Prime minister | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

A Letter To Prime Minister Borut Pahor (Yo B., Wassup!)

Dear Prime Minister!

It’s me again. I hope you don’t mind the quip in the title. It seems that these days almost everyone feels comfortable addressing you on first name basis. Not just your (former) brethren in arms but just about anyone who litters the Slovenian corner of the internets with their more or less half-witted comments. Anyways, it’s that time of the year again and I’m not talking about the December festiveness, if you catch my meaning 😉 No matter how you look at it, it’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? You’ve seen your ratings plummet, the crisis took a turn for the worse and skeletons have been falling out of closets faster than you could say “welfare state”. But, unlikely as it may seem, your second year in office earned you much higher marks in my book.

Finger-pointing PM Borut Pahor (source)

You see, in your first twelve months in office you’ve been more or less all fluff. No need to go into details (besides, you can read them up on this blog), but let’s just say that your chronic searching for common ground was beyond counter-productive. Then, all of the sudden, you seemed to have gotten your bearings, released a few carefully placed “gaffes” and transformed – it seemed as if overnight – into this decisive, no-bullshitting, finger-pointing asshole who will walk over bodies to get what he wants.

First and foremost, I congratulate you on securing, signing and winning ratification of the Arbitration Agreement between Slovenia and Croatia. I for one wholly agree with your assessment that consequences of this agreement go beyond mere here-and-now. To think that things regularly escalated almost to an armed border incident while times were good for both countries, it doesn’t bear contemplating what would happen if the border dispute were to become a convenient red herring for either country in times of economic woes and rising nationalism. Yes, I think that had the issue remained unresolved, we could have even witnessed an armed conflict. Things were that bad and with that in mind I feel that for this alone you deserve utmost praise.

Having said that I’d like to impress upon you is that this is the moment to construct your own piece of Churchilliana. Remember him? The old conservative fart with a cigar in one hand and a glass of brandy in another (brandy, not whiskey as you mistakenly claimed in your inauguration speech) whom we both appreciate? If memory serves, one of his many quotes includes “In victory – magnanimous”. This is how you should go about the arbitration agreement. Yes, you struck it, stuck to it and saw it through. But you were not entirely alone in that enterprise. The government and the coalition were behind you. The majority in the parliament was behind you. A lot of people who needn’t stick their necks out were behind you as well. Yes, if you had failed the blame would fall entirely on your shoulders. And, yes, you can claim all the success as yours. But that would be a bit short sighted, methinks. Not only because the story is not quite over yet, but also because a lot of people would feel better about it if you spread some love. Many a voter supported the deal simply because they were fed up with the whole storm in a teacup. This doesn’t mean that they’re in your bag for good. But they might support you again if you come off as magnanimous enough.

Sir!

Arbitration Agreement aside you seem to have generated some clout with your Balkans initiative which is – as I understand – now seen as a convenient fall-back for NATO and EU ever since the Butmir process more or less failed as did the Spanish initiative during their EU presidency. You were also very active in the Arab world and the much lacked economic aspect of foreign policy now finally seems to be there. Hopefully it is not too little too late. At the very least I’m sure Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković is grateful for your Lybian endeavours, since apparently moneymen from Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya will invest 30 million euros into Stožice Complex.

Foreign policy is your strong suit. Case in point being the cable by US Embassy in Ljubljana which was released by WikiLeaks and picked up by Spanish El Pais daily which detailes how you floated the idea of Slovenia accepting one Gitmo detainee and put it in the wider context of Slovene-US relations. While US charge d’Affairs apparently took the bait, the idea did not bear fruit. It does, nevertheless prove that you know how to play the game, although people whose opinion I value tell me that your performance lacked diplomatic style in this particular episode. However…

If were are to broaden the famous dictum by von Clausewitz and accept that foreign policy is only a continuation of domestic policy using different means, then, my dear Prime Minister, I fear you are on the brink of your ego issuing checks your body can’t cash.

You see, most if not all of your diplomatic exploits will not be worth a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys if you fail in your domestic policies which – as we both know – constitute a rather tall order unto themselves, doubly so in times of economic and social crisis.

Prime Minister!

While it is generally understood that (in Slovenia, at least) left-wing coalitions are fraught with bickering, divisive rhetoric, principles which sometime border on hard-headedness and a plethora of interests with almost every player, no matter how unimportant, convinced that he/she would do a far better job in your place, you must take caution as to not let this state of “organised chaos” dissolve into senseless waste of time. This can happen either by you and your government being spread thin over too many fronts or by you not keeping your coalition partners and (even more importantly) your own party in check. You seem to be going down both paths with gusto.

Challenges (to use one of your favourite buzzwords) you and your government are facing today are numerous, chief among them the upcoming pension reform where you’re bleeding too much too fast and should bring the issue to a favourable close as soon as possible. The longer it takes you to do it, the less positive outcome there will be.

You are most likely facing a referendum in pension reform in 2011. Ditto for legislation on menial work. The same quite possibly goes for the new Family Code. You’re also up for a referendum on the new law on RadioTelevision Slovenia (RTVSLO). These are battles you must win. It is only with political victories at home that you can claim clout abroad. But to win them, you desperately need to get your own house in order. The fuck-up over your former chief of staff Simona Dimic put quite a dent in your armour. Leader of one of your coalition parties is on trial for dereliction of duty in the Patria Affair and has burdened this country with an attack boat Slovenia got as compensation for the so called “clearing-debt” owed to us by Russia. True, Karl Erjavec of DeSUS had a hand in this while he was defence minister in Janez Janša’s government, but fact of the matter is that your government is taking heavy flak over it. Not to mention that it is Erjavec who is continuously giving you the short shrift over pension reform.

Not that it stops there. Your other two coalition partners, Zares and LDS are having problems of their own and I don’t mean just fighting for survival in the public opinion polls. Zares and its leader Gregor Golobič is constantly fighting off ever more silly attempts to implicate him and Ultra company in every half-baked investment in this country while LDS is possibly up for a third consecutive interpelation of one of its ministers, this time of Justice Minister Aleš Zalar (not in the least because is using Twitter, which some find irresponsible)

But all of the above is peanuts compared to the slaughterhouse that is to become your own party if you don’t kick some serious ass soon. Case in point being bloc 6 of Šoštanj Coal Powerplant (TEŠ6), an investment of a whooping 1.2 billion euro with so little oversight that it probably made even tax consultants cringe. While TEŠ6 is more of a “local v. national” rather than inter-coalition feud, fact of the matter is that some very powerful players in your party became very nervous when one of the largest investment in Slovenian history was (finally) starting to be questioned.

Dear Prime Minister!

You yourself often said that your political opponents tend to underestimate you. But you yourself must not underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. Regardless of your (probably intentionally) misleading signals over whether you will seek another term as PM, I think that – barring a disaster – you will do just that. But elections are never won, only lost. And right now you seem poised on losing them not because you’re doing the wrong thing, but because you’re doing too little of the right thing.

Put your own party in order. Roll a few heads. Kick some pensioner butt. Possibly kill TEŠ6. To quote Winston C. again: “If you’re going through hell, keep going“. And stop worrying whether Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković will run for PM in 2012. He won’t.

Oh, and while you’re at it, do make sure Slovenia hosts 2013 European Basket Championship. I know you’re just playing hard-to-get when you’re not (yet) giving it your full support, but really… We could do with a bit of good copy in this day and age.

Kind regards,
pengovsky

P.S.: If by any chance you didn’t get the joke in the title, he’re a hint 🙂

Immunity for Janez Janša and Ivo Sanader

Janez Janša and Ivo Sanader share a great many things. Not only are both former prime ministers of their respective countries, their parties are also members of European People’s Party, they were both implicated in alleged (and then strenuously denied) fixing of border incidents between Slovenia and Croatia prior to 2004 elections and now they are both facing criminal charges. Talk about male bonding! 😈

“So, tell me Janez, what’s it like on the inside?” (source)

As you know, former PM and now opposition leader Janez Janša was indicted for aiding and abetting bribery and corruption (with four more people facing similar or graver charges). What has happened since is that the indictments were “tested” by the local court at which they were filed and the court approved them. This of course does not mean that the man is guilty, but it does mean that potentially the biggest procedural hurdle was cleared and that the trial will go forward.

Which is why today the parliamentary Committee for Public Office and Elections had to vote on whether Janez Janša should be granted immunity in the Patria Affair. Under Article 83 of the Constitution a deputy can invoke immunity if the maximum penalty for charges against him/her do not carry more than a five-year prison sentence. And since charges against Janša carry three years or less, the parliamentary Committee can (even against Janša’s wishes) grant him immunity.

But the man, who already knows what the inside of a prison cell looks like, said upfront that he will not invoke the immunity clause and hours ago the committee dully voted not to grant him immunity, which means that the trial can start with the full cast. Not so in the case of JJ’s buddy Ivo Sanader, who – it now appears – was virtually run out of office but not because of now-virtually-solved border dispute with Slovenia, but because there was no way to keep the lid on his (alleged) mischief.

One version goes that he was “summoned” to Brussels, but – instead of stalling yet another round of border-dispute negotiations – he was greeted by a stack of binders documenting in detail his supposed criminal activities, some of which are said to be connected to the downfall of the Hypo Bank and then to a series of fraudulent and embezzlement activities in his native Croatia.

However, unlike his Slovenian paisan, Sanader, having returned from what was officially a lecturing tour in the US (unofficially avoiding questioning by the parliamentary committee and Croatian CrimPolice), decided to claim his seat in the parliament and invoke the immunity clause, to which he is apparently entitled.

Fun times. Two former PMs looking at a prison sentence, while their successors iron out what even yesterday looked like insurmountable problems. Can it really be that easy? Nah, I’d be out of stuff to write, then… 😈

Lahovnik To Quit As Minister And MP (His Schwartz Just Ain’t Big Enough)

Lahovnik and Golobič while they were still on the same team (source)

Yesterday the government communication office released the infamous letter minister of economy Matej Lahovnik sent to Prime Minister Borut Pahor in which he detailed grievances against his former party boss and ministerial colleague Gregor Golobič. Lahovnik’s adios to Zares was not really a surprise, but the timing left a lot of people, yours truly included, a bit baffled. Pengovsky speculated on reasons why Lahovnik took the Fatboy Slim approach (right here, right now) and now it turns out that he thought his Schwartz was bigger than anyone else’s and he turned out to be dead wrong. As a result, he announced his resignation earlier today and even said that he will not re-take his position as MP.

The letter was widely expected to be a bomb-shell. It turned out to be a dud. Basically, Lahovnik complained that companies owned by or connected with Ultra (a company in which Gregor Golobič owns a 7% stake) applied for public tenders and such. Lahovnik’s main grievance – at least according to the letter – was the very fact that a company in which a sitting minister owns a stake runs for public funds. But the devil is – as always – in the details. Lahovnik goes on to write that in no instance (at least no instance which he detailed) did any of the companies win any tenders, but – and this is where he seems genuinely pissed – in one case the company files a lawsuit against his ministry for kicking it out of the tender.

Let’s be brutal. The fact that a company, where a sitting minister (or any other elected and/or public official) owns a stake, no matter how small, runs for a public tender, is not entirely cricket. The world would be a much nicer place if these things didn’t happen. However, the Ultra issue was over and done with. At least on relation Golobič-> Zares-> Coalition-> Government (the opposition is still trying to keep the whole affair simmering on a low temperature). If Lahovnik had a problem with that, he should have quit months ago.

From a legal point of view, however, there is nothing wrong with Ultra (or any other similar company) running for public funds. The law stipulates that a company where a public official and/or his immediate keen hold more than 20% stake cannot take part in public tenders. And if it does it anyway, it simply gets thrown out. Pengovsky should know, it happened once with The Firm™. No ifs, not buts, one simply gets a nice letter saying “Sorry, you can’t take part due to anti-corruption legislation”.

But Golobič’s share in Ultra is not above 20%. It is not even, say, 19.5%, which would imply that he is following the letter if not the spirit of the law. No, he holds a 7% share, which he apparently earned by working for the company and that’s it. There are scores of public officials which own various stakes in various companies. After all, we are running a sort of capitalism in Slovenia. But Lahovnik goes on to say, that he finds it hard to believe that Golobič would not use his influence to put Ultra at an unfair advantage vis-a-vis other companies running for tenders. That may be, but in all honesty, you don’t need to have a sitting minister among your stakeholders to better your business positions. All you need to do is know the right people.

However, as noted above, Ultra did not win any of the tenders Lahovnik takes issue with. So, not only was no law broken by Ultra running for tenders, even if pressure was brought to bear, the system worked and threw Ultra’s application out on merit. The fact that the company then filed a suit against Lahovnik’s ministry over it only reiterates the fact that the system worked, because seeking legal protection against what an applicant deems an unfair decision is perfectly normal. It is done by scores of companies practically on a weekly basis.

So, on the face of it it looks as if Lahovnik doesn’t really understand how the system works. Which is kind of hard to believe for a minister who runs a pretty important ministry and (among other things) gave thins country a electronic one-stop-shop system (e-VEM) for setting up your own company.

So, waddafuck is going on? It looks more and more that there was a clash between Lahovnik and Golobič. Either there was some sort of a leadership challenge (less likely, as Lahovnik reportedly refused taking over Zares) or – more likely – Lahovnik felt Golobič was pissing in his pool and wanted to put an end to it. Only he played his cards wrong and put an end to his political life (at least temporarily).

Namely. One area Lahovnik specifies in the letter is the energy sector. There’s a relatively huge debate going on right now in Slovenia whether to invest in Bloc 6 of Šoštanj Coal Power Plant (so called TEŠ6) or to start building the second reactor in Krško Nuclear Power Plant (known as NEK). Pengovsky says “both” and there seems to be a general consensus that Slovenia will need both investments in the mid-term, but the real question is which comes first. Lahovnik was very much in favour of TEŠ6, as it will replace the ageing blocs 3,4 and 5 and produce much less carbon dioxide to boot. However, since Šoštanj is part of Lahovnik’s electoral unit (constituency, if you will), this can also be seen as “bringing the bacon home“, to use an Americanism. Which would all be fine and dandy, had it not been for the fact that some dubious contracts were being signed for TEŠ6 even before the project started for real. I’m not saying that Lahovnik had a hand in this (he probably didn’t) and regardless of his feud with Golobič, energy still is Zares’ turf right now and if there’s a screw-up, Zares as a whole will take the blame anyway. But it seems probable that he felt he was being side-tracked and he took it personally.

The more pengovsky looks at this the more it seems as if Lahovnik only tried to do as much damage as possible and brought up the Ultra affair for no reason other than to hurt Golobič. But he took it too far and forced PM Pahor to choose between a seemingly competent minister and a whole coalition party. Pahor obviously knew where his priorities are and Lahovnik achieved nothing but maybe yet another dent in the government’s already ridiculously low ratings. As a result he really had no other option but to quit his post and PM Pahor undoubtedly told him that his credit just ran out.

This goes for his MP status as well. Upon quitting as minister he could have re-taken his MP seat as he was elected to the parliament first and made minister second. Thus he would have ousted Alojz Posedel of Zares, chipped off one sure vote for the coalition and would even help form a new parliamentary group “independent MPs”, as parliamentary Rules and Procedures specify three MPs are needed for establishing a specific group and there are already two independent MPs (Franci Žnidaršič and Vili Rezman who quit DeSUS months ago), all of which would probably weaken the coalition grip on parliamentary majority, if not immediately, definitely some time in the future.

However, Lahovnik was probably told in no unclear terms that he would be branded a political leper had he returned to the parliament and started stirring shit, so he is apparently returning to the Faculty of Economics from whence he came – and will possibly be awarded membership in one or two low-key supervisory boards somewhere out there. He might have thought he was doing a good thing, but in politics, just as in real life, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Such is the nature of the beast.

Oh, and just a technicality. Some Slovene media erroneously report that Lahovnik’s function will cease tomorrow. Not entirely true. While he has already tendered his resignation, he will remain in office in a care-taker capacity until a new minister is appointed.