Not to put too fine a point on it, the president fucked up royally. In one fell swoop, she made a huge political error, missed an opportunity to hold parliament accountable, screwed up the messaging (again) and possibly opened herself up to an impeachment proceeding. It is, to use a technical term, a clusterfuck.

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There is an off chance this blogpost comes across as somewhat muted. Therefore pengovsky would like to reassure both readers that he is fucking livid. The president is a central figure in this early stage of post-election political cabaret for one reason and one ping reason only: to provide constitutional legitimacy and facilitate the transfer of power while the parliament is getting its shit together.

Swift, functional and efficient transfer of power

Sometimes, the president’s role is pretty straightforward (for sure). Let’s say a political party wins the election bigly. It will then co-opt one or more smaller parties to secure an absolute majority, schedule a meet-up with the Prez, and end up with its leader becoming a PM nominee. Sometimes, however, things are not straightforward. Like this time around, for example, when no party has yet laid claim to the coveted 46th vote in the National Assembly (but see below).

And yet, the mission stays the same. The role of the president is, first and foremost, to come up with a PM nominee so that the legislative branch can set up the executive branch. To put it more crudely, it is the constitutional role of the president to do ensure a swift, functional and efficient transfer of power from one government to the next. Everything else is secondary. Or at least should be.

Of course, presidents are not just figureheads. Not even in Muddy Hollows, where their powers are for the most part purely symbolic. Slovenian presidents are also political personalities with their own agendas and personal preferences. Sometimes, this will lead to a clash of egos between the president and the prime minister (see Pirc Musar, Nataša and Golob, Robert). Sometimes it will lead to president kowtowing and bending over backwards for the prime minister (see Pahor, Borut and Janša, Janez).

Be that as it may, it is the president’s constitutional duty that is paramount. Unfortunately, it seems that NPM’s (otherwise perfectly legitimate) political agenda interfered with that.

Misreading the constitution

Article 111, Paragraph One of the Constitution clearly states that “[a]fter consultation with the leaders of deputy groups the President of the Republic proposes to the National Assembly a candidate for President of the Government.” (in English here). It doesn’t say “may propose“. It doesn’t say “…provided the nominee has shown they have secured the necessary majority“. Nor does it say “the president may shorten the 30-day period at their own discretion“. And yet, Nataša Pirc Musar basically claimed all of the above when she pulled the plug on her search for a PM nominee two days ago.

But in addition to Article 111 of the Constitution, Article 225 of the Rules and Regulations of the National Assembly states that “[t]he President of the Republic proposes a candidate for President of the Government to the National Assembly within 30 days of the National Assembly being constituted.” (in English here).

Seeing as how the parliament had its first meet-up on 10 April, the cutoff date for NPM to come up with a nominee is 10 May. To put it another way, the president had two more weeks to come up with a name. At the very least, she had two more weeks of this fucking song and dance to go through, before she could plausibly claim that she couldn’t find anybody that would accept the nomination (more on that below, too).

A week is a long time in politics

In the run-up to the 22 March vote, president Pirc Musar said multiple times that she will nominate a candidate who will secure at least 46 votes in the parliament. That is to say, she set the standard of a single-vote majority to confer her nomination. What she meant by that was that even if Marshal Twito won the plurality, she would skip him in favour of, say, the Big Bird, if the latter could cobble together a majority.

Which, OK. If multiple candidates fit the basic criteria it is perfectly reasonable to set up additional, optional criteria. But if none of the candidates fit the optional criteria that does not mean the president can choose to not do what the constitution is clearly instructing her to do. Especially not when she’s only half-way through her timeline on this.

A week is a long time in politics. Two weeks, well, doubly so. And it is perfectly reasonable to think that things will (or could have) happened that would change the calculus and made Janez Janša a viable candidate. The problem, of course, is that NPM is loath to nominate Glorious Leader for the post. Which brings us her political miscalculation.

Political malpractice

One of the core arguments NPM made in explaining her rationale on Saturday was that she will not be party to forming a minority government. Now, even if we ignore that the nature of the government is not her call to make (see above), the president missed a golden opportunity to stick it up to Janez Janša even before he (presumably) begins his fourth installment as PM.

Namely, while Robert Golob most certainly cannot cobble together a majority, right now Janez Janša is only pretending he can’t. Given how swimmingly Zoran Stevanović was elected Speaker, it seems plausible that a similar coalition will ultimately appoint Janša to his rightful place as Saviour of Slovenes once more.

But assuming there’s an actual reason for JJ faking being majority-less (and it’s not just him enjoying watching Anže Logar and Jernej Vrtovec shit their pants with uncertainty), president Pirc Musar could easily play along and offer him the nomination.

Janša would then be forced to either fess up and say that he indeed has a majority, or feign ignorance and take a pass. NPM could then go down the line and offer the gig to Jernej Vrtovec or Anže Logar. And both of those would be mightily tempted to take it. And even if they ultimately didn’t, this would definitely sow distrust within a future coalition that already has trust issues to begin with.

I mean, in terms of following one’s political agenda, few things are better than doing it while following the constitution down to the letter. What is more, in doing so the president would continue to dictate the tempo to the last possible day. Which just happens to be 9 May and a Saturday, too. Just in case she was worried about the messaging aspect of this shituation.

Messaging all over the place

When she was running for office and on many occasions after she was sworn in as president, Nataša Pirc Musar said that she will not stay quiet. This was a thinly-veiled and a very much justified dig against her predecessor. Borut Pahor often looked the other way when Janša’s third government went after the public media, the civil society and basic liberties.

To her credit, Nataša Pirc Musar is living up to her promise. But boy, did she turn it up to 11. Just like she did with that (anti)abortion march issue a couple of years ago, and several time since, the president tried to deliver a bombshell of a statement, only to follow that up with explanatory press-releases and a defensive posture.

In this case, after she was called out on the problematic relationship with the constitution her Saturday decision put her in, NPM didn’t do the presidential thing and kept quiet, leaving her minions to argue her point of view. No, she released a written statement to the media saying that president Pahor did the exact same thing in 2018.

First of all, presidents should never explain their position beyond the initial statement. It’s once-and-done, and if things are unclear it is the problem of the media and the body politic to figure it out.

If clarifications are given, it is for her advisors and whisperers to give them, in a semi-official capacity at best, as to maintain the integrity of the initial statement. But the one thing she should definitely not be doing, is fucking over-explaining her already tenuous argument on Twitter to randos with five followers. And yet, here were are…

Misreading history

Second, and much more important, citing the 2018 Pahor shenanigans as historical precedent is dubious at best. More likely, it is flat out wrong. First of all, what Pahor did back then was just as constitutionally unacceptable as what NPM did on Saturday. He was tasked with coming up with a nominee regardless.

But at the very least Pahor waited until the full thirty days have passed. Moreover, he first offered the post to Janša, whose SDS won the plurality in 2018, and when he took a pass, then-president extended the offer to Marjan Šarec who also took a pass. Only then did Pahor throw his hands up in the air waived them like he don’t care.

In contrast, Pirc Musar most definitely did not offer the post to runner-up Janša, making her claims to a precedent more or less invalid. Doubly so, since Pahor specifically reserved the right to put forward a nominee in the 14-day-long second round.

To be sure, this is a constitutional stipulation by itself, so the president can do that anyway. But by mentioning it Pahor at the very least signalled that he is aware of his constitutional conundrum. On the other hand, NPM is merely saying that it’s been done before. Even though it wasn’t really.

Snap election fallacy

There is a line of thinking that president Pirc Musar went down this problematic path in an attempt to force an early election. If true, this is about as misguided assessment of the situation as any Muddy Hollows has seen lately.

Yes, there is a theoretical possibility that no-one is elected PM-designate in the first and second rounds of nominations. But if the president thought that she could rush the schedule cutting her 30 days in half, she very much misread the room.

Not only is there a high chance of Janša actually already having secured the votes necessary, there is zero chance of this parliament not electing some sort of a government. Zoran Stevanović will not give up his Speaker’s gavel easily. NSi and Demokrati also run the risk of worsening their result in a snap poll, especially now when they played their cards and it was all Janša for them. And the Glorious Leader himself has no room to grow anymore, after having increased his total vote count by a fucking lot.

So, the only way Muddy Hollows could have a mid-Summer snap election is if the parliament were to stumble into it, by a coincidence of less-than-full attendance at exactly the time of the crucial vote on whether to allow the third round of PM nominations. This, of course, has nothing to with the president attempting to force the schedule. It is simply not the way things work.

Articles of impeachment

What the president has achieved, however, is opened herself to a possible impeachment proceeding. Few things in Slovenian constitution are as clear as Article 111. So she is definitely wide open on this one. And one should never be wide open.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to think that somewhere in the dark depths of SDS HQ, high-ranking party faithful the likes of Zvone Černač or Aleš Hojs are already hard at work at drafting articles of impeachment. Maybe not for today, but for the next time she does something problematic.Because let us not forget, that just like in the US, in Muddy Hollows impeachable offences are whatever the majority in the parliament says they are.

Unlike in the US, however, the actual impeachment trial is held at the constitutional court and a guilty verdict requires a two-thirds majority of all judges. But crucially, if the article(s) of impeachment are passed, the president is suspended from office for the duration of the trial. Which would be embarrassing enough, and Janez Janša loves, loves to embarrass, not just his political partners but his political opponents, too.

Which is why this next detail is crucial: to adopt articles of impeachment, only a simple parliamentary majority is required. Meaning that at best, Janez Janša would require 46 votes to refer the president to the constitutional court for suspension and a trial.

Those would, of course, be the same 46 votes the president thinks Janša doesn’t have.

That much is obvious after president Pirc Musar held her first official round of consultations before she appointing a PM nominee. To be fair, no-one has yet secured the 46 votes necessary in the first and second rounds of PM appointment procedure. But with Robert Golob taking a step back, the initiative is with the Glorious Leader. And he sure behaves as if he had already clinched it.

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Two-and-half steps of nomination

As readers with an unhealthy obsession with Slovenian political system know, appointing the PM candidate is a two-to-three-step procedure, with the third step kicking in only if the first two fail. The entire thing is designed in a way that all but ensures a PM-designate gets elected. Unless there is some sort of a political consensus not to do so (see below).

In short, the president gets first dibs. Per Article 111 of the Constitution, she has thirty days from inauguration of the new parliament to make her nomination. If that doesn’t fly, parliamentary groups, or any group (gaggle? congregation? murder?) of ten or more MPs can join in on the fray and put forward their nominee within the next fourteen days.

Should that result in competing candidates, they get voted on in the order in which they were nominated. But if the president wants to give it another go for whatever reason, her candidate goes to the front of the line. And whichever candidate gets to the magic number (46 votes) first, gets to be the PM-designate and everyone else can go cry into a pillow.

However, if no candidate makes the cut after the second attempt, the bar gets lowered and suddenly a simple majority suffices. This effectively means a minority government (even though appointing the cabinet is a separate process).

But there’s a twist.

The case for/against snap election in mid-July

First, the parliament needs to vote – within 48 hours of the last failed vote – on whether it wants the torture to continue into round three. That, too, requires a simple majority and at this point, the ball would be entirely in the court of GS and SDS, simultaneously.

Namely, if both largest parties agreed (even if for competing reasons) that a re-run of elections would be worth the risk, they could join hands in an unholy ad-hoc coalition and force the dissolution of the parliament. This would result in a snap election some time in mid-July and both GS and SDS could arguably count on sucking up what little oxygen they left for other parties to breathe.

But while GS, SD and Levica could count on the 6% of the broadly left-wing vote that was lost to parties below the 4% threshold (not to mention the mostly-GS disenchanted voters who stayed at home), SDS has can only cannibalize NSi++ and Anže Logar’s Demokrati. Of course, Janša would be perfectly fine with that. Logar and Jernej Vrtovec, however, not so much. Not to mention SLS and Fokus, the ++ parts of NSi++. They would be livid.

And that’s before we get to the fact Zoran Stevanović would probably have to turn in his Speaker’s gavel. It is possible that in a snap vote Resnica gets kicked out of the parliament, mostly due to Slovenia’s answer to RFK, jr., behaving like a giant asshole from the moment he was sworn in to the post.

Everyone’s a fucking liar

Point being that if we get to the third phase by any chance, all bets are off and chances of a Golob premiership, a Janša premiership and a snap election would be roughly the same. Perhaps with a slight edge in favour of the Big Bird clinching the vote, simply because by then he would start looking like the lesser of to evils for most of the smaller players.

Which is precisely the reason Janez Janša will do everything in his power to not let it come to that.

If there is one common descriptor of the last couple of weeks, is that everyone if fucking lying through their teeth. Pengovsky isn’t talking ordinary levels of politicians making stuff up and then pretending otherwise here. No, what we’re seeing here are ninja levels of misinformation and deception, where the prudent thing is to assume exactly the opposite of what is being said.

That is to say, that when Apex Avian says that he is fine with spending time in opposition, he is in fact anything but. And when GS parliamentary group chief and soon-to-be-ex minister of defence Borut Sajovic says the party refused to resort to treachery and treason to secure a majority, you can be damn sure they were playing dirty pool to the fucking max. It just didn’t work.

Papacy, the Normans and Comrade Tito

And the reason it didn’t work is that despite claiming the opposite, Janez Janša is very much ready to form whatever weak coalition he can get his hands on. Furthermore, his statement after meeting president NPM on Monday, that SDS is not putting together a government actually means that The Party is very much putting together a government. In fact, said government has most likely taken shape already.

What the Glorious Leader is looking for right now is not so much support from equal partners but rather an act of fealty from the very people his power hinges on. Think less papacy and more Norman kings of England.

(Yes, pengovsky is a big fan of The British History Podcast, why do you ask?)

At any rate, as long as Janez Janša is pretending he doesn’t have the 46 votes, with or without anti-waxx Resnica entering a confidence-and-supply arrangement, president Pirc Musar can hold off making her nomination. But she needs to make her move by 10 May, one way or another. Meaning that Marshal Twito could lead this country once more no later than May 25th.

If you know, you know.

To say that Robert Golob and GS were blindsided by this is an understatement. They had it all gamed out six steps ahead and were ready for some serious 3D chess. But it all hinged on the failure of the first speakership bid. Imagine their surprise when a disgraced former cop got the nod at the first try and was driven home by his buddies from the police academy.

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To cut a long story short, this development dramatically shortens the odds on the fourth Janez Janša government. Which would be more than a little ironic given how our brothers in paprikash kicked Janša’s erstwhile Lord Protector out to the kerb a couple of days ago.

History has a dark sense of humour

But no-one accused history of having a vanilla sense of humour. Doubly so since the word on the street (rather, the word in the corridors of the parliament) was that SDS and NSi++ backed Stevanović only to burn him and remove his sorry ass from the equation. But in the end, the man convicted of fraud who came in ona platform of cozying up to Russia, denying science and being willfully ignorant, actually won the speakership vote.

But wait, there’s more! It turned out NS++, Resnica and Demokrati were marking their fucking ballots, even though the vote was technically secret. Why would they do that, you ask, if the vote is technically secret? Obviously, they are dealing with significant trust issues. Again, fucking hillarious, given that NSi++ chief Jernej Vrtovec spet the past three weeks droning on about how he redirected Golob’s meeting requests to a spam folder, because “there is no trust between NSi and GS”.

But then again, maybe it’s not that Resnica, Demokrati and NSi++ don’t trust one another. After all, they have formed a loose alliance of sorts even before all of this. Maybe it is Marshal Twito who doesn’t trust them and needed them to prove to him that they can stick to a deal. Which would be vintage Janša, him needing them more than they need him, and yet somehow humiliating them in the process.

Shot-gun wedding

The Glorious Leader in all likelihood knew that ballots, even though they are anonymous, fall under the freedom of information act and that some enterprising journalist will get a hold of them. And if no-one took the bait, he’s got enough media propagandists in his employ that the marked ballots would see the light of the day.

So, when the number or each type of marks corresponded to the number of MPs each of the three parties has in the parliament (minus Stevanović, who obviously voted for himself), it became painfully obvious this was not a team-building trust exercise but rather a shot-gun wedding.

So, how does this all play out?

In theory, the speakership vote is a thing unto itself and needed primarily so that the new parliament can assume its powers and start to function. In practice, however, the position is a part of the general post-election horsetrading. Therefore, the general wisdom is that the coalition that elects the Speaker will also elect the prime minister.

Exceptions to the rule

However, there are also exceptions to the rule. Back in 2018, a parliamentary term that pengovsky has invoked more than once when describing the upcoming political clusterfuck, the liberal-left parties were bending over backwards to woo NSi and Matej Tonin to join then in an across-the-aisle coalition. To that end, they even got him elected as Speaker.

But the man pengovsky dubbed the Internet Explorer of Slovenian politics either got too greedy too soon or too happy too fast, and didn’t make the jump. And so then-PM Marjan Šarec struck a supply-and-confidence deal with Levica, formed a minority government and ousted Tonin as Speaker.

Could something like this happen this time as well, just the other way around? In theory, yes. At the very least, the Big Bird, after overcoming the initial shock of being outmaneuvered, is apparently still trying to cobble together something resembling a majority. But seeing as it would now take not one but two parties to take the cross-aisle plunge (NSI++ and Demokrati), the odds are as long as Muddy Hollows has ever seen.

Promises and changing circumstance

Doubly so since it is Anže Logar who is making the left-wing-coalition-is-still-possbile noises. On one hand he is signalling that Golob is still the only one who came up with a draft coalition deal. But on the other, whenever he needs to make an actual decision in favour of bipartisanship, his fear of Janez Janša apparently takes over and the dude goes all BSOD and resets to an SDS default setting.

So, pengovsky is not really holding his breath, even though there are rumours about Logar’s parliamentary group not being happy about the prospect of the fourth Janša government. For that matter, neither are Resnica rank and file, especially since Head Bouncer actually signed an affidavit before the election that he will not collaborate politically with Janez Janša.

The political amateur that he is, Stevanović is now saying that his previous promise is irrelevant because the circumstances have changed. Seems like the newly minted Speaker has yet to watch House of Cards. Because to put in the words of Frank Underwood, the nature of promises is that they are immune to changing circumstance.

Crossing the Rubikon

At any rate, with Zoran Stevanović grabbing the gavel, the clock started ticking for the president to nominate a PM. She has thirty days to do so and she said repeatedly that she will nominate whoever will show they command at least 46 votes. That is to say, a simple majority, at the very least.

Stevanović already crossed Rubikon in one direction and hooked up with Janša. Vrtovec and/or Logar on the other hand very much are not crossing it in the other direction (ditching Janša in favour of, you know, political moderation). Therefore, odds are that despite coming in second in the national vote, the audacious autocrat will get first dibs in forming forming the government.

And even though his strategizing abilities are way over-hyped, he is not the type to fuck it all up this close to the finish line. Even though he said that he is not interested in forming a weak government. But with so many new voters who have yet to drink the Janša Kool-Aid, he may not have a choice but to go for it.

On the other hand, Robert Golob and Nataša Pirc Musar are calling meetings. Right now, these are purely about taking the temperature. But in this brave new world of post-rational politics vibing is super important, apparently. So there are already attempts at making people comfortable around one another.

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Officially unofficial meetings

While Robert Golob held a get-to-know-one-another meetup last week, it was president Nataša Pirc Musar who kicked off the official proceedings yesterday, by meeting with leaders of all parliamentary parties and sounding them out.

pengovsky says “official proceedings”, even though the meetings were billed as unofficial. But between a day-long press stakeout in front of the presidential office, party leaders addressing a gaggle of reporters and the Prez herself then holding a press conference, there was little unofficial about the whole thing. Other than the Prez’s office limiting access to photojournalists and rubbing the journalists’ association the wrong way.

Then again, the meet-ups were indeed perfunctory and temperature-gauging. NPM said she didn’t learn a whole lot other than that it will take fucking ages to cobble together a coalition. Oh, and she also said that nobody likes a sore loser and that Janša should cut that result-disputing shit out. Not in as many words, but you get the picture.

Sore loser

Speaking of the Glorious Leader, seeing as the Party actually did well in the election, the man stopped short of disputing the overall result of the vote. For now, at least. But for the past nine days he kept finding new and ever more desperate ways to try and derail the confirmation of the result. So far, without much success. Yet, he is by no means done.

pengovsky spent the last couple of months harping on about how Janša and his minions are setting up information space to dispute the election result should it be close and they come up short. Obviously, none of that was a good-faith argument but rather a drive-thru for ready-made excuses, depending on the actual post-election needs.

These ranged from claims that rural voters were getting disenfranchised to claims of what amounts to stuffing ballot boxes. He also made up a veritable fuckton of administrative irregularities that in his mind make this whole thing illegitimate.

The one straw Janša and SDS might actually have grasped at (and it still is just a straw) is the location of early voting in Ljubljana, where one part of the electoral says the vote must be organised at local electoral committee HQ but another part basically says committees are free to organise however they like as long as people can cast their vote.

Throwing out the early vote

So the state electoral commission ruled that maybe things in the capital should be organised differently but that it wasn’t really a problem. This, of course, was enough for our audacious autocrat to demand that early election results in Ljubljana be thrown out, because… reasons.

But the move was as premeditated at is it was obvious. You see, even before the early voting started, Janša and SDS were firing off allegations about the impropriety of the early voting locations in Ljubljana and told their supporters to avoid early voting. Which the supporters dutifully did.

It was only after he made sure that few-to-none votes for SDS would be endangered, that Janša demanded early votes in Ljubljana be thrown out. Because disenfranchising rural voters (again, not a thing!) is super bad, but disenfranchising Ljubljana votes is fair game, apparently.

Not that it comes as a surprise to either reader, but this is just the latest example of ho Janez Janša doesn’t really give a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys about a fair election. He just wants 11,780 votes in Georgia to win. And he will probably continue to do so, up until and including the confirmation of MPs’ mandates.

Why is Janša doing this?

One might ask why the fuck is Janša doing this? He came within a hair’s breadth of winning the plurality and he still has a decent shot at becoming the PM. Again. All he needs it to keep his cool, and even if Golob manages to cobble together a coalition, Janša and SDS will still exert enormous influence in the new parliament.

The Glorious Leader does not operate like that. Not only does he need to win, he needs to project strength and humiliate the adversary. The goal is nothing short of total domination. Which is why his governments are very one-sided affairs, where coalition agreements are rarely worth the paper they’re printed on.

However, with total domination very much not being achieved, Janša has an ever bigger problem. With so many new voters in his camp (and why so many young people voted for SDS will be a subject of a future blogpost), Janša actually needs to reassert his cult-of-personality thing, to make sure these voters stay with him, despite the failure. The only way Janša knows to do that, is by conjuring up a conspiracy theory.

Golob cooing other parties

But while Janša spent the last seven days reasserting his cult of personality, Robert Golob was busy sweet-talking his potential coalition partners. He is making them the centre of his universe and is using verbiage he knows will resonate with them.

Development plan for NSi. Fight against corruption and tax breaks for Demokrati. Housing and welfare for Levica. Sovereignty for Resnica (*shrudder*). You know you want it for Social Democrats.

There are many similarities between Janša and Golob when it comes to doing politics. Some would even say too many . But there are also stark differences and this is one of them. These days, when the Big Bird speaks GS priorities are nowhere to be seen. At the same time, he is using verbiage designed to make other parties feel as important as possible. Talk about a sales pitch. At least it is much better than pengovsky soliciting coffee.

In fact, Golob is avoiding horsetrading, allegedly finding out if there’s enough common ground first. In effect, he is trying to make everyone involved comfortable around everyone else before he even starts making a play at a coalition.

Now, the Apex Avian does not have unlimited time to do so. The new parliament will meet for an inaugural session on 10 April. Ideally, it will elect the new Speaker in the same session.

Keeping the pressure on

But like objects in the side-mirror, 10 April is closer than it may appear today. Thus it is possible that the Speaker will be elected a couple of days later. Not just because things will be complicated on that front but also because Janša and SDS are almost certain to dispute at least some of the MPs being seated.

Just think about it. If the election was rigged, at least in part, as the Audacious Autocrat claims, then there must be at least a few MPs who really shouldn’t have been elected. Janša and his minions are almost certain to bring this up. If for nothing else, to keep the pressure on. And if they luck out and actually get to unseat an MP, all the better. It is probably not going to happen, but you never know.

Point being that the ad-hoc coalition electing the Speaker may or may not resemble the actual ruling coalition that Robert Golob will – eventually, probably – cobble together.

Ironically, the man helping him most in this endeavour is Janez Janša with his rants against the legitimacy of the election. Because nothing will drive the smaller parties into making a deal with Golob more than Janša constantly threatening to blow up the election result and force a repeat election. And once that possibility dawns on everyone, including Jernej Vrtovec of NSi, things will start falling in place.

Play hard with Golob or surrender to Janša

But for now, Jernej Vrtovec is playing hard to get and insists there’s no trust between his party and Golob. Which is weird, because other than a couple of half-hearted attempts at electoral reform, GS and NSi didn’t exactly do a lot of cooperating anyhow. But there is the small detail of Vrtovec being indicted for abuse of office over checking if the police are have wiretaps on specific people who just happened to be their political brethren. So maybe it’s personal for Vrtovec.

But NSi honcho behaves as if the is the only game in party-town (pun very much intended). Which he is most definitely not. In fact, what got elected to the parliament was not NSi but rather NSi++, where NSi won seven seats while SLS and Fokus won one seat each. Especially SLS is likely very keen to end up in the government. And the way things stand now, they have a better chance of achieving that with Golob than with Janša.

So, despite all the bravado, NSi++ is basically facing the same conundrum as Anže Logar and Demokrati. Either they play hard but ultimately negotiate with Golob, or surrender to Janša in advance and hope the Glorious Leader hands out enough candy to make everyone happy.

The only difference is that unlike Vrtovec who at the very least will at least keep his cushy MP job, Logar doesn’t even have that so he really, really needs a coalition deal. Preferably one which he can negotiate from at least somewhat of an independent position.

Logar’s Haily Mary pass

That said, Logar is not above a little dirty trickery himself. Namely, just as SDS was disputing results in at least 40 voting precincts, Demokrati were alleging irregularities, too. Specifically in the Maribor area and “other places which may have cost them a seat in the parliament”.

Obviously, everyone understood this to be a Hail Mary pass for Anže Logar to somehow clinch that MP seat that he missed by 30-something votes. But just as with SDS , the DVK told Demokrati where exactly the can shove their complaints.

Turns out you can take a man out of the SDS, but you can’t take SDS out of a man.

Assuming, of course, that the new parliament gets constituted at all. Namely the moment he lost the lead, Janez Janša started claiming voting and counting irregulairites. Which means that the next few weeks will be fucking intense.

Pengovsky writes this drivel for free and runs on coffee. If you like what you read on this here blog, please consider buying him a coffee using this link. And if you already did, you rock!

The turnout. Again.

pengovsky will do deeper dives on the result of the Sunday vote over the coming days and weeks. The main takeaway, however is the fact that Robert Golob seems poised to be the first Slovenian PM to repeat a term since the late, great Janez Drnovšek. But equally important is the turnout. With 69.32% it is just shy of the 2022 number. And that’s before the absentee ballots were counted.

You can get detailed results here but the broad outline is as follows. GS got 29 seats, SDS 28, NSi 9, SD and Demokrati 6, and Levica and Resnica 5 each. And just as seat count is close, so too are the actual numbers. In fact, it impossible to overstate just how close this election was.

Robert Golob almost didn’t make it

With 99.85% of votes counted (again, absentee and overseas ballots), SD and Demokrati are 93 votes apart. Levica is a measly 563 votes ahead of Resnica. And while GS seems to have a comparatively comfortable lead over SDS with about 7500 votes, the senior coalition party overtook the senior opposition party only after more than 90% of the vote was already counted.

In fact, the person who clinched the victory for GS was Apex Avian personally. For much of the night he wasn’t making the parliamentary cut (complex math, don’t ask). It was only after all the votes he got pushed him over the threshold in his voting unit did GS win that extra parliamentary seat over SDS.

But equally impressive was the bodycount this election demanded. Anže Logar and Eva Irgl, both leading Demokrati figures, did not get the nod. Neither did Speaker Urška Klakočar Zupančič, prominent GS defector to SD ranks Mojca Šetinc Pašek, nor former Levica parliamentary group leader Matej Tašner Vatovec who shocked everyone when he left the party for – predictably – the SD.

Resnica huffing and puffing

Parties who gained the most last night were – obviously – Resnica and NSi. The latter outperformed expectations and ended up where the pollsters put either Levica or Demokrati. Netting his party one MP more than their current crop, Jernej Vrtovec just might have proved his mettle as party leader, even though the result is a group effort of NSi, SLS and Focus.

Resnica on the other hand, probably surprised themselves, too. While making it past the 4% parliamentary threshold was always on the cards for them in this cycle, breaking the 5% barrier is a bit of a shocker. And party chief Zoran Stevanović wasted no time in puffing his chest and making unreasonable demands if he is to join any future coalition.

But by demanding finance, foreign and interior ministries, Stevo might have already taken himself out of the equation, because settling for less would make him look weak and prone to horsetrading. Which is what politics is mostly about at this stage just after the election, but he doesn’t know that yet. And when he inevitably won’t deliver, his base might start asking questions.

Which brings us to what the future coalition will look like.

Broad coalition vs. contested legitimacy

As Demokrati leaderhship didn’t make parliament, Anže Logar and Eva Irgl have a huge incentive to join the next coalition of Robert Golob. And for his part, the Big Bird already started signalling that he is ready to reach across the aisle. He did so by saying that he is willing to collaborate with all democratic parties and later adding that this excludes Janša and SDS. But he also started using language his potential coalition partners from left and right are comfortable with.

Talking about housing and health (key Levica talking points) but also about entrepreneurs, economic development and growth (things Demokrati and NSi have the feelz for). He also blabbed something about sovereignty, which is a word Zoran Stevanović likes to use, even though he probably doesn’t really knows what it means.

So, on one hand, Robert Golob has already signaled that he is willing to build a broad coalition which – at least on paper – would have more than just a minimum majority. On the other hand, Janez Janša is looking to actively undermine the legitimacy of the vote and is already talking about recounts and the need for a new election. Despite the near-historic turnout.

And even if Muddy Hollows avoids Florida 2000, Stop The Steal and January 6, the next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic.

The last six to twelve months have provided us with plenty of rendering of garments, strategizing and positioning to maintain status quo. SDS was in the lead, GS second, then nothing for a very long time, and then everyone else. But the moment ball started rolling, it was all just, well, one battle after another.

Pengovsky writes this drivel for free and runs on coffee. If you like what you read on this here blog, please consider buying him a coffee using this link. And if you already did, you rock!

Anže Logar vs. Vladimir Prebilič

For almost a year, public opinion polls have been as interesting as Pete Hegseth during Dry January. And until about two weeks ago, things were pretty much clear. SDS was in the lead, with GS following, just outside the margin of error. Then nothing, for a really long time and then everyone else within a 3%-interval, hovering between 4 and 7 percent.

But there were signs of things bubbling, just beneath the surface. First and foremost, there was the self-immolation of Vladimir Prebilič. Sure, he misread the room and somehow thought that just by appearing on the scene, the seas will part and the liberal and left blocs will welcome him with open arms. And when that didn’t happen, he careened from a campaign fuck-up to a campaign fuck-up, all but crashing out of the race.

The series of unfortunate events that was the Prebilič campaign made life easier for the former SDS choir-boy-turned-apostate Anže Logar. His Democrats. By Anže Logar (seriously, that’s how the party’s name is styled. Complete mindfuck, if you ask pengovsky) ran a relatively slick campaign and somewhat benefited from Prebilič’s crash-out. Apparently it pays to be the first to present an election alternative, even if it took you fucking ages to take the plunge.

Muscle memory

But the more the campaign dragged on, the more Logar’s impersonation of Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks started fading away. And even if his attempt at breaking away from Janez Janša is earnest (and pengovsky still believes this to be the case), his muscle memory started taking over and the Anže Logar we all know and, uh, love reappeared. Still with a charisma of a wet cloth, but also thoroughly unlikable.

It remains to be seen whether Logar’s tanking in the polls is the result of his mask starting to slip or the other way around. But fact of the matter is that after once movement began, Logar’s ratings took a turn for the worse. Likely, because many of his supporters started drifting back to the Party, for fear of things going tits-up more than they already are.

Because Logar is not the only one with a muscle memory problem. Predictably, Janez Janša simply couldn’t resist and fucked it all up virtually at the last moment. As per usual.

And by “fucked it up”, pengovsky means that Janša seems to have, once again, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Dismay and Disappointment

Make no mistake, SDS is still poised to come up with an impressive election result this Sunday. But they are no longer a shoo-in for the top spot.

In fact, after the corruption videos/Israeli election interference thing blew up, poll after poll has recorded a sharp bump for PM Golob and his Gibanje Svoboda, much to the dismay and disappointment of the Glorious Leader and his minions. This suggests was a substantial voter activation on the liberal left side and perhaps even some undecideds, regardless of the corruption allegations.

Turns out people don’t like the idea of foreign powers meddling in national politics. Especially if this is done at the behest of one of the domestic political parties. And even more so if said party is professing all sorts of nationalist and jingoistic shit, while using Israeli spooks, (formerly) Hungary-funded media, Bosnian-laundered money and American-MAGA playbook, while singing Croatian fascist tunes.

There used to be a word for this sort of politics, but it wasn’t used in polite society outside of a classroom.

So, what the fuck happened?

There will be time for a fuller analysis after the election. But right now it seems that pengovsky was right (duh!) when he wrote that parties were keeping their powder dry for as long as possible.

Golob should thank Netanyahu

The thing that started this domino effect was, ironically, US-Israeli attack on Iran which prompted a scramble to evacuate tourists from the region. The Apex Avian and his government actually made a decent job of it and got most Slovenians out while other countries were still trying to charter planes.

This started moving polls in their direction, which in turn prompted the SDS to spring their trap. But once that was done, Newton’s Third Law kicked in once again. And when faced with the allegation that he met with Mossad-for-hire, Marshal Twito did what he always does. He started lying through his teeth, but still managed to get caught with his dick in his hand.

He went from “I don’t know who these people are” via “I may have met one of them once, somewhere outside Slovenia” to “yeah, I met with one of them, but I don’t know when, I just know it wasn’t on the date the report says I did“, all inside of 24 hours. Who knows what the story will be come tomorrow evening.

Janša is a shockingly bad liar

While we’re on the issue, it is remarkable just how shockingly bad a liar Janez Janša is. I mean sure, it’s good to tell the truth. But if you’re gonna do it anyway (and most politicians are good in truth-bending department), at least try to stick with the story for more than a couple of hours.

He tried something similar when he was caught with his hand inside the cookie jar back before the 2018 election, with that Bosnian money-laundering thing. He ran through every possible iteration of the story, trying to blame literally everyone else, only to finally admit the wrongdoing and return the money. As pengovsky wrote back then, Janez Janša was once SDS’s biggest asset. Now he is the Party’s biggest liability.

Oh, since you asked, yes, something like this happened in 1988 as well. Back then the Yugoslav army arrested him over possession of a classified document and was desperate to find out whom he got the document from and whom else did he show it.

And poor naive little Janša fell for the oldest trick in the book, when the interrogator said that the army already knows everything and just needs to hear it from him, so he’s not the one unfairly hung out to dry. The future triple prime minister then proceeded to tell everything, while munching on an ice-cream cone the nice interrogator provided.

Some people never learn, huh?

Raising a stink in Brussels

Anyway, here in 2026, Robert Golob, probably made the best possible move of the entire campaign and took himself out of the equation for a couple of days. The SDS-Black Cube connection was first leaked to the media who teamed up with NGOs to write a banger of a story. The Big Bird then professed his shock but let other people take point on the issue, while he skedaddled off to Brussels and raised hell about foreign election interference in an EU member state.

Probably wary of the blowback they got in Romania, the EU was bit more muted in its response. Sure, Golob got some decent press out of it, but it was only Emanuel Macron who openly went to bat for his liberal comrade in charms.

Perhaps it was fact that unlike in Romania, the security apparatus in this sorry little excuse for a country seems to be on top of things. Or, even more importantly, that in Muddy Hollows, Janša is the one likely to dispute results and nobody really wants to go there.

Stop the steal

Nobody except the Glorious Leader, should the election result end up being reasonably close and not in his favour. In this case, expect hysterical claims about disenfranchising rural areas and, at the same time conspiracy theories about “secret voter rolls, deployed to skew the result”. This is Stop the Steal territory. Both narratives are already out there, simmering and waiting to be launched into the mainstream. Pengovsky wrote elsewhere on both.

And, of course there’s already good old misinformation floating around. So far it is pretty amateurish, to the point that she state electoral commission (DVK) is able to debunk it easily. But Sunday is still a long way down, and things can change quickly. That goes for public opinion polls, too.

But for now, it looks like GS actually managed to hit a 30% threshold among likely voters, with SDS trailing in second place with 26%. That is quite the turnaround.

Levica/Vesna and NSi+SLS+Focus are north of 8 percent. This is great news for Luka Mesec because that would mean his party would double it’s MP count, and mid news for Jernej Vrtovec whose party would add one MP. Maybe.

Not great not terrible

Then it’s SD and Matjaž Han, with 7.5%, a decidedly not-great-not-terrible territory. And then, everyone else, including Anže Logar, dangerously close to the 4% threshold.

This, of course is a major shift from where polls were, say, two months ago, when things looked set in stone, with SDS in the lead GS close second and a dead heat in coalition forming.

The latter is still very much in the air. But a simple repeat of the current coalition setup is not impossible anymore. Which makes a lot of people very nervous, be it because they have so much to gain, or because they have so much to lose.

Mind you, there are other polls out there as well. And if while they were all mostly in agreement about as little as a month ago, this is no longer the case. Which is precisely why the last few days of the 2026 parliamentary election campaign in Muddy Hollows look more like a bar-fight than a carefully executed plan.

In any event, it’s a bit like one battle after another. But someone will have to pick up the tab at the end.

After the supposedly shocking revelation from undercover videos became public, the political right wanted nothing more but to keep talking about what was said, regardless of the context. The political left on the other side, wanted to talk about election interference, regardless of what was said. And today they got their chance.

pengovsky writes this drivel for free. and will eventually get to the post about public opinion polls, too. Promise. But until then, if you see it fit, you’re more than welcome to buy pengovsky a cup of coffee.

Do not be fooled, it really is a duck

Long story short, Mladina magazine and 8. Marec Institute teamed up to do some research. Based on some, well, credible sources and some online sleuthing, they pieced together a story about Israeli Mossad-adjacent types, hobnobbing with SDS, since December last year.

According to the research team, people from Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence company did what they allegedly did in some other places (notably, Hungary) and engaged in some light honey-trapping of people with connections to the Golob government.

This, of course, is more than enough for the left to scream election interference from here until Sunday (and then some). And, truth be told, this is a much more credible response than some vague statements about those videos being forgeries and/or AI deepfakes.

Now, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page, this was not Mossad. Because, once again, if the Mossad is after you, you are going to get Mossad’ed upon. But to put it in the words of Groucho Marx, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don’t be fooled. It really is a duck.

Spooks, cooks and a little irony

The videos of Dominika Švarc Pipan, Nina Zidar Klemenčič, Rok Hodej and some Gen-I executives (see, pengovsky told you there were going to be other leaks) are simply too well executed to be the work of some Muddy Hollows freelancing insignificunts.

But according to the report, things weren’t as clandestine as SDS and their Middle Eastern buddies had hoped. When the videos appeared it didn’t take Mladina/8. Marec “credible sources” long to put two and two together, and – at the very least – point the illustrious investigative team in the right direction.

As to who these credible sources are, we can only guess. But we can make a reasonable guess that it wasn’t some cook at the Ljubljana Airport. Or maybe it was, given that it was the cook aboard The Red October who worked for the KGB. Or that the cook on the Missouri was a former Navy SEAL. If you catch pengovsky’s meaning…

Also, there’s more than a little irony in the fact that Mladina made a name for itself almost 40 years ago, by reporting on an intelligence leak that got Janez Janša arrested in 1988 and launched him into political stratosphere. And now, they’re once again reporting on what seems to be an intelligence leak. Only this time the report is about Janša working with rent-a-spooks.

There are, of course, multiple ways too look at the current shituation. One is decidedly pearl-clutching, the other unhealthily cynical. Either reader can decide where on this spectrum pengovsky falls.

Ratfucking

But one thing is certain. In a serious country, people would have been prosecuted for this. Be it for the alleged corruption, be it for alleging corruption without evidence, for the entrapment of unsuspecting individuals or for aiding and abetting said entrapment. And more often than not, Muddy Hollows is not a serious country.

If all of these allegations are true, then this here place is not only a corruption-infested den of thieves, it is also a playground for foreign intelligence services or their subcontractors. And apparently, these guys can take anyone on a ride, and interfere in European elections virtually at will.

Or, none of this is true, and both the videos and the report are just elaborate ratfucking schemes, aimed at shaving a couple of percentage points from the other political bloc.

Or, more than one thing can be true at the same time. It did not escape pengovsky’s attention that Peter Šuhel, Janša’s chief of staff all but confirmed the basic allegation of the report. Which kind of makes sense. To put in the words of Jack Ryan, there’s no point in defusing the bomb once it has already gone off.

More where that came from?

Be that as it may, fact of the mater is, that none of these allegations need to stand the test of time. The videos only need to stand until Sunday evening, while Mladina/8 Marec research needs to looks plausible for the next week or so.

But just as there was more than one video, pengovsky wouldn’t be surprised if there was more than one article on this over the next few days.

For all the brouhaha that this story is attempting to generate – and for the time being, it is mostly right-wing spin doctors who are pretend-clutching their pearls over this – it is important to see what the story is not. This is not about high-ranking government officials asking for bribes or admitting to criminal activities. It is GS-adjacent influence peddlers talking shit about their competition and brandishing their own credentials. At least for now.

Some might say that a 10,000 character blogpost on a campaign trick might be excessive. And some might be right. But hey, this is what this blog is all about, so if you think pengovsky should have a coffee or two, feel free to buy him a couple at this link. And if you already have, cheers! Coffee, amirite?

Timing is everything

For the time being, there are two three major batches of leaks. The first one were audio recordings of former GS secretary general and attack dog Vesna Vuković. The second one consitst video recordings of former minister of justice and wannabe lobbyist Dominika Švarc Pipan. And while it is tempting to go into the weeds of what was said and what is inferred from the recordings, we should look at the bigger picture first.

(After this post was written but before it was published, there’s also been a third batch leaked, this one including celebrity lawyer Nina Zidar Klemenčič. Pengovsky is not sure why she is included as she is definitely not in an inner Golob orbit. )

As of this post, Slovenian parliamentary election is ten days away. Call it E-10 days. Suddenly, parties that spent the last six months sitting on their asses and waging some sort of political trench warfare, are running out of time if they are to end up on top. But as static as the public opinion polls were over the last months, things have started changing in the last couple of days.

Pengovsky was in the middle of writing a separate blogpost on this (and will still do so, only later). But the key takeaways are that GS closed the gap to SDS, Levica has separated from the rest of the pack and is now polling where Anže Logar’s Demokrati used to. They, in turn have fallen back and are now rubbing shoulders with NSi, whereas Vladimir Prebilič is getting more and more irrelevant. If the trend continues, his Prerod will not even make the 1% financing threshold.

Action/Reaction

Point being that there is movement in the polls, and that it broadly favours the left-liberal bloc. Enter Newton’s Third Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,

How these recordings were madeand/or obtained remains a bit of a mystery. There is ample room for speculation and conspiracy theories (see below), but apparently things are bad enough that the cops got involved.

Slightly more is known about the case of Dominika Švarc Pipan. She claims that she was approached by a Vienna-based firm who wanted to talk about some sort of investment in data centres in Slovenia. As former senior government officials are useful sources of information and can be, well, commissioned to advocate a certain viewpoint or business interest. Which is why Dominika Švarc Pipan – with ample time on her hands – went to an all-expences-paid business lunch in the former imperial capital.

The other thing former senior government officials like is the sound of their own voice. Admittedly, so do bloggers and podcasters, but generally they are not former senior government officials (unless you’re Dan Bongino, but pengovsky digresses.) At any rate, it was probably fairly easy to get Dominika Švarc Pipan to talk turkey.

And even though it apparently dawned on her by the time of the follow-up meeting that this investment firm might be a bit shady, she went in for seconds and talked some more, regardless. Because, you know, the sound of one’s own voice and whatnot. And of course it’s kind of hard to say no after you’ve said yes the first time. Pengovsky is sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Zoran Thaler would like a word

At any rate, Dominika Švarc Pipan talked and and talked, unaware that she was being recorded the whole time. Maybe both readers will remember a similar incident fifteen years ago, when The Sunday Times caught then-MEP Zoran Thaler on tape in a similar fashion. Unlike DŠP, who merely talked shit, Thaler actually incriminated himself back then and was had to resign.

But other than the concealed-camera-on-table, the other parallel between Thaler and Švarc Pipan is that both were opportunistic SD picks. Which just goes to show that the SD will go to bed with anyone, if it suits their immediate needs. Surely, there is a lesson in there somewhere as well. But pengovsky digresses again…

That said, the site where these videos are published directly references the Thaler thing. This suggests someone did their homework. Moreover, the company that was a front for Dominika Švarc Pipan’s lunch seems to have been a legitimately registered business, with a website that was active for several years, only to have been deactivated this morning. This in turn suggests the whole thing was run at least semi-professionally, with resources that are outside the reach of Slovenian political parties.

All the more so, when one considers the fact that DŠP videos seem to be only the first of many leaks. The site features several inactive sections, presumably placeholders for future releases.

Thus, pengovsky expects to see more people come forward in the next couple of days, hat in hand, admitting to their stupidity and recklessness. It is also quite possible that future releases will be much more damaging than this episode with Dominika Švarc Pipan, both to these individuals personally and to the government as a whole.

Motive yes, but opportunity?

So, presumably, the coalition spin-doctors and PR foot-soldiers are already out in force, trying to get ahead of the various stories breaking. Because while embarrassing and possibly damaging on a personal and career level, it is beyond obvious that the main goal here is to stop to the surge in polls the coalition parties are experiencing.

Which answers the question of who is ultimate beneficiary of these sting operations: the opposition in general and the largest opposition party specifically. The SDS has the mindset, experience and contacts to organise and support a stunt like this. But while the Party has the motive, it probably didn’t have the opportunity, nor did it have the means.

You see, for all the infamy of SDS and Janša connections in the security apparatus, their reach has been severely degraded over the years. No longer are there two parallel state security structures in this sorry little excuse for a country, one loyal to whatever government is in power, and the other always loyal to Janša. At the very least, the two are not comparable anymore.

Moreover, the Party itself is turning more and more into a comedic cult of personality, drunk on their own Kool-Aid and so it is at least possible that Janša and SDS are just pawns in this story. Very enthusiastic pawns, but pawns nevertheless.

Election interference

So, who framed Dominika Švarc Pipan? If pengovsky were to put on a tin-foil hat, he could see several potential benefactors of this op.

There’s Russia, obviously. The Moscow Madman and his entire spy network HAVE been hard at work in various EU countries to try and derail elections, subvert institutions and sow doubt into democracy in general. Could they achieve this with Janša in power? By all means. I mean, they do have a history of supporting far-right parties all over the EU.

More importantly they’ve recently sent an expedition to Hungary, to help the sinking fortunes of Janša’s one-time Saviour And Lord Protector, a certain Órban Viktor. And sure enough, Orban’s arch-rival Péter Magyar publicly warned that several of his close aides will be subject to damaging leaks, be it fabricated or manipulated. So, similar MO. Moreover, several pro-Russian puppets in Slovenia have been low-key cumming over the DŠP shitstorm, so… maybe it was the Russkies?

But then again, Janša is staunchly pro-Ukraine, and has been from the start, in direct opposition to other fellow European far-right leaders. In fact, Vova might find that the current left-liberal coalition in Muddy Hollows, even though it is vehemently pro-Zelensky, could be persuaded to jump at any and all peace initiatives, as implausible as they may be.

Flooding the zone with shit

So, why waste resources, when possible outcomes are dubious at best? Besides, there’s more than enough evidence that FSB or whoever is really running Russian foreign operations these days, already have their people in Muddy Hollows.

Next up are the Americans. More importantly, the Bannon wing of the MAGA movement. Sure, the US embassy in Ljubljana has been known on occasion to publicly opine on the democratic process in Slovenia. But it was Flood-The-Zone-With-Shit Steve, who openly courted far-right parties all over the EU.

And even if his antics were never officially sanctioned (and there’s word on the street that the relations between Ljubljana and Washington are far better than either side lets on), Bannon could still freelance a bit. Especially now that Chief Brexiteer is having an yet another crisis and Marine Le Pen is on the brink of being barred from public office.

So, maybe this is a MAGA related thing. After all, MAGA and the Party are more than a little sympatico.

Being Mossaded upon

Or maybe it’s Janša’s friends in the Middle East. The Glorious Leader is probably the staunchest ally Israel has in Muddy Hollows. And Bibi Netanyahu would probably be keen to have a more militant voice advocating for him in the EU. After all, who could forget Israeli foreign minister, back when Slovenia was about to recognise Palestine, when he had a hissy fit and tagged Janša on Twix.

But if it was the Israelis, then it sure as fuck wasn’t Mossad. Because as we all know, if Mossad is after you, you are going to be Mossaded upon. They will then plausibly deny it was them while wearing T-shirts saying “yep, it was definitely us”.

So, take your pick. And change your password while you’re at it. It could have been just a coincidence, but apparently there was an attempt at one of pengovsky’s online accounts this morning. Fun times.

Vesna Vuković knows where the bodies are buried

Well. 9,000 characters in and pengovsky still didn’t discuss what Dominika Švarc Pipan actually said in those videos. And here’s the thing: she didn’t say all that much. Other than some name-dropping, very little a careful observer of the Muddy Hollows political cesspool (such as this humble blogger) could not have told you.

So, while Dominika Švarc Pipan was trying to peddle influence, the people running the operation were looking for juicy quotes. And fuck me sideways, did she provide. Nothing groundbreaking, but that wasn’t really the point.

The goal here was to create the notion that the current Slovenian government is a hellish pit of political and economic corruption run by the Deep State. And just to make sure the message got across, the editing of the videos is clearly non linear, with more juicy parts of the conversation moved to beginning, and such. This edit job wasn’t meant to stand the test of time. It just needs to stand for a week or so.

Which finally brings to the recordings of Vesna Vuković. In light of today’s banger of a story, these have taken a back seat, but are on the whole potentially much more damaging, as she is taking pot-shots at every high-profile GS politician who gives the party an appearance of an actual, you know, political party.

Temu Malcolm Tucker

For example, the releases to date (and surely, there will be others) are obviously aimed at driving a wedge between the Apex Avian, Alenka Bratušek and Urška Klakočar Zupančič. Whether or not anything Vuković says in there is true is, obviously, of secondary.

The goal is to put Golob on the back foot, make Bratušek deal with claims of skimming money from the Divača-Koper railway project and isolate UKZ from the rest of the party via claims that she was getting off-the-book party funds before she ran for office. None of this has to be true to be damaging. It just needs to resonate enough.

The thing is that Vuković is not someone whom Golob can simply throw under the bus. She has been at the Big Bird’s side from the beginning and knows where the metaphorical bodies are buried. The fact that she was removed official government and party positions in the wake of the Bobnar Affair is probably about as far as she is willing to go.

So even though in these audio recordings she comes across as Temu Malcolm Tucker, she will probably suffer no real consequences, leaving he party to clean up any other way they can.

So far, the GS is brushing things off, first by claiming the audio was deep-faked and when that didn’t fly, that it was edited in a manipulative way. Which it probably was, but that doesn’t mean the party of Robert Golob won’t have some tough questions to answer in the next few days.

A look at the polls will tell whether they did a good job of it.

The hill in question being the digital presence of influencer Aleksandar Repić. Like, fucking everything is in play and yet the right wing picked a influencer-pimp as their cause célèbre. You literally cannot make this shit up.

Pengovsky writes this blog for free. If you like it, this blogger is happy. If you don’t, leave a comment. But either way, you can buy pengovsky a coffee using this link. Because like most of internet, this blog, too, runs on caffeine and dubious life choices.

Insta-dram-a, part deux

Both readers will recall the Instadrama pengovsky wrote about in the last post. The one where an attention-whoring influencer picked on GS Instagram account and the Bird Brood got their knickers in a twist. Well, shortly after Aleksandar Repić (the attention-whoring influencer in question) got picked up by the police on an unrelated criminal charge, Meta deleted his IG accounts.

Repić didn’t share the official explanation for removal, which suggests he was banned for violating Meta ToS. Whether that has anything to with the fact that he also runs (ran?) an OnlyFans farm, or the fact that he apparently shared private correspondence he had with son of president Nataša Pirc Musar, or something else, we will (probably) never know.

But if pengovsky were a guessing man, he’d guess that it was the OnlyFans thing. Payment processor companies are notoriously allergic to anything within the adult content industry. But even if you subscribe to the notion that sex work is work (which pengovsky definitely does), pimping is not sex work, it’s exploitation. And so presumably once Meta got wind of his off-platform (cross-platform?) entrepreneurial activities, the music stopped instantly.

Sylvester Stallone would like a word…

Or maybe it is all a hoax and the dude pulled the plug himself, switching over to Twitter, where the Slovenian right wing commentariat simply adores him right now. Because in some ways they are even more gullible than the ‘Gram-dwellers.

The one thing that almost certainly didn’t happen was GS and PM Golob going full Sylvester Stallone in Oscar on the influencer wannabe.

Regardless, Repić came up with a half-baked conspiracy theory and – boom! – the Twitterati were eating out of his hand. Nevermind the pimping, the manslaughter or the stabbing attack that landed him in jail. All of this he freely admits and did time for some of it. This dude is now the right-wing’s poster boy for freedom of speech.

In fact, such is the right-eous fervour, that even NSi chief Jernej Vrtovec got in on the action and tweeted that kicking Repić off IG is the largest abuse of repressive apparatus for campaign purposes in, like, ever. Which is a bold thing to say, given that Vrtovec is neck-deep in shit himself on charges of abuse of office.

But then again, this is the name of the game. When polls start going the wrong way, you gotta make some noise and say stupid shit. And the latest poll was no bueno for NSi. Sure, it is not critical (yet), especially since with single-digit results things can quickly change course. But coming in at just below 5% three weeks before the election, when they aim to go north of 7% they got the last time around, that is what moving the wrong direction looks like.

Prebilič puts on wailing hat

But Vrtovec, NSi and their merry band of tag-alongs are still in a better shape than Vladimir Prebilič. Leader of Prerod put his whining hat on today and complained at being disinvited from tomorrow’s campaign debate on POP TV.

Namely, before they launched their election coverage, POP TV said that debate invites will be extended only to the top eight parties in the average of the last tree Mediana polls. And since the pollster ran a new poll this week, the oldest (and most favourable to Prebilič) is no longer used in calculations. Which means that Prebilić and Prerod will sit this (and probably the next) debate out. Their replacement is the Pirate Party. Pengovsky is not holding his breath.

Admittedly, this is a huge blow to the man who once saw himself as the next PM. No POP TV debate means no exposure and that in turn means even less votes in an campaign where Prebilič already struggles in. Luckily for him, there are still election debates on TV Slovenia where he gets the spot automatically, by virtues of being an MEP. Even though he ran as a Vesna candidate back then and is now a Prerod guy.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, according to the poll, the campaign field is still pretty much evenly split between the left and right blocs. But who’s counting, right?

This blogger is a couple of days late with this post because there were things to see, people to do and because adulting is hard in general. But there’s also the fact that public opinion polls are remarkably stable and have been for a while. With less than a month to go, it is now beyond obvious that this is a base-only campaign.

pengovsky writes this drivel for free, but if you feel like donating a couple of euros towards his coffee pot, you’re more than welcome to do so here. And a big thanks to everyone who already did so. Your coffees are the fuel that keeps this blog going.

Agreement among pollsters

This is not to say that this sorry little excuse for a country has never seen a base-only campaign. Janez Janša’s SDS, for example, has this tactic down pat, for example. Even if they ended up developing it more by accident than by design. What is new this time around, is that fucking everyone is doing it. At the same time.

Regardless of which pollster one takes, the placement is more or less the same. SDS is leading the pack, usually just north of 20% support, with GS trailing just behind, usually in high teens or low twenties.

Then, nothing for a very long time, followed by everyone else jam-packed below 8 percent of support. Specifically, there are six, seven parties squeezed into the small interval between the apparent single-digit ceiling and the four-percent threshold they need to pass to win seats in parliament.

It will be a bloodbath and even a minor dip or surge in the turnout of any party’s voters could mean the difference between fuck, yeah! and fuck off! on election night. No wonder everyone is catering to their own bases, with very little attempts to branch out.

Base-only campaign

Either reader might think that given so much competition and so little margin of error, parties would be keen to provide actual rational reasons to vote for them. Maybe even hint at specific policy planks. But either reader would also be dead wrong, of course.

Sure, there are platforms and campaign manifestos. But for the most part they are either more red meat using longer words, or they look like a fucking brainstorming session that nobody bothered to edit for clarity (I’m looking at you, SD).

Either way, these things fucking useless to the average voter. For as messy as they are, they will get even messier if, and when their party of choice enters coalition negotiations. But in order to get there, said party needs to pass the 4% threshold first.

Which brings us to the key dynamic/vicious circle of this electoral cycle. The path to success on 22 March will lay in getting the vote out by any means possible. To do that in an environment where there is already little movement in the polls (and where manifestos are worth jack shit), the base must be kept in a state of permanent fervour. Which further diminishes any chance of movement in the polls. That in turn requires even more rage-baiting. Which requires… Well, you get the point.

Insta-dram-a

Unless, of course, there’s a campaign crash-out, either by ways of a party running out of red meat/sugar/Colombian marching powder for their masses, or by a significant blunder that gets blown further out of proportion. And lacking any real substance, this appear to be the only campaign game in town right now.

Over the weekend, things started happening to Instagram accounts of Gibanje Svoboda and The Apex Avian that their administrators didn’t like and locked the profiles as a precaution. Apparently, there was a large influx of non-genuine followers, which GS social media managers interpreted as a coordinated attempt to game the algorithm and push down the GS and Golob accounts. At some point a local attention whore influencer Aleksandar Repić got in on the act and sicced his followers on one of GS Instagram polls. And after GS raised a stink about fake followers, Repić raised a couterstink and accused GS of deleting comments made by real people.

Which was all the cue the right wing needed to start claiming that GS online campaign is like its governing style: full of shit. They joined in on that comment storm with gusto and tried to transfer it into their Twitter bubble, too.

But when GS very smartly leaned into the story and doubled down on both the interpretation and the burek-related content which apparently sparked this whole clusterfuck, the rightwing commentariat quickly lost its collective smirk.

The Streissand Effect

Their IG content might well be cringe (and really, OMG!), but GS refused to be bullied or memed out of social media existence. And when Repić was arrested on an unrelated charge (apparently, in addition to running a small OnlyFans porn content farm, he also does some light extortion on the side), the commentariat quickly pivoted from “haha, GS can’t do social media for shit” to “GS is abusing the repressive apparatus to settle petty campaign issues”.

So, which is it, guys? Either GS is a bunch of incompetent insignificunts, or they are the big bad crew of state pirates who will rain hell if you as much as look at them wrong.

But while the right-wing faithful are trying to convince themselves and their bubble that GS can be both at the same time, depending on their needs, the only real-world effect of this is that GS Instagram views went up. Which effectively means that the right did GS promotional work for them. Maybe they should at least bill GS for it. This time around the Streissand Effect worked very much in GS’s favour and they are milking it for all its worth.

That said, this whole development should worry at least two groups of people, for two different sets of reasons: the NSi and Anže Logar’s Democrats.

The fact that the cops are not fucking about and will apparently do their work regardless of campaign season should really worry the NSi.

Fuck around and KNOVS out

Namely, its current and former leader as well as two other NSi MPs are neck-deep in a fairly serious scandal, where they are facing criminal charges for alleged abuse of power. Namely, back in late 2023, Jernej Vrtovec, Matej Tonin, Jožef Horvat and Janez Žakelj, all members of KNOVS (parliamentary intelligence oversight committee) made a surprise inspection of the police SIGINT facilities. While there, they demanded to know if certain phone numbers were being wiretapped. And these just happened to include other high lever NSi personnel, themselves targets of other criminal investigations.

The cops saw this as impeding active investigations, blew their stack and took the case to the prosecution. In turn, the state prosecution launched an investigation and filed abuse-of-office charges against the four MPs about two weeks ago.

So, at this time, the NSi Four Amigos are in comparatively deeper shit than the pimping extortionist influencer. Must be a funny feeling.

The other person dealing with a continuous knot in their stomach is probably Anže Logar. You see, one of the pre-requisites for running a base-only campaign is, well, having a base. And Logar decidedly does not have a base.

Lacking a base

In fact, his entire shtick is to present himself as the “other guy”, and hoping there are enough disgruntled GS and SDS voters to push him over the parliamentary threshold.

So far, the approach seems to be working. Unlike Vladimir Prebilič, who doesn’t seem capable of running anything that would resemble an actual campaign, Logar and his ilk are systematically at it.

The way things stand now, Anže Logar is poised to become the kingmaker in Muddy Hollows. But, as pengovsky is fond of remarking, a week in politics is a long time. And maintaining this state of things might well prove challenging for the erstwhile SDS wonderboy.

Sure, predictions are hard, especially about the future. But it is a long way from a disgruntled voter in an opinion survey to an actual voter changing their allegiance at the ballot box. Logar’s worst nightmare is his support evaporing as voting day approaches, so he is desperate to lock it in right now. Somehow.

Especially since the Glorious Leader realised that he needs to be seen in public, not just in social media photo ops. Sure, non-Party media might be the enemies of the people (at least Janša’s people), but they do wield plenty of influence. Which is why the Glorious Leader changed course and graced POP TV with his presence in a debate this week, after it became apparent that Logar is, in fact, making inroads into SDS electorate.

Party like it’s 2018

That said, Janša playing defence now is bad news for Logar later. Heavy-rimmed specs, designed to project authority and control, will only get him so far. Fact of the matter is that bruh still has no rizz. And as the youngsters say these days, that’s a bit of a skill issue.

Experience shows that in campaigns as bereft of substance as this one is, the real action is likely to take place in the last two weeks before the vote. Which is still some time away. And seeing how as just about everyone has been preparing for this election for the last eighteen months, there is more than a little irony in them acting like they can’t wait for this to be over.

If all of this reminds you of the 2018 parliamentary election, well, you’re not alone.