Milan Kučan | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Social Democrats Between Cerar And Veber-y Hard Place

in 1994, then-defence minister Janez Janša, refusing to quit office over Depala Vas Affair was removed from office by a parliamentary majority in what was probably one the most tense periods of Slovenian statehood. A defence minister using military spooks against civilians to his own needs is never a good idea, let alone in a fledgling democracy. And in an ironic fuck you by Mother History itself, twenty-one years later, almost to the day, Slovenia is again faced with a defence minister running amok and refusing to stand down. This time, however, it’s not Janez Janša, the now near-fallen leader of the SDS, but rather Janko Veber, of Social Democrats (SD) who directed OVS, the military intelligence service, to poke around the sale of Telekom Slovenije. Namely, he defied PM Miro Cerar and refused his calls to resign. AS a result, the PM will now ask the parliament to replace Veber.

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Picture related

Now, drawing parallels between Janša and Veber only goes so far, although a nasty one pops up on a seemingly unrelated question of handling the issue of Roma family Strojan some years ago. This time around, there is no danger of the select army units being deployed to “secure key installations”, no thousands of protesters in front of the parliament sporting pitchforks and shovels and threatening to do generally unpleasant things to deputies if defence minister goes. But one would think that the political class would have advanced both in style as well as content in the past twenty-odd years. Especially political veterans such as Veber who definitely have enough mileage to know better.

As a result, a clusterfuck of reasonable proportions is now brewing inside the ruling coalition. The SD is, for the moment, standing firm behind Veber with party boss Dejan Židan (who doubles as minister of agriculture) going on and on about Veber doing nothing inappropriate and that SD will defend ministers who do their work. On the other hand, Cerar’s demand Veber step down won him a round of applause from the opposition NSi and SDS, while coalition member DeSUS is ~~apparently still calculating how to profit from this~~ as of today on the same boat with Cerar.

The thing is that although technically his boss, PM Cerar cannot simply dismiss Veber. Because constitution. The ground law namely states that ministers are nominated by the PM but appointed to office by the parliament, hence it is only the parliament which can dismiss them. This stipulation has caused trouble more than once, with mixed results. Amazingly, back in 1992, during his second administration, Janez Drnovšek tried to replace Jožica Puhar of what is now the SD (!) but failed. Puhar later resigned of her own accord, while Drnovšek went on to become one of Slovenia’s iconic political leaders.

The same conundrum, albeit with much more melodrama attached, was faced by PM Borut Pahor in 2010, when he demanded that DeSUS leader Karl Erjavec resign as minister of environment due to a damning report by the Court of Audit. Teflon Karl refused, forcing Pahor to call upon the parliament to remove Erjavec from office. Only then did the man give in and resigned, saying he wanted to spare the PM further embarrassment.

And this is quite possibly the scenario we are facing today. Not unlike DeSUS in 2010, the SD in 2015 can, despite reportedly a strong faction in the party to do so, ill afford to quit the ruling coalition. Because resources. You see, the party is but a mere shadow of its former self. It won 30 seats in the parliament in 2008. Six years later it hardly mustered six. And it fared only marginally better on municipal level. The only asset it really still has is its organisation and ground network. But that needs to be supported somehow, mostly by influence exerted on various levels to either bring in financing or to please the right people. Preferably both. And you can not do that when in opposition.

So while PM Cerar might be faced with an undesirable prospect of a single-vote majority in the parliament (SMC and DeSUS combined can put together 46 votes), going back to square one, reopen coalition negotiations and try to lure Alenka Bratušek’s ZaAB to join in on the fun or even give a shot to a minority government rule, the SD is faced with a much more fundamental question of its survival. Of the party as a whole, not just survival of its current leadership set and the gravy train attached to it. The on

The only thing going in favour of the SD is the vast amount of experience it can draw from. The SMC is still well-versed in the intricacies of political maneuvering and is prone to trip over things that need not being tripped over. One such thing is the SD trying to shift the blame for the current situation on the SMC, saying the PM is not adhering to the coalition agreement by speeding through the motions to replace Veber. But Cerar really doesn’t have any other option. Even before the whole thing escalated to boiling point it was clear the PM can not simply let this one slide. There he was, faced with a minister who clearly stepped is bending over backwards trying to explain why, of all the possible agencies, bureaus and directorates did he have to pick army spooks to assess the sale of Telekom. Furthermore, why the bleeping bleep did that he, while claiming to have acted in the interests of national security, exposed the inner communication of military intelligence which – if nothing else – showed that the service was just as divided on the issue as the rest of the country. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a security risk. And Veber trying to explain all that was a textbook definition of a shitty job.

If Cerar ignored the issue or even supported Veber, he would have not only condoned Veber’s actions but – just as importantly – empowered the SD to the point of near-invincibility, because if you can get away with abusing military intelligence for political purposes, you can get away with anything. And before the faithful jump citing Veber’s concern for national security, we should not forget his party chief Židan who yesterday more or less plainly told the newsmedia the true casus belli was not national security as such but rather control of the Telekom. And this evening, Veber upped the ante, echoing Židan and even implied that while he was working in the interests of the country, Cerar wasn’t. Which is stopping just short of accusing the prime minister of high treason. And that’s a statement that’s very hard to walk away from. So the question do jour is whether the SD will walk away from Veber or from the government.

If pengovsky were a betting man, he’d bet on the former. Especially since there are other big companies for sale as well and if the SD quits the government, they relinquish what little influence they will have over the issue after the dust settles.

Astroturf

Virtually all over the map (both geographically and otherwise) political forces that be have a huge ~~political~~ credibility problem. That in itself is hardly news. In Britain Tories and Labour alike are tripping over each other, trying to run away from Rupert Murdoch with whom they were schmoozing beyond any good taste only months earlier. In the US, Democrats and Republicans were playing chicken over country’s finances and en passant produced a needless crisis. In France, bombing the shit out of Ghadaffi was equally complemented by a would-be presidential challenger who has a problem keeping his fly closed and in Germany going after multi-kulti was the obvious answer to a lack-lustre economic recovery.

The list, of course, goes on and on. Hungary went from a government of fucking liars to semi-autocratic, press-muzzling and dangerously nationalistic rule. Italy and Belgium, we won’t even mention, while Slovenia went from deliberatly harmful to depressingly incompetent. This was all exasperated by the fact that the electorate, having succumbed (or adopted, whicever you prefer) to consumeristic dictum in all walks of life including politics, demanded ever quicker solutions for ever bigger problems without giving up much of the ever more comfortable life in return. In short, clusterfuck.

With the decline of political parties’ credibility, grass-roots organisations and pressure groups began gaining on prominence. Ranging from corporate special interest to NGOs, from environmentalist initiatives to labour unions and religious organisations, democracy was becoming increasingly horizontal.

The good old days

Slovenia, as always, is a bit of a special case. Civil society saw its heyday in the late 1980s, when existing mono-party channels becoming painfully insufficient to run (if not rule) the society. Things were happening which the ruling Communist Party – which appropriated for itself the role of the societal avant-garde – was unable to comprehend, let alone control. But since the Party in Slovenia on the whole opted for reform instead of oppression (although it wasn’t as clear-cut as the sentence might suggest), Slovenia of the time was replete civic organisations of virtually every flavour. You name it, Slovenia probably had it, chief among them being the Committee for Protection of Human Rights, which for all intents and purposes can be described as a text-book case of a grass-roots organisation. In terms of civil society, late 80s in Slovenia were as good as it gets.

With the advent of the nation-state, most of these initiatives either transformed into proper political parties or disbanded, their raison d’etre spent. But individuals from either of the two types were popping up in the political arena faster than you could say ‘multi-party elections’ and starting in 1990 it seemed that the civil society in Slovenia was non-existent in the traditional sense becuase it was in fact in power.

Astroturf

Fast forward fifteen years (give or take a few) and the situation was beginning to take shape it has today. Political parties, although still the only legitimate player in the political arena are fast losing the initiative in virtually every aspect and are for some time now looking to various supposedly non-political players for ideas and support. This, of course is nothing special. Think-tanks, lobby groups and NGOs do have a place in a democratic society and rightly so. In this respect, Slovenia is only coming up to speed with the rest of the developed world.

However. In addition to the above, political parties instead of trying to harness the flow of ideas that was at last being generated by re-emergence of the civil society started hi-jacking it. And in this the political right in Slovenia has built up an impressive lead. While a couple of think-tanks have emerged both on the left (most notably the Liberal Academy, widely connected to LDS and lately Forum 21, created by former President Milan Kučan) and the right (such as Jože Pučnik Institute) the right mostly went about artificially creating “popular” movements, either to gain legitimacy or to have them say and do things that were unbecoming to a mainstream political party. In short, we’re talking about astroturf initiatives (hat-tip to Cornelius for this one)

One of the earlies examples of political astroturf was (and still is) Aleš Primc, former member of Slovene People’s Party (SLS) who took to baricades when the law on in-vitro fertilisation was debated and which proposed that single women without a pre-existing medical condition were eligible for IVF. Until then IVF was the last resort for couples which failed to conceive children any other way. The political right saw this as an attack on everything that was holy, natural and traditional and Primc’s initiative was used to go below and beyond the level of what was considered an acceptable debate at that time (way back in 2001).

The same, but worse

Careful observers did not miss the fact that those same issues (holy, natural and traditional) were raised again recently as the Family code was debated and passed and is now awaiting the fate of a referendum bid initiated by – you guessed it – Aleš Primc. The only difference between today and ten years ago is that the right wing parties of today are using Primc’s rhetoric of a decade ago, while Primc is saying everything they think but can’t say today.

Much more civilised but no less artificial are various initiatives of “concerned citizens” who recently took it upon themselves to cut short the life of the incumbent government of Borut Pahor. The self-styled “resetters”, a group of more or less high profile individuals including Gregor Virant, Žiga Turk, Janez Šušteršič, Marko Pavliha, Matej Lahovnik and Rado Pezdir first called for “a reset of Slovenia”, later upgraded that with a web petition to call early elections and got around 19k signatures to date. All fine and dandy even you don’t agree with them, but with one caveat: four of those individuals are former ministers. Turk and Virant served during Janša’s government, Pavliha and Lahovnik served under PM Tone Rop, with Lahovnik returning for another stint under Pahor, but both of them becoming bitter opponents of the current government (Pavliha over Arbitration Agreement, Lahovnik over TEš6 power plant). Janez Šušteršič and Rado Pezdir, however, were connected to Slovenian Macroeconomic Forum (a proper think-tank) which provided Janez Janša with a ready-made neoliberal economic platform prior to his 2004 electoral victory. To sum it up – nothing remotely grass-roots here, only people with their own political agendas.

Ditto for the Group of Active Citizens, headed by Matej Makarovič who last month brought together Tone Jerovšek, Borut Rončević, Lovro Šturm, Matevž Tomšič and Andrej Umek and pointed out the need to return to the roots (sic!) of “Slovene Spring” of 1988-1990. Of six individuals three served as ministers (Šturm, Jerovšek and Umek) while the other three are professors at some of the newly formed Slovene faculties which came into being with in the last decade. But a special mention goes to the leader of this outfit, Matej Makarovič (whom pengovsky fondly remembers as assistant lecturer during his days at the social sciencies faculty) whose forays into the political include being president of the SDS youth organisation and later being named honorary president of the same. Again, rather than true grass-roots, this congregation is pure astroturf.

Laying waste

And last but certainly not least we come to the the Assembly for the Republic, currently headed by (surprise, surprise) Gregor Virant. This assembly was created before the 2004 elections to drum up additional support for Janez Janša. While it never presented itself as a genuine grass-roots organisation it did not fulfil its initial promise to watch over the government regardless of the outcome of the elections. As Janša ultimately won the 2004, the Assembly for the Republic almost died off, briefly re-appearing in 2006 to support France Arhar in his unsucessful bid for Ljubljana mayor (Zoran Janković won with a landslide) and then went dormant until 2008 elections where it acted in Janša’s favour much more directly but to little avail. The left wing won the elections and Borut Pahor was appointed Prime Minister, while the Assembly for the Republic went dormant yet again, only to re-surface recently as early elections were mulled.

Astroturfing in Slovenia of course does not end there but goes on and on and on. And it will continue to do so since political parties (mostly right wing) have long taken their fight outside the parliament and onto other venues, civil society being one of them. To an extent this is to be expected in a country as small as Slovenia, but what they fail to see is that they are in fact laying waste to the society as a whole. And at the end of the day, when they find out their ratings don’t match their expectations, their only reaction is to serve us with more astroturf.

The Prez Was In Surgery. Why Wasn’t Anyone Told?

President Danilo Türk underwent a surgical procedure on Tuesday, removing malignant tissue from his prostate, the Office of the President said earlier today. According to the statement the procedure was successful and the President is expected to make a full recovery, returning to his duties next week.

The Prez was under the knife (source)

Wishing good health and speedy recovery to The Prez, pengovsky is somewhat troubled by the post festum announcement of presidential medical woes. The issue in itself is nothing new and has been debated time and again: to what extent is the public entitled to know medical details of their elected officials?. Slovenia has a patchy history on this. First Slovenian president Milan Kučan was relatively free of medical problems (at least those we know of) and during his two-and-a-half terms in office was admitted to hospital only once, due to kidney stone problems. Before Kučan, the first Slovenian Prime Minister Lojze Peterle had his appendix removed while in office.

More known and widely reported was medical condition of the late Janez Drnovšek. In 1999, while still PM, Drnovšek was admitted to hospital and had a cancerous kidney removed. Three years after the operation he ran for president and was elected to the office despite confirming that he was “of slightly weaker health”. His embracing of alternative medicine to combat cancer caught international attention and his changed lifestyle was an inspiration to many in Slovenia and abroad. Nevertheless, Drnovšek died of cancer in late 2007, shortly after leaving office.

And of course, let us not forget the glorious fuck-up years ago while Janez Janša was Prime Minister, when he had his hernia operated. Then, as now, the media were informed post festum, but the fun began when his spokesperson (some say deliberately) made a typo and wrote that the PM had ligament (Slovene: kita) instead of hernia (Slovene: kila) surgery. However, “kita” is also slang for cock (or penis, if you prefer) and you can imagine the roaring laughter that echoed for weeks on end.

And while we’re on the subject, rumours are circulating of Janša being of ill health. Whether or not that is true and if true, what is the exact nature of his medical condition, no one save Janša and those closest to him know. Which brings us again to the question: How much should the public know?

For better or for worse, I think that there is indeed a limit to that. True, there is a certain logic in politicians presenting a clean bill of health before assuming and during their time in office. It’s nice to know that the people we trust to run the country as physically capable of performing the task. If a person in office has a debilitating illness, or a condition which is impairing him or her from doing the job effectively, then the public has the right to know and the politician in question most likely has to step down (hat tip: John Morrow on Quora)

But good health is no guarantee whatsoever that they will execute their office in the public interest. Case in point being President Drnovšek who (in my opinion) was one hell of a president after he changed his lifestyle on account of his disease. I’m not saying he was a bad president before that or even that he was a bad prime minister (his track record remains unbeaten), but fact of the matter is that his presidency has had a profoundning and extremely positive effect after he “turned alternative”.

But there are legal and political issues to consider as well. In case of president Türk’s surgery this means there should be at least some kind of announcement made. True, Slovene president does not have nuclear codes, nor are we at war (save with ourselves, but we don’t need a president for that). But despite everything, the President still is the Commander in Chief. Furthermore, the Constitution stipulates that in case of temporary or permanent incapacitation of the President, his powers are transferred to the President of the Parliament.

I imagine President Türk was under narcosis during surgery which means that for the duration of the procedure the powers would have been transferred to President of the Parliament Pavle Gantar. Hopefully, the necessary paperwork was filled out, but a public announcement was definitely lacking. Some would say that it’s not such a big deal, given the fact that the president’s powers in Slovenia are limited and that it’s a more or less routine procedure. But what if – Bob forbid – something went wrong?

Despite his limited powers, the President has some relatively important duties and obligations regarding the functioning of democratic institutions. For example, he nominates candidates for judges of the Constitutional Court. In fact, it was only yesterday when his nominee for a vacated post at the Constitutional Court Rado Bohinc was not approved by the parliament meaning Türk must go through the entire selection process again. What if he were unable to and the public were to find out through this that the presidential powers were transferred to Gantar?

I realise this looks like nitpicking but normally President Türk is such a stickler for constitutional details that this is quite a serious slip-up on his part and the part of his office. Again: I assume the powers were formally transferred but in the name of transparency, accountability and all the of-the-people-for-the-people-and-by-the-people shit, it would be nice if they would let us know that the Commander in Chief is going under the scalpel.

The same goes for the Prime Minister. Agreed, the PM wields more executive and less formal power, but in his case there is not even a clear line of succession as there is no formal Vice-PM (or something). Technically, the PM can decide which of his ministers can run the daily government business, but should the PM become incapacitated, there is no-one with parliament-mandated powers to run the executive branch. And the situation in Slovenia at the moment is so fragile that PM Borut Pahor reportedly cannot afford to be out of the country for more than three-or-so days.

However, most of these constitutional nuances are lost on general Slovene media. They are more concerned with why The Prez went to Innsbruck, Austria to have the surgery when he has professed his faith in Slovene health system. Well, that’s bullshit, methinks. The Prez can have him self opened up wherever he damn pleases, if he pays for it out of his own pocket. Which he has done in this case. And were he to choose a Slovenian hospital (apparently only Celje hospital is capable of performing a similar robotic surgery), he would be accused of jumping the queue.

Fun Times! :D

(source)

After the Archivegate fiasco, Janez Janša and his SDS took a noticeable (and predictable) dip in the polls. It was just too obvious for anyone but the most hardened SDS supporters to believe that the whole thing was just an honest mistake. But the effect will probably not last beyond a couple of months, although it is highly likely that this will become the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, at least whenever Janša will question the credibility of his political opponents.

Ghosts Of Independence Past

However, the leader of the largest opposition party remains on the defensive. It just so happened that parallel with the Archivegate claims of Janša’s involvement of illegal arms sales resurfaced (yet again) with people who claim (or are claimed) to have been in on it saying that Janša took cuts (or at least knew of cuts being taken) from arms sales to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now, this is highly complex subject and features Janša, his fellow political travellers and a number of other former high ranking Slovenian politicians, including former presidents Milan Kučan and late Janez Drnovšek.

At some point pengovsky will probably (have to) write a blog-post on the issue, but I admit this is a daunting task, as books have been written about it and still it remains unresolved. The thing is that twenty years after independence, wherever there’s a shady arms deal, Janša is not far away. He is definitely not the only one, but he is one of the few names that pop up every single time. And right now the question-de-jour is whether or not he had a part in what seems to be a 10 million euro difference in cash between what buyers from Croatia and Bosnia paid to Slovenia and the amount that was officially registered by defence ministry while Janša headed the department.

It should be noted that throughout the last two decades, give or take a year, Janša denied taking any illegal activities and that he was never convicted of anything (whether or not he was charged with anything escapes me at the moment). It should also be noted that of the four parliamentary inquests, none filed a final report, thus only adding to the confusion with partial information being leaked and interpreted in a zillion different ways. But one thing seems certain. Twenty years on, Janša is looking increasingly lonely in professing his innocence. People are starting to point their fingers and they point them dangerously close to Janša.

Meanwhile in the Batcave…

On the other hand the dark magic that is being called “handling the crisis” and which is being practised by the government of Borut Pahor seems to be making at least partial headway. Nothing dramatic yet, but those same polls which noted a dip for Janša, saw a slight bounce in the government’s ratings.

Somewhat more surprisingly, however, the reform legislation – at this point the pension reform and the law on menial work – seems to have a fighting chance in the upcoming referendums. In fact, according to polls by yesterday’s Delo newspaper, a majority of voters support the law on menial work (reforming the area of student labour), while those opposing the pension reform have only a couple of percentage points’ lead over those who support it. And that’s before campaigning started for real.

Much work remains to be done before PM Pahor and his coalition can claim another crucial referendum victory, and some would argue these are not really reforms but more of a patch-me-ups, plugging only the biggest leaks and not really kick-starting the economy. In all honesty pengovsky wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more substantial pension reform, but until we get a working model of basic income, every reform will be limited to plugging leaks. Not to mention the fact that the ruling coalition again suffered a minor hear attack due to controversial (and harmful) plan to build bloc 6 of Šoštanj coal power-plant, where the costs have apparently risen for additional 300 million euro, at the moment totalling at 1.5 billion euros.

In other news…

Combination of perceived political and economic gridlock on one hand and the inherent inability of a capitalist social order to correct errors caused by its own design flaws together with reaping all the “benefits” of wealth distribution which comes as a result of a transition from a socialist to a capitalist society, is a bitch. But one is still amazed at how the above leads highly intelligent and academically accomplished individuals into having the most wonderfully absurd ideas.

The latest one, launched by Žiga Turk, formerly minister of development in Janša’s government, currently a Ljubljana city councilman and a fellow twitterer, who floated the idea of a “reset”. Days ago his thinking was beefed up by two other former ministers, Matej Lahovnik who served as minister of economy in governments of Tone Rop and Borut Pahor and Marko Pavliha who served as minister of transport in Rop’s government, former head of the Government Institute for Marco-economic Analysis and Development Janez Šušteršič and Rado Pezdir, the bad boy of Slovene economics (and I mean that in the kindest possible way).

Together they expanded on the idea of “resetting Slovenia”, basically saying the whole country and most if not all of its subsystems are FUBAR and that we’re better off starting all over again. Only this time we’ll do it right.

Now, I’m oversimplifying things, to be sure. Their text is substantial and it has been already taken apart by Drugi Dom and the good doctor (all links in Slovenian). But on the issue of fixing problems of capitalism with more capitalism pengovsky said all he had to say some time ago. But as things stand now, this is a valid issue in a public debate.

At any rate, the entire quagmire that is Slovenian political landscape just got a bit more murky and opaque in the past week. Fun times! 😀

Pahor-Obama: A Very Special Huddle (But Not All That Special)

So, Big O. met Lil’ B. regardless… Yesterday Prime Minister Borut Pahor concluded his visit the United States. This in itself would be of only mild importance had it not been for the infamous Wikileaks cable detailing how Pahor did some diplomatic tit-for-tat and, among other things, told the top ranking US diplomat in Slovenia that this country will consider taking in one Gitmo detainee, but he’d like to speak to President Barack Obama for 20-or-so minutes. And – somewhat surprisingly – did get what he asked for.

Big O. meets Lil’ B. (source: RTV SLO via STA)

Now, fair’s fair and it should be noted that Gitmo and quality-time with the Big O. were only part of a bigger package, much (if not all) of which was discussed with various US players by Slovene delegation which included foreign minister Samuel Žbogar and finance minister Franci Križanič. The fact that the latter was on the scene suggest that preliminary talks with J.P. Morgan over the bank possibly buying a stake in state-owned Nova Ljubljanska banka may actually yield results. Personally, I wouldn’t hold my breath, although it seems that Slovenian delegation mostly got what it came for: pleading a case for US direct investments, American acknowledgement of Slovenia having clout in the Balkans and some face-time with Obama.

Truth be told, this wasn’t an Oval Office meeting. According to the infamous cable Pahor wanted a 20-minute private pow-wow with the US president, but instead got what appears to be a half-hour group huddle in the Roosevelt Room (adjacent to the Oval Office) where the two leaders were accompanied by their entourage.

Furthermore, it must be said that Pahor is not nearly the first Slovene leader to have met a US president. Way back in 1997 Slovenian President Milan Kučan had a private meeting with president Bill Clinton, which according to reports lasted about half an hour and every Slovene President and/or PM sice was either visiting or hosting the President of the United States of America. A year later Cliton was paid a visit by Slovene PM Janez Drnovšek. Then Clinton came to visit Slovenia in 1999 (co-hosted by PM Drnovšek and President Kučan), then we had the legendary Bush – Putin summit in Slovenia only months before 9/11 with Kučan and Drnovšek again playing co-hosts. A year later Drnovšek meets George W. Bush in the Oval office. Two years later, upon entry into NATO, Bush meets with Slovenian PM Tone Rop, whereas two years after that President Bush meets PM Janez Janša, who – again – two years later, in 2008, together with Slovenian president Danilo Türk plays co-host to President Bush while he visited Slovenia on his farewell tour in 2008. And now, two years later, Slovenian PM Borut Pahor visited US President Barack Obama.

Point being that starting with Clinton, Kučan and Drnovšek US presidents regularly met with Slovenian presidents and prime ministers. In this respect yesterday’s meeting is not really so much of a breakthrough as it is a continuation of Slovenia (again) punching above its weight in terms of regional diplomacy. While Slovenian politicos across the board consider themselves specialists on the Balkans issue, fact of the matter is that the moment the US realised that the endgame of Yugoslav wars will be played in Kosovo and took the Kosovar side, Slovenia was slowly but surely sidelined, although Kučan’s and Drnovše’s advice was much sought before the big boys decided to clear things up and finally kicked Milošević’s ass. Slovenia’s “special status” in the Balkans was of course confirmed by the 1999 Clinton visit.

Under Bush the US focused on their war on terror, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and since at than time Slovenia was still outside NATO looking in, it continued to curry the US favour, often in a less-than-tasteful form (i.e. by co-signing the Vilnius Letter). Fast forward to 2008 and Slovenia has virtually no more clout in the Balkans (economic expansion into the region notwithstanding). Not that we didn’t have information, insight or opinion, it was just that the border dispute with Croatia was becoming an ever bigger mess, often almost on the brink of a shooting war. And if you can’t solve a petty dispute on your border, how can you give advice in the region? But that was solved, courtesy of big case of cojones on the part of PM Pahor and his Croatian counterpart Jadranka Kosor (with a little arm-twisting from Brussels and Washington) and now Slovenia can have a serious go at regional diplomacy once again. And since it is the US which shuffles this particular deck of cards, Slovenia again has to curry their favour, this time in clearing up the human rights mess that is the Guantanamo Detention Camp. Bottom line: although at times it looked more like Slovenia was blowing American dick and a lot of people looked away in disgust, Slovenia always tried whisper into the Americans’ good ear and for the past twelve years it has more or less succeeded.

Having said that, despite heartwarming assurances that Slovenia is an equal partner and all that jazz, it is obvious that yesterday’s meet-up was not a culmination of a long and successful diplomatic streak but a sort of a re-start, which had some good karma to it. However there are things that were conspicuously missing, mostly the fact that Obama did not meet Pahor separately but sort of “invaded” meeting with VP Biden. However, it is plainly obvious that the whole thing was carefully planned, despite a tweet by foreign minister Samuel Žbogar couple of hours before the meeting asking himself whether or not Obama will drop by.

This has all the hallmarks of a diplomacy Pahor-style, where everyone is playing stupid, allowing everyone to get what they wanted. Something like this happened late in 2009 when Bill Clinton came to a Diners event and bored everyone to death for 45 minutes, but refused to meet with Slovene leadership officially, apparently because the State Department will not have him pissing in his wife’s pool. But Pahor being what he is, he engineered a “chance meeting” in downtown Ljubljana. You can imagine the scene: a former US president just happens to be strolling down Čopova Street and the incumbent Slovenian PM by pure chance happens to find himself on that particular street and you’ll never believe whom he met…

The Pahor-Obama huddle is special when viewed through the prism of the Wikileaks cable which caused plenty of embarrassment and produced some very ballsy denials both in Ljubljana as well as Washington. In terms of defying the public outcry which – although largely unwaranted – followed the release of the cable, the meeting is both an achievement as well as a strong commitment of both Slovenia as well as US. However, when viewed on a larger scale of things, it only shows that what we are seeing is a variation of a familiar tune. A pretty good variation, but nothing radically new.

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