent losers of this elections, both liberal parties, LDS of Katarina Kresal and Zares of Gregor Golobič. Neither of them made it above the 4% treshold. Zares scored a disastrous 0.65 % of the vote, while LDS fared only marginally better with 1.46 %. This, however, will not stand in the long run and I fully expect the liberal/social-liberal option to make it back into the parliament. But we’ll cover that in one of the upcoming posts.

One party no-one will particularly miss are the nationalists of Zmago Jelinčič. Scoring only 1.80 % of the vote they’re down and out. We’ll see if that’s for good, though.

Also, technically Borut Pahor’s Social Democrats must be counted in the ‘losers’ column, since they’re down to 10 seats from previous 28. But given the criminally low ratings Pahor’s government was getting in its last year, the fact that the SD came in third does soften the blow quite a bit.

What happens next?

Obviously, Janković will have to go about forming a coalition government. We already noted the seat-divison for the top three parties. Citizens’ List led by Gregor Virant came in fourth with 8 seats, DeSUS gor six seats, ditto for SLS of Radovan Žerjav, while NSi of Ljudmila Novak got the minimum possible four seats. Two seats are, of course, reserved for MPs representing Italian and Hungarian minotiries.

The PM-presumtive (that be Jay-Z) said time and again that he will not form a coalition with Janez Janša no matter what (as in: he’d rather gnaw his arm off than have to work with the man who snubbed him in every way possible during his 2004-2008 rule). And even though he reportedly initiated talks with SDS as well, that can be – for the time being – regarded more of a good-will gesture than real negotiations. Which leaves Zoki with a couple of options to go by: First (and least likely) is to try to isolate Janša and invite just about everyone and his brother to form a coalition, including the NSi. But since the latter went head-to-head with the new leader of Slovenia on a couple of occasions, including but not limited to Tito Street (where the NSi won the case in the Constitutional Court), odds are NSi will sit this one out.

This leaves Janković (PS) with SD, SLS, DeSUS and Virant’s List (LGV) to choose from. Social Democrats are almost necessary as coalition partners as they bring in ten votes. Additionally, If the PM-presumptive wants to achieve at least some sort of across the isle consensus on reforms, he will have to include at least one of the pro-welfare-reform parties, either Virant’s List of the SLS (both centre-right). If he includes both of them, he already enjoys a comfortable majority of 52 votes (54 if minorities are counted in) in a 90 seat parliament. The other possibility is a Jankovic-Pahor-Virant-Erjavec coalition (again, 52 votes) or a slightly less comfortable PS-SD-DeSUS-SLS combo with 50 votes.

But given DeSUS’ anti-reform stance, the PS-SD-LGV-SLS seems most probable. This would also probably mean (in addition to Janković at the helm) Borut Pahor as foreign minister (a field where Zoki is noticeably lacking both in skills and personnel), Gregor Virant as either minister of justice or of the interior (possibly both, as there is talk of reducing the number of porfolios) and Radovan Žerjav as agriculture or transportation minister (portfolios which SLS usually wants to control).

Timetable

The State Electoral Commission will declare the final official results no later than 16 December, which means that the new parliament will convene for the first time on or around 24 December. After that the President of the Republic Danilo Türk will start consultations with parliamentary groups upon which he will make his nomination for the post of prime minister. While the consultations are a mere formality, they help to establish a clear picture of whether the PM presumptive can secure a necessary majority in the parliament.

And if all goes smoothly, Zoran Janković, a self-made-man of humble origins, born to a Slovene mother and a Serbian father in a backward village in Serbia, who moved to his maternal country at the age of 11 and continues to be mocked on account of his mixed roots to this very day, will be sworn in as the eight Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia.

The irony of course is not lost on Janša… If only he hadn’t had Janković removed as CEO of Mercator retail chain in 2005…

Slovenian Elections: Last Call

So, this is it. Election silence commences tonight at midnight and it’s hight time pengovsky wraps things up. This is why today’s tittage was rescheduled but tune in tomorrow (hint, hint :mrgree: ). Virtually all polls predict a decisive victory by Janez Janša‘s Slovene Democratic Party, with Zoran Janković‘s Positive Slovenia coming in second with about 10 percent gap. Further down the ladder, Borut Pahor‘s Social Democrats seem poised to finish third, ahead of Gregor Virant‘s Citizens List.

Poll numbers over the course of the campaign (see note at the bottom)

There are a couple of ways to look at this campaign. First, the fact that Top Four were reduced to Top Three. Gregor Virant crashed and burned early in the game and his Allowancegate was a gift that kept on giving, cutting him down from almost 20% to single digits. He just wasn’t up to it and went from bad to worse, not being able to stop digging even though he was in a deep hole already. In contrast, neither Zoran Janković nor Janez Janša did a particularly good job at explaining discrepancies in their financial and real estate reports but seem to have suffered very little in the polls (until today, that is). This can to an extent be explained by the fact that their voters are rather devoted to their respective political leader, but more likely it has to do with their fierce refusal to admit to have done anything wrong, even though Janković failed to declare a small part of his real estate to the anti-corruption commission (as in: did not tell he owns the wood). Also, he was anything but quick on his feet to disclose his financial obligations, but in the end did just that.

His main opponent, however, got into a lot of hot water demanding everyone else discloses their accounts and property, but then dragged his feet doing so himself. In fact, just before yesterday’s debate on POP TV his party claimed that their scanner broke down. Now that SDS and scanners don’t mix was well demonstrated in the case of creative photocopying and sure enough it turned out that this time too not everything was fine and dandy with Janša’s documents. The whole thing was revolving around how the SDS leader bought, sold and managed his real estate and it turned out that the initial contract, where he sold his existing property and bought an elite apartment in Ljubljana is fishy, with the buyer (a construction company which won many government contracts including construction of defence ministry building during Janša’s days at the ministry) being overly generous to the point of making economically unsound decisions. Re

But today, Mladina weekly, which is conducting a tracking poll over the last week, detected a marked drop in SDS’ ratings, virtually unchanged result for Janković and a rise for Social Democrats. According to this Janković is trailing Janša by only 3,6 percent. And that means that a lot of people will have a nervous 44 hour-wait.

Looking at it from another point of view, a few permanent fixtures are on the brink of dropping out of the parliament. LDS and Zares are registering low single digit percentage points and their only saving grace can be the fact that with such low numbers the margin of error is relatively huge and that it is possible that their voters are simply not detected. We’ll know for sure come Sunday. But even if both parties drop out, this will not last. Just as with Christian Democratic NSi of Ljudmila Novak, which dropped out in 2008 and looks poised to make it back, the (social-) liberal option has its rightful place in the parliament and when the pendulum swings the other way, they will most likely make it back over the 4%. But they are trying very hard to prevent dropping out in the first place. Zares of Gregor Golobič is throwing everything it has into the field (literally, they’re running a grass-roots campaign) while LDS of Katarina Kresal is beating the human-rights drum, reminding people of the 2004-2008 Janša government.

Another point of view is the dichotomy between fluff and stuff. There were some platform points that stood out: emergency financial legislation, TEŠ 6, pension and labour market reforms, some notable successes of the outgoing government (Arbitration Agreement, rectifying the issue of the Erased, Family Code, although pending a decision of the constitutional court) and so on. On the other hand, this was probably one of the most vicious, brutal and personal campaigns in recent history. Families were dragged through the mud, wives were interviewed standing next to their husbands during a debate, names were called and ad hominem attacks were the norm, especially by rank-and-file members. As per usual, journalists (yours truly included) were not spared.

But perhaps the single most defining moment of this campaign was emergence of social media as an important tool in the campaign. For the first time campaign-related tweets were published in near real time during debates (on POP TV) and the inflation of politicians, their supporters and fake accounts generated to create the necessary buzz and hate speech was – well – admirable (in a perverse sort of way). Also, social media – Twitter in particular – offered a rare insight into the campaign mindset. 140 characters are just enough to get the message across without too much spin and one could see how some politicians who usually act normally (even though they might not agree with you) went positively bananas, denouncing everyone who didn’t dance to their tune. God forbid someone actually pointed out basic flaws in their politics. On the other hand some politicians embraced Twitter and are actually using it to broaden the scope of the immediate debate. Then, of course, are also those who block other users to keep a neat and embarrassment-free timeline.

At any rate, the run is over, pengovsky decided on his vote long before the campaign began and all that’s left to do is to go out and vote. Whoever wins will probably go belly-up (politically speaking)relatively soon as the clusterfuck this country and this continent are headed into is worse than anything this generation has ever seen. We’ll probably have another elections in 2014. Provided there will be anything left to vote on.

So, tune in tomorrow for a generous helping of Friday Foxies and expect exit poll results on Sunday, some time after 7 pm local.

N.B.: Graph data is compiled from different polls with different sets of questions and different samples, so it is not directly comparable from a scientific point of view. Data still available as .xls file for download.

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