resignation | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Turf War

Poor Czechs. They can’t even have a proper senior political turf war without those pesky Slovenians beating them to it. Imagine being in charge of Czechia’s foreign policy, seething over another one of your president’s solo trips to badlands and mulling a response, only to see your counterpart in Ljubljana do the exact same fucking thing, an hour earlier.

This is broadly what happened to Czech FM Tomáš Petříček while he was looking for ways to undo the damage president Miloš Zeman did during his visit to Belgrade where he said that he will push for de-recognition of Kosovo by Czechia. However, Zeman wasn’t the only president of a Central European country facing pushback from his foreign minister that day. Cue Borut Pahor. Obviously.

Dropping Like Flies

Well, this is getting really old really fast. It seems that prime minister Marjan Šarec lost yet another minister today. The latest person to have bid adieu to the government was health minister Samo Fakin.

Samo Fakin follows Bandelli, Prešiček, Leben, and joins the ranks of ex-ministers

In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, health minister Fakin is stepping down due to – health reasons. Curiously, however, the official medical explanation given seems to be somewhat too pedestrian to merit a resignation.

Designated Survivor: Slovenian Edition

Shocking journalists around ~~the world~~ Europe who after more than a decade again had to struggle with the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia, prime ministers of both countries tendered their resignations yesterday within hours of each other. Pengovsky being pengovsky, however, we’ll skip ~~Slovenia~~ Slovakia and just do Muddy Hollows where Miro Cerar resigned on the heels of a court annulment of results of the referendum of the second line of the Koper-Divača railway.

…with apologies to Kiefer Sutherland

The gist of it is that while the government won the vote back in September of last year, it failed to win the constitutional challenge of the result, owing to some very weird and novel interpretations of the constitution and referendum legislation. Be that as it may, the Supreme Court, following the decision of the Constitutional Court, decided that the campaign was not fair (specifically, the government’s role in it) hence the result is invalidated and the vote should be repeated. However, there’s more to that than meets the eye.

Continue reading Designated Survivor: Slovenian Edition