Tanja Fajon | SLEEPING WITH PENGOVSKY

Election Nightmare in Muddy Hollows

Muddy Hollows is less than a month away from parliamentary election and rubber is finally hitting the road. Technically, the campaign only started on 24 March. But in many ways, what is done is done. For the most part, political parties will not be seeking organic growth over the next month. Rather, they will try to keep whatever voter base they’ve established until now.

A nightmare rendition of election campaign TV debates in Slovenia. — *TV debates, nightmares and Muddy Hollows (source, via dreamscopeapp)*

The parties will also hope the competition somehow fucks up royally, bleeds support and that they get to reap the benefits. Sometimes, this happens on its own, and sometimes it requires a bit of help. Which is probably why PM Janez Janša has avoided the first round of TV debates. He probably thinks he can waltz in during the final stretch of the campaign and throw everyone off balance.

Ukraine War Forces Slovenian Politics To Think Foreign Policy Thoughts

In all honesty, it is a bit self-serving to try and look at Russian war against Ukraine through the lens of Muddy Hollows and its political cesspool. But seeing as this is an utterly self-serving blog, pengovsky will go right ahead. PM Janša, on the other hand, will stay put, as the Russian aggression preempted his photo-op in Kyiv planned for today.

Flags if Ukraine in the government district in Ljubljana. — *Ukrainian flags in the government district in Ljubljana (source)*

This, incidentally, should make the Glorious Leader available for a court-date in a defamation case against him. But he’ll probably claim an emergency NatSec Council meeting or something like that. And for once, he may not be lying through his teeth to get out of a court date.

Janša Deflects And Denies As Covid-19 Makes A Comeback

Covid-19 infection and mortality numbers in Slovenia are at a high not seen since the worst of the second wave. The 7-day average is the highest it has even been. If this goes on, one in every 400 Slovenians will have died of Covid-19 in a matter of weeks. Such is life in Muddy Hollows these days, where the government of Janez Janša bet the house on vaccines and then proceeded to fuck up the vaccination campaign.

A tweet by Slovenian PM Janša commenting on internal Dutch politics. — *Slovenian PM doing some casual homophobia*

Then again, rule by decree, liberal use of tear gas and general incompetence don’t help either. As a result, prime minister Janez Janša is now forced to contemplate the one thing he explicitly said he would not do. Reimposing the lockdown. But to do that and survive politically, he is resorting to the only three things he is really good at. Diversion, denial, and deflection.

Exit, Židan

After six years of running the Social Democrats, Dejan Židan announced on Thursday that he is getting the fuck out of Dodge, leaving the party in the hands of its senior MEP Tanja Fajon.

Tanja Fajon taking over from Dejan Židan (*photo: SD*)

Obviously, Židan is not leaving the party itself as he has no reason to. He is, however, reducing himself to a lowly MP. Which he should, as his six years at the helm of the direct descendant of the Slovenian Communist party were, for all intents and purposes, a series of missed opportunities. It also provides a much-needed respite from bad pop-rock puns in post titles on this blog but that is another matter.

Trial Balloons

In the post-EU-election hustle some member states are hitting the ground running. Some, however, are not. No points for guessing which category Muddy Hollows is in.

*Marjan Šarec and his weird-ish relationship with the EU (source* *and* *source*)

In fact, rather than defining strategic areas of interest early on and then finding one or more people potentially fitting the bill, the great Slovenian political minds of Dunning-Kruger fame started playing a game of elimination and floating trial balloons. Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight.