Slovenia | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

The Survivalists

A social network diagram of Slovenian governments is making rounds on the interwebz these days. Posted over at Virostatiq, it is an awfully nice presentation of how the “six degrees of separation” are cut down to, well, only a couple. If you’re Slovenian, you surely know somebody on that list, or at the very least, you know somebody who knows somebody on that list.

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Social network diagrams of Slovenian governments between 1991 and 2013 (source)

The diagram claims to show different levels of loyalty between members of various ranks of government officials, ranging from prime ministers down to the level of state-secretaries (the level immediately below a ranking minister). The fact that author Marko Plahuta wrote it up in English is also commendable. However, while mighty interesting and potentially useful, the diagram as it is now is only partly relevant.

Don’t get me wrong. Pengovsky is going ga-ga with excitement, because something like this was long overdue. Also, it hits close to home since distribution of political power was part of my thesis at the university and I know from first hand experience that one soon hits a brick wall of non-transparency when trying to find rhyme or reason when compiling a “who’s who” of movers and shakers (not that it can not be done, as it will be shown later in the post).

And this is exactly the point where the diagram fails. Among other things. So, my two cents on the entire thing, hoping the author finds them useful:

Loyalty of ministers

Loyalty between PM and the ministers is a much more fragile category than the diagram would have us believe. Indeed, some ministers are utterly loyal to the PM, while others much less so. To put it graphically and using the current government of Alenka Bratušek as example, we can say that ministers from Positive Slovenia (Bratušek’s party) are much more loyal to their prime minister than ministers from Citizens’ List or (perhaps even more so) ministers from SocDems quota.

So, ministerial loyalty indicator could be augmented a) by party affiliation and b) by the influence/power the party wields in the parliament/coalition/government. Actual ponders would have to be worked out, but a good rule of the thumb would be this: Unless a minister is a member of PM’s party, then the larger his or her party or the more ideologically different, the weaker a minister’s loyalty towards the PM.

The above is a direct result of a multi-party coalition system we sport in Slovenia, where a government’s agenda is the highest possible common denominator of all the coalition party platforms.

Loyalty of state secretaries

The author assumes state secretaries are a lot less loyal to their ministers than ministers are to the PM. Even if we neglect the varying degrees of ministerial loyalties demonstrated above, pengovsky contends that – if anything – state secretaries are more loyal to their ministers than ministers are to the MP.

Again, once you delve into the issue, it becomes a lot more muddled. The role of state secretaries changed dramatically over time. When the new public service hierarchy was developed, the role of state secretary was indeed meant to be that of the highest ranking bureaucrat, a link between political agenda of any given minister and a running public service, impervious to political squabbling and special interest.

Riiiiight….

Parties soon realised the position of a state secretary is arguably even more important to their agenda than that of a minister and it wasn’t long before positions on this level of administration were heavily fought for. This resulted in inflation of state secretary positions and At one point a sort-of-compromise was reached where one state secretary was politically appointed, the other supposedly for his or her expertise in a given area.

This was later abolished because and now state secretaries come and go with their respective ministers. Which is why in pengovsky’s opinion their loyalty factor should a) be increased overall to reflect dependence on their minister and b) corrected downwards on individual basis during the period where one state secretary was a political appointee, the other expert.

Also, the above sort of invalidates the claim that state secretaries are loyal to each other. Since their appointments are inherently political ans their primary role is to serve as a liaison between politics and public service (with their secondary role being lightning rods and scapegoats for high-level fuck-ups), the horizontal loyalty rarely goes beyond professional courtesy.

People who are not in the picture but should be

When we’re talking about distribution of political/social power in Slovenia, we can not by any means neglect political parties themselves. And this is where the diagram is noticeably lacking. Government officials, especially ministers and other political appointees are often caught between solving problems of their specific field and catering to their party’s interests. For “caught between … and….” you might want to read “neglect…. in favour of…”, depending on your point of view.

@Spovednik has an excellent blogpost on this phenomenon. In Slovenian only, I’m afraid.

But to continue and find an example at random: when the field of education was redrawn under the Janša 2.0 administration, minister Žiga Turk and especially the ranking state secretary Borut Rončević did undertake some necessary steps, but quite a few of them were directed to the ultimate end of state forking out money for private scholarly institutions close to Janez Janša‘s SDS party. Again, this is by no means the only such example, but it is a telling one, especially since it had the “added value” of being done under the guise of tackling the crisis.

In this respect, party officials who are not elected by popular vote, also sport great power and should be included in any such diagram. Again, the general rule of the thumb is that the bigger the party, the more important party people are, since at some point party leader(s) need to delegate decisions down the ladder.

Additionally, until recently, the name of the game in Slovenia was that party leaders are also government ministers or, at least, have some other high-ranking function. Not allowing the trend to continue was – among other things – the reason Zoran Janković failed in his PM bid in 2011. But with advent of the Bratušek administration, this is no longer the case as a) Igor Lukšič of SD chose to pass on a ministerial position and b) Ljubljana mayor still plays a big, although diminishing role in national politics (a blogpost is pending, fear not).

Therefore, while the diagram explicitly deals with members of the government only, this is by far not the entire scheme of distribution of political power in Slovenia. In the last twenty-odd years we’ve had a number of individuals who have exerted power over specific government decisions from beyond the limits imposed by this diagram. To increase its relevancy, this should be rectified.

The above does not include only party heavyweights, but also elected officials from other branches of power, especially since we are starting to see a trend of people starting in one branch and then continuing to another. Off the top of my head, the diagram would have to include the president of the parliament, leaders of parliamentary groups and (optionally) leaders of parliamentary committees. Also, in pengovsky’s opinion, the office president of the republic should be included in the diagram.

And although this might be stretching it a bit, the diagram begs consideration as to what exactly happens when a person is no longer part of the government. Does his/her influence stop immediately? Perhaps a diluted factor of loyalty could be allowed for a selected period of time? After all, every change in government produces more or less serious shifts in top layers of power.

The mysteries

Based on the graph, Virostatiq makes a number of erroneous or incomplete conclusion. One of them is the apparent surprise at the fact that governments of Janez Drnovšek and Tone Rop are the most similar. Well, they had to be. Not only was Rop finance minister in Drnovšek’s last government, there was also a tacit agreement that Rop, upon being sworn in as PM, will not replace ministers and other cadre Drnovšek picked only two years earlier. In retrospect, this was probably the single biggest mistake that led to Rop’s LDS having its ass whooped in 2004 elections. Therefore, while the similarities of Drnovšek and Rop clusters are undeniable, the reason for this is not their ideological likness, but rather pure political necessity.

Furthermore, when viewed from the point of view of various institutions, the analysis of the graph states that “prime ministers like to keep close Department of Defence, Department of Finance and Department of Internal Affairs. People close to these offices are the movers and shakers.”

Again, had the graph included party positions, distribution of power would quite possibly be markedly different. Also, the fact that a department shows up close to the PM, doesn’t necessarily mean the people in it are the big kahunas in town. Rather, this depends very much on the style of governing of a particular prime minister.

It is no secret that during the Andrej Bajuk six-months-long administration Janez Janša was the main honcho. Since he was the minister of defence at the time, the analysis might even seem correct in this case. The only problem is that you won’t find ministry of defence anywhere near Andrej Bajuk on the graph. Alternatively, saying that Janez Drnovšek kept ministries of defence and internal affairs close is a huge misrepresentation of the situation. On the other hand, he was indeed very much into the daily operations of financial ministry, but one could argue that he ran the show there rather than having people on the ministry run him. Ditto for ministry of foreign affairs which by all accounts should come up very close to Drnovšek, but doesn’t.

The survivalists

However, the Virostatiq diagram is far from non-usable. In fact, the most obvious but perhaps unintended result is seeing who are the great survivors of Slovenian politics. There are a couple, but on political/ministerial level you will not be surprised to find that the greatest survivors of Slovenian politics are Dimitrij Rupel and Karl Erjavec. Curiously enough, they’ve both held the post of foreign minister. Go figure…

So, to wrap up. The diagram has limited use for the intended purpose. But with a little work this could become an awesome tool. But it desperately needs to include additional data. Just a hint: Ali Žerdin recently published a Omrežja moči, a book on social networks in Slovenian politics and economy. I’m sure it would provide a useful resource.

Keep Calm and TEŠ6

Debating the ever more derailed project of Šoštanj power-plant bloc 6 (TEŠ6) the parliament played the blame game entire day yesterday. It was both fun and gruesome to watch. Like German 70s porn. Called by the opposition SDS it had one goal and one goal only. To put a daylight between them and a project that is spiralling out of control as has almost tripled in cost, going from 600 million to 1.5 billion euro. To put things in perspective: 1.5 billion may not seem a lot. It won’t buy you a Virginia-class nuclear submarine, to pick an example at random. But on the other hand, it represents about 4.5% of total Slovenian GDP. It will also buy you a lot of German 70s porn.

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Now, you may or may not be fully up to speed on the issue, but while quite long in the making, the issue became hot during the Pahor era, when Zares of Gregor Golobič started ~~making noises~~ raising hell about how this project is run so badly it is going to explode into everyone’s face. In retrospect they were right and this was arguably the single most important issue that brought down the government of Borut Pahor. Namely, it emerged that an ad hoc SD-SDS special interest coalition formed on this project specifically and passed a law of a state guarantee for a 400 million loan by the European Investment Bank. At the time it was hailed as the only infrastructure project in Slovenia worthy of its name, a backbone of Slovenian energy self-sufficiency and a jobs maker in the area.

Very few people asked themselves how exactly TEŠ6 helps energy self-sufficiency if it is only meant to replace the ageing blocs 4 and 5 and thus producing almost zero net increase in megawatt hours. Few people asked themselves just how exactly do 3500 jobs warrant over a billion worth of stimulus when the entire country is going down the shit-hole. And finally, nobody really took care of the project, which means that TEŠ6 still has to produce a single megawatt of electricity.

A shitload of people had and still have a vested interest in this project which is why it was defended furiously. Case in point being this POP TV video from 2010 (Slovenian only) where Srečko Meh, a SD heavyweight from Velenje/Šoštanj area goes after Gregor Golobič from the very beginning, defending the project as financially sound, economically justifiable and socially necessary. Fast forward three years (June 24 2013) and Srečko Meh posts a video (Slovenian only), slamming the SDS for calling the parliament debate and pre-emptively distancing himself from the project and the parliament-approved guarantee he helped secure.

You see, TEŠ6 was meant to be a hunting ground both in terms of money for pet projects as well as securing high paying jobs for selected people. Which is why the entire project was based of the principle of fait accompli, with stuff being done first and then asking the relevant authorities to either OK it or cough up the dough. or both. Energy is where the money is and TEŠ6 was earmarked to burn the local lignite which has the energy density of a well-behaved rock and is pricey to say the least. It is also a matter of some debate whether – after decades of mining – there’s enough lignite left for the entire life-span of TEŠ6 or will this mean importing coal, driving the cost up even more. In fact, yesterday’s parliament session even pointed to the possibility of the power-plant making a loss. Yes. you read it correctly. Apparently, TEŠ6 is so screwed up it is liable to lose money rather than make it. It should come as no surprise then that Uroš Rotnik, CEO of the plant at the time when the deal with Alstom was sealed is now under criminal investigation

What we saw yesterday was a classic example of pot calling kettle black. It was perverse seeing SDS and SD pointing fingers at each other and screaming bloody murder over a billion-and-a-half worth example of pork-barrel politics. In fact, in a bizarre show of complete disconnect, the SDS actually moved to have the parliament set the price tag at 1.3 billion and not a penny more. As if Alstom, the French construction company which got the contract to build under suspiciously favourable conditions, would give a damn.

But if you think anything changed, you’re mistaken. The 800 million already spent remain with Alsom and 400+ mil state guarantee for an EIB loan stands, despite a new majority in the parliament and a new government at the helm. The only decision that begs mention is a measure instructing the Court of Audit to go over the books of state-owned HSE, the mother company of TEŠ. But the law does not give the Court the power to dig into companies that are indirectly state owned, like TEŠ is. So in fact, the parliament yesterday almost unanimously decided that the project is a disaster and then voted to carry on with it.

Your Country Wants YOU To Be Her Taxman

Strictly speaking, this write-up isn’t political, but this being Slovenia and all, politics is never far away. As you might or might not know, government of Alenka Bratušek increased VAT 2 percentage points, from 20 to 22 percent amid cries of adding to the economic slump. Now, truth be told, Bratušek and her finance minister Čufer are somewhat caught between a rock and a hard place. The budget is screwed up and in dire need of rebalancing which is happening as you read this. Instead of an across-the-board slashing of the public sector, Bratušek opted for the slippery-slope approach of gradually reducing wages in the public sector and increasing taxes as well as introducing new ones. The VAT increase is the initial step, to be followed by a proper real-estate tax (cue property owners including the Roman Catholic Church going ape-shit) and a still-lingering option of special crisis-tax. To name but a few.

…to be her taxman.

But beyond the normal ripples of you’ll-pry-this-money-from-my-cold-dead-hands, none of this cause any special uproar. OK, maybe the property tax is yet to do this, because two things are sacred to a Slovenian. His house and his car. Both of which are usually slightly above his means. What is making rounds for the past two days, however, is a programme by the Tax Administration to have citizens send in photos of invoices they receive via MMS messages. That’s right. In the age of Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus (ok, maybe not the last one), the TaxAdmin opted for a 20 year old tech to turn people into snitches. I guess they went for quantity rather than quality.

Now, some people (@had included went slightly ga-ga over this, especially since the TaxAdmin is not a particularly small government agency. And is about to get bigger still, with the Customs officers being transferred from the border with Croatia to various posts within the TaxAdmin. However, the outrage is totally misplaced.

After all, even today, the Slovenian political class likes to wear the snitch-jacket when it breaks bread with a ranking US diplomat, to give an example at random. I mean, we’ve been doing this for decades. When Fascist took over in 1941, snitching was aplenty. When Communists took over in 1945, snitching on your neighbour was a favourite past-time activity to settle old scores. And when Capitalists took over in 1990, the same thing was happening all over again. And so on and so forth.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is simply a relatively well-aimed but poorly executed attempt to tap into this nation’s snitching reflex.

Slovenia, The Country Where PRISM Is Useless

The clusterfuck that is the NSA PRISM leak by Edward Snowden, which precipitated a story by Der Spiegel about the US monitoring communication in several allied states – in fact, most of them – somewhat unexpectedly washed up in Slovenia as well. Nothing as dramatic as Snowden asking for asylum in this excuse for a country (on that note: China, Edward? Really? You don’t get out much, do you? What’s next? Iran?), but rather the fact that earlier today the Slovenian foreign ministry summoned the outgoing US ambassador Joseph A. Mussomeli and said the US has some ‘splainin’ to do, since Slovenia is presumed to be on the “Bugged Allies” list.

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Joseph A. Mussomeli (source: The Firm™)

Now, what is amazing here, is not the summon itself, but the fact that the great Ambassador Mussomeli, the kingmaker himself had to appear in front of a lowly senior public servant and hear what he had to say. You see, Mussomeli, who is preparing to be rotated out of Slovenia to a different post, was (still is) very much a felt presence in the Slovenian political arena. Often curiously outspoken for a top diplomat, he did not mince words and had plenty of not very nice things to say about Slovenian transition period, state ownership and the political left in general. Or, to put it another way, he was the best foreign asset Janez Janša had on the ground.

It has been said that the rest of the diplomatic core in Ljubljana was quite baffled by actions of their American colleague on several occasions. In fact, it was a more or less public secret that Mussomeli played at least a small but influential role in forming the government after 2011 parliamentary elections when, after much wrangling, Janez Janša took power, only to be ousted by a no-confidence vote a year later. However, it should also be noted, that Slovenian politicians (with a few notable exceptions) generally flocked to Mussomeli and proved themselves to be more than eager to talk to the man. Usually that meant bad-mouthing competition, but hey. At least, the CIA station chief was kept happy.

You see, PRISM is totally useless in Slovenia. If you’re the US ambassador to this sorry little place, most of the indigenous politicians will tell you everything you want to know over lunch and then the dumb bastards will go on and brag about it.

Sorry, Edward. PRISM doesn’t scare us. We got that shit covered long ago.

Retiring Rupel

The world of international diplomacy (probably) breathed a collective sigh of relief a couple of days ago, when Slovenian foreign minister Karl Erjavec announced the imminent retirement of the one and only Dimitrij Rupel. The once seemingly eternal foreign minister is apparently going to become the first high-profile victim of austerity measures enacted by (oh, the irony!) the previous right-wing government of Janez Janša.

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Dimitrij Rupel and his boss Karl Erjavec (photo: Ljubo Vukelić/Delo)

Long story short, when Janša’s government opted for across-the-board-no-questions-asked approach at slashing government expenditures it provided for mandatory retirement of public servants when they reach both 40 years of employment and 67 years of age. Unless, of course, their supervisor decided their services are so essential they warrant extension of employment. With Dimitrij Rupel now being Slovenian Consul-General in Trieste (a prestigious, but technically mid-level appointment), he is about to fall within both categories in a matter of days, allowing his political past to finally catch up with him.

Rupel is, naturally, screaming bloody murder and claims he’s a victim of a political purge. Indeed, his retirement being announced on the eve of Statehood Day only adds insult to injury for Rupel, who exactly five years ago was embroiled in a similar controversy and famously said this anniversary sort of belongs to him since he was the foreign minister when Slovenia declared independence. But back then, he was on top of his game. He switched sides four years earlier, in 2004, from LDS (which went on to lose elections) to SDS, became a hardcore supporter of Janez Janša, the same man he once labelled a nationalist in need of a reality check.

As a result, when Janša came to power again in 2011, his government – no doubt as a reward for his newfound loyalty – appointed Rupel the Slovenian Consul General in Trieste, Italy. As you know, the Trieste region has a large Slovenian ethnic minority which makes the said diplomatic post politically relevant and very sensitive. But in Rupel’s case, it was just one more proof that the man, whose ego usually can’t fit through the door and has been known to bend the fabric of space-time to fit his needs, has long outlived his usefulness and is having trouble letting go.

To see a four-time foreign minister accept a lowly consular post just to stay in the game is utterly self-degrading. To see see him fall prey to the legislation that was meant for everyone but him (he would have most likely been granted an exception to the rule, had Janša remained in power) is ironic. But the real kicker is the fact that Rupel’s career was given the mercy shot by the same man who – under different political circumstances – would most likely extend it and not bat an eye-lid in either case. Karl Erjavec served as foreign minister both in Janša as well as Bratušek administration and is quite possible the only senior Slovenian politician who switched more parties than Rupel.

Which means Dimitrij Rupel should probably join DeSUS if he wants to salvage his career. And yes, the irony of joining the pensioners’ party to avoid becoming a pensioner is not lost on pengovsky 😉 Alternatively, Slovenian media will shortly be suffering a deluge of Rupel’s writing.

Well, they do say pensioners have all the time in the world

PM Bratušek Meets The Pope, Gets Pulled Over By The Fashion Police

Alenka Bratušek met @pontifex today (or maybe it was the other way around) and the fashion police were out in full force. As if that were the main problem this country has. Admittedly, she does seem to have a penchant for tiger/leopard patterns, but surely a politician’s ability to carry out his/her office outweighs whatever fashion no-nos he or she might have committed. At the very least, it way better than having a PM who looks like he walked out of a Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue but is prone to committing diplomatic gaffes.

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Alenka and Francis, earlier today. (source: Delo/AFP)

Anyway, the thing is that while AB sported a leopard-pattern skirt while meeting her Italian counterpart, she put on a nice black outfit for her date with Francis (veil included) and was apparently toeing the line of the diplomatic protocol. So, everyone should be happy.

What is more important, however, and what we probably will never know, is what exactly they talked about. After all, the Maribor Diocese still has the 800 million debt hanging over its head and basically went tits up. Just for comparison, only days ago, the state OK’d recapitalisation of two largest banks, NLB and NKBM for a combined amount of 900 million. So you can see that the Roman Catholic Church has a bit of a problem in Slovenia. Which is probably one of the reasons the local clergy did not go ape-shit over the proposed real-estate tax which – according to a government leak – would encompass Church-owned real estate as well. That, and the fact that the local clergy is more Ratzingerian than Bergoglian and are probably still getting their bearings vis-a-vis the pop-Pope.

Also, it was reported the entire real-estate assets of the Slovenian Roman Catholic Church amount to – you guessed it – 800 million euro. Repossession, anyone? No? Too heavy?

Point is that there are serious issues at play here. Bratušek government is about to start selling a batch of state-owned companies as well as start transferring toxic assets to a bad ~~band~~ bank. In short: the landscape of Slovenian economy is about to change dramatically very soon. But here we are, as a nation, talking about the size and colour of the PM’s skirt.

Really, maybe we deserve the shit we’re in.

Patria Verdict: The Immediate Aftermath

Y’all probably know by now that Janez Janša was found guilty in the Patria Affair and sentenced to two years in prison and a EUR 37,000 fine. Similar sentences (22 months in prison and 37k€ fine) were passed on Brigadier General Tone Krkovič (Ret.) and Ivan Čnkovič, owner of company Rotis, while Jože Zagožen, accused to have done the legwork in the affair, and Walter Wolf, international lobbyist, businessman of Formula 1 fame and an overall shady character, will be sentenced separately. This, of course, is the bombshell of Slovenian politics and deserves to have some light shed upon. Also, it is a good enough excuse for pengovsky to re-enter the blogging orbit after an unintentionally long break.

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Janez Janša leaving the courthouse and meeting his supporters (source: Gorenjski glas)

Firs thing’s first: the verdict against Janša et al. is not final as the defendants will most likely file an appeal. Therefore, they should still be considered innocent until proven guilty. Also, given that conspiracy theories are his soft spot, it should come as no surprise that Janša declared the court’s decision was a part of a wide-ranging communist conspiracy (which, if one is to follow his logic, expands to Austria and Finland and in fact goes back in time all the way to 1945. You see, they were out to get him before he was born). However, there is more to the events of last Wednesday than meets the eye.

Then there is the mobilisation potential of the verdict. Rather, the lack thereof. Granted, the Party shot to the top spot in the polls, catching up with Igor Lukšič‘s SocDems. Also, there was a relatively strong showing of support for Janša within party ranks as both senior and not-so-senior party officials rushed to pledge allegiance to Ivan, without as much as blinking an eye.

But what the verdict failed to generate, was any sort of meaningful street protest, despite calls for a mass rally and people reportedly being bussed to Ljubljana from all over the country. In fact only a few hundred people attended the rally in Janša’s support and even they were constantly heckled by a few dozen anti-Janša protesters stationed nearby. In addition, the pro-Janša Twitterati are conspicuously quiet. Conclusion: while the Party closed its ranks and manned the barricades, the non-faithful seem much less impressed.

The problem, therefore, is twofold. On one hand, Janša needs all the support he can get. And – to be honest – few things are conductive for the sense of belonging to a group (or, say, a political party) than a clear and present danger of imminent destruction. After all, Janez Janša is literally the centre of political beliefs of a number of people in this country. And a guilty verdict shatters these beliefs to the very core. Thus it is no wonder a lot of people cried as if Kim Jong Il died. Can’t blame them, really.

But on the other hand, it is precisely those strong held beliefs which present the gravest danger to the man and his party. Because if Janša’s guilty verdict is upheld by any chance and the man actually ends up in the slammer, a leadership crisis will ensue faster than you can say “our beloved leader”.

Janša of course knows this and has been keeping more or less mum for a week now as a result, save an occasional interview. Instead, he has been calling in favours from all over the place. Be it from people who owe him their (political) existence or from people who have lobbied him successfully in the past and are now returning the favour (such as an owner of a large media network who benefited greatly from changes in media legislation under Janša’s first government, to give an example at random). At least, pengovsky hopes that is the case. If not, then people who have a vested interest in Janša remaining a free man are operating of their own accord, meaning the Force is not strong with the Prince of Darkness.

What is clear, however, is that a guilty verdict would have made Janša about as popular in the EU as clap. Janez Janša is no Julia Timošenko and Slovenia is no Ukraine where democrats are labelled as such depending on whom they sell their gas to. There is no way in hell Frau Merkel or David “Super Injunction” Cameron are staging a photo-op with a convict.

But not to get ahead of ourselves: despite the fact that Janša & Co. were found guilty, the judge still has to put the ruling in writing, which reportedly might take up to two months. After all, there are apparently more than 22,000 pages in the case file. It only then can the former prime minister appeal the verdict and the appeals court can take its time deliberating, you can be sure Ivan isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But he just might find it increasingly difficult to direct things according to his wishes.

One thing, however, does strike pengovsky as funny. Upon having been ousted as Prime Minister for the second time, Janša chose not to take his MP seat, he rejected ex-PM benefits and refused being employed by the party, running it in his free time. In fact, his means of income remain a bit of a mystery this time around (officially, he’s writing books and giving lectures). But the point is that – looking back – it appears as if he was wrapping up business. We’ll know soon enough.

P.S.: pengovsky bet Janša and his chums would skate free out of this one with only Zagožen risking a suspended sentence, so from my point of view this is an intriguing and somewhat unexpected turn of events. And, again, the ruling can still be overturned.