The parking ordnance referendum simply refused to go away, despite Zoki’s legal maneuvering. In addition, he also seems to have finally drawn a worthy challenger in the autumn election. While names like Luka Mesec and Urška Klakočar Zupančič are being tested and retested as potential candidates, the one name that probably really rattled the mayor’s cage is former PM Tone Rop.

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UPDATE: Although as many as 94% of all votes cast were against the parking ordnance, the referendum bid failed as it did not pass the 20% turnout threshold. In the end, only about 18% of eligible Ljubljanchans cast their vote. Whatever lessons could be gleaned from this, pengovsky is sure they will not be.

Beating someone with someone else

This blogger often repeats the mantra that you cannot beat somebody with a nobody. Zoran Janković and his undisputed twenty-year rule is a textbook example. He won in a landslide in 2006 and drew no serious challengers since. OK, so the SDS tried once or twice even they gave up soon, leaving it to the likes of Miha Jazbinšek to do the challenging.

Not this time.

OK, so the SDS still can’t come up with a decent challenger. In all likelihood, they will nominate someone, or risk having to support either Aleš Primc or Mihael Jarc. Both these charaters are different shades of Catholic fundamentalism. Specifically, the former is an anti-choice and anti-LGBTQI activist while the latter cut his teeth opposing the construction of Ljubljana’s only mosque back in the day. Barring a disaster of epic proportions, neither of these twats stands a chance.

Rather, in a suggestion that nature might indeed be healing, the challenge to mayor Janković comes from the liberal/left side of the spectrum. Specifically, about a month and a half ago, former PM Tone Rop emerged as a contender and for the first time in two decades Zoran Janković seems to have an actual fight on his hands.

Who the fuck is Tone Rop?

Pengovsky needs to point out that to date, no-one but Janković officially declared an election bid. So if Rop officially jumps into the fray, there will be ample time talk about him.

For now, suffice it to say that his top billing nationall is, of course, former PM and the guy who oversaw Slovenian accession to EU and NATO. He is also the guy who lost to Janša in 2004, which precipitated the splintering of once-mighty LDS, and ended up in SD, so there’s that.

Internationally, he peaked as VP at European Investment Bank and kept sort of a low profile since, until his bid for governorship of Bank of Slovenia, which went up in flames (his bid, not the bank) due to petty differences between president Pirc Musar and PM Golob.

But most importantly, if Tone Rop were to really challenge Zoran Janković, it would be fucking hilarious. Not in the least because of an exchange 25 years ago, when Rop was caught on a hot mic telling Zoki off, that he was appointed as CEO of Mercator only because he (Rop) made it happen.

It would be glorious.

A crowded field on the left

That said, Tone Rop is not alone in this enterprise and apparently his group of political malcontents also includes former Speaker Urška Klakočar Zupančič and former MP and TV journalist Mojca Šetinc Pašek, as well as former SD secretary general Uroš Jauševec. And if reports are to be believed, UKZ is also in play for a mayoral race, apparently because she polls better. But while name recognition is important, she seems much better suited for an office that is more glamorous and less nitty-gritty. Such as president of the republic.

But pengovsky digresses. Point is that there are serious bids mulled on the left. One such potential candidate is also Levica co-coordinator Luka Mesec.

Failing some disaster befalling Janković, Mesec doesn’t really stand a chance against incumbent mayor. But seeing as mayoral debates are the only televised debates in local elections, a good performance by Mesec could raise the number of Levica councilors. This, in turn, would make the party a force to be reckoned with in the city, not just a one-person nuisance for Janković’s voting steamroller.

While these bids were likely mulled for a while now, they were given new impetus after the parking ordnance clusterfuck.

*the* parking ordnance

In short, the city wanted to handle an ever-growing problem of non-residents parking in residential areas by installing parking meters and enforcing parking fees everywhere, including in parking spaces that are effectively functional land of apartment blocks. (cf. last post about Miha Jazbinšek).

While this approach does have some merit and has shown good results in other neighbourhoods, Janković went about it with all the nuance of a runaway bulldozer. As per usual.

Only this time he rubbed that particular part of Ljubljana (an area called Štepanjsko naselje) wrong in so many ways that the residents decided to give Janković a piece of their mind. Reader, it did not go well.

Zoran Janković relishes conflict. But this time the citizens’ initiative from Štepanjsko naselje soon ballooned into a city-wide effort, under the campaign slogan of “Our parking spaces”. And a s problematic as this slogan is, it is very effective.

Status quo ante parkingum

You see, parking spaces are not “ours” per se, as there are not nearly enough of them for all residents of most Ljubljana neighbourhoods. And in areas where parking metres were installed, freeloading daytime parking by non-residents has all but ceased. Ultimately, what proponents of the referendum aim for is a prolongation of the current regime, where some people have solved their parking problem on common land, whereas everyone else can go fuck themselves.

But in an average Muddy Hollows mentality very few things are allowed to come between Slovenians and their car and a city mayor definitely is not one of them.

By the time Zoran Janković realised he bit off more than he could chew, the Our Parking Spaces campaign had already collected enought signatures to force a referendum. At that stage Jaković did a panic and had the city council rescind the ordnance. It is better to kill a parking measure than to be knifed at the ballot box four months before the election.

Of metres and mercurial mayors

But in a classic case of the cover up being worse than the crime, the legality of the cancellation is dubious and the campaign pressed on with the referendum bid. Because at this point his is no longer about a parking meters under people’s windows but about a mercurial mayor who does whatever and whenever the fuck he pleases.

There was serious polling of this referendum bid, at least none pengovsky is aware of. But it makes sense to think that this is the sort of issue that primarily motivates people unhappy with Zoran Janković. Which is why his main approach was to draw as little attention to the issue as possible and hope that the referendum does not reach the necessary quorum. This way the inevitable rejection on the parking ordnance would be null and void, and he would technically remain undefeated.

But we all know how this approach turned out the last time around.

There Jazbinšek seemingly felt most at home with his particular breed of obstinate progressive liberalism. And if that sounds like a contradiction in terms, congratulations, you’ve just met Jazzby. He drove successive mayors including Zoran Janković up the wall with his relentless debates, pointed criticism and – at least once – disagreeing with what he said minutes ago and asking for procedural time to rebut his own debate.

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The law bearing his name

Miha Jazbinšek entered Muddy Hollows lore by ways of a massive housing overhaul which became known as the Jazbinšek Law. What it basically did was to distribute the existing public housing fund among the people, based on a relatively complex system of points, weights and discounts.

You see, in the old country, most housing was public. The municipality would approve a project by a quasi-public developer, with seed money coming from employees’ mutual funds. Like pensions and health insurance, everyone was required to put away a tiny portion of their paycheck into such funds.

Most of the money, however, was provided by various companies, who also ran their own housing funds. And when all of this money was pooled, entire neighbourhoods were built in a relatively short amount of time, mostly between 1970 and 1985.

Seeing as most property was public back then, people didn’t outright own the apartment. But they did have dwelling/apartment rights and through that they could use public apartments as if they owned them. Up to and including passing them on as inheritance. But – to use a market economy term – they could not leverage them as an asset.

This new thing called capitalism

Jazbinšek Law changed all that. At its core, it was a massive redistribution of wealth. And a massively successful one at that. In one fell swoop, the legislation created an economic and financial foundation for an entire generation of Slovenians. Not unlike vouchers in privatising the public-owned companies, only unlike with the stocks, the people did not, for the most part, unload their newfound property for peanuts. 

But understanding capitalism only went so far. In fact, the moment people got their ownership papers, most of them lost any interest in, you know, managing their assets. And with people pengovsky also means politicians.

Originally, Jazbinšek Law was meant to be only the first step in disbursing among the people what in the old country was theoretically of the people (in a very socialist amorphous sense of the word). This was to be followed by divvying up of the functional land surrounding the newly privatised housing as well as replenishing of the housing stock, now via state and municipal housing funds.

Not following through

While some efforts were made in that direction, they were not on the scale of the original law. And as focus of national politics shifted towards bigger issues (ahem, EU and NATO), the little details didn’t matter as much anymore.

Needless to say that thirty years later, a national housing shortage in Muddy Hollows is as bad as anywhere in Europe. With prices to match. Even more ironically, a clunky attempt by Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković to sort-of-solve a city-wide parking clusterfuck, which is a direct result of lack of follow-up on Jazbinšek legislation, threatens to bring down Zoki’s 20-year tenure as mayor.

Incidentally, if this were actually come to pass (more on that in a future post), this would be Jazzby running interference against Janković even from beyond the grave. Which would be fucking hilarious.

You see, Miha Jazbinšek and Zoran Janković never really got along. Jazzby saw himself as occupying a cross-section between urbanism, sociology and nature protection. In a way, he was years, if not decades, before his time. One could go through his website and find policy nuggets and ideas from late nineties and early naughts that sound suspiciously like EU’s Green New Deal.

Always the Lone ranger

But for someone whose primary field of activity was politics, he was woefully inept at building coalitions. He just could not understand that being right was never enough and that sometimes people will agree with him and still vote to defy him. More precisely, he understood this, but he never saw it as an obstacle to work around. To him, it was merely proof of other people’s ineptitude.

This was also his take on the fact that the Green movement in Muddy Hollows split early in the nineties. Despite the fact that he was by far the most prominent member of the OG Green Party in Slovenia, back then somehow the provincial right-wing element took control of the outfit and made it a family heirloom. All Jazbinšek got out of this was the ability to run on the party ticket if he wanted to and keep his operational an political independence.

As a result, he was often the lone voice of what he saw as rational dissent in the Ljubljana City Council. And not infrequently, rational would be doing a lot of heavy lifting in those debates. These were legendary. In fact, Jazzby and another one-man-band in City Council, Mihael Jarc (a crusader from the opposite side of the political spectrum and proof that no-good people live longer) were the primary reasons mayor Janković had no problem finding the necessary two-thirds majority to change the rules and limit debate time, soon after he took office.

Old habits die hard

After that, Miha Jazbinšek’s influence and ability to gum up the works were considerably weakened. As a direct consequence, he would transfer the bulk of his screeds to press releases. These, he sent out with the conviction of a 20-something die-hard activist rather than a seasoned politician who has been around the block a couple of times.

But in a proof that old habits die hard, Jazbinšek (born in 1941, just a few months after Nazi Germany invaded and subjugated then-kingdom of Yugoslavia) remained convinced that paper is a rare commodity, even in the digital age. To wit, he regularly sent out Word documents with margins extended all the way into the bleeding edge of the page, often making them impossible to print out. Because you know, we gotta conserve paper.

He also insisted that every document he sent out would include his personal signature. As if the the reader (mostly journalists and other people paid to read these things) could ever confuse his generalist style of prose, interspersed with random focuses (foci?) onto very granular and often helpful detail, with anyone else’s writings. But everyone who had to, read those things. Because sometimes, just sometimes, there would be a nugget in there that could make a newsroom’s week in an instant.

Jazzby

The one thing that Miha Jazbinšek took great pride in, other than driving mayor Janković and his predecessor Danica Simšič up against the wall, was music. He would perform at regular (albeit rare) intervals with his band, Miha Jazbinšek and His Legends.

To a certain part of the public, his musical exploits in the jazz-swing genre were much better known than his political achievements. It was also the arena where he earned a nickname that would follow him into politics. Jazbinšek might have been a bit weird and often went against the grain intentionally, but he never lacked recognition. Being affectionately known as Jazzby made sure of that.

As fates would have it, Miha Jazbinšek passed on 25 June, the birthday of the country the future of which he has affected profoundly. Even if his area was not flashy statecraft and flag-waving. And yet, thirty-odd years after his foray into national politics, we are seeing that issues he argued for passionately, if sometimes brusquely, are now seen as key issues of resilience and sovereignty.

Like swing, these things apparently never really go out of fashion.

There are two or three referendums lined up. A potential violation of international law. An SDS MEP being kicked out of EPP. Resnica playing even bigger dumm-dumms than they are. And interesting developments in Ljubljana mayoral race. But first, read below or click here for parts one, two and three.

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Polona Rifelj, minister of environment, spatial planning and getting blamed when shit goes wrong

An eminently political appointee, Polona Rifelj could easily have popped up in any other role in Janša’s fourth government. She no specialised knowledge that would qualify her for this portfolio, nor is she a standout Party cadre who would spend years obediently pressing every button the Glorious Leader needed pressed in parliament (see Lep Šimenko, Suzana).

What Polona Rifelj did have going for her is the position of state secretary at the ministry of economy during the Covid-19 era Janša 3.0 government. So, she has some executive experience, which will definitely come handy.

She is also the bosslady of SDS Celje branch which is awfully close to Middleof Fuckingnowhere, Velenje, where the Glorious Leader sleeps nowadays. Admittedly, she does not have the high honour of counting the Marshal among the due-paying members of her particular outfit (that being the SDS Velenje branch) but she is geographically closer to him than any other member of this cabinet.

That said, environment and spatial planning is not exactly a coveted post. Precious few political careers have been made at this ministry but many have been tarnished beyond repair (see Jazbinšek, Miha; obit pending in the next couple of days).

Because when things will go sideways on the second nuclear powerplant in Krško or when additional highway lanes will refuse to materialise out of thin air, you can be sure that infrastructure minister Jernej Vrtovec will be looking for scapegoats fare and wide, with Polona Rifelj being prime candidate.

Mihael Zupančič, minister of justice and swallowing hard

Ah, yes, another portfolio where Demokrati have likely bitten off more than they will be able to chew. Mihael Zupančič had an nice little career going for him in the Muddy Hollows diplomatic service and with a law degree from Sorbonne, he was sure to go places.

Alas, one of those places seems to be the ministry of justice. This is one of handful of portfolios Glorious Leader will be paying special attention to. Which is understandable, given all his rants about the justice system and whatnot.

Thus even though the fight against corruption was very much at the top of Demokrati and Anže Logar agenda, Mihael Zupančič will get his marching orders from Janša and his personal lawyer, who just happens to be minister of the interior. He will simply be expected to swallow hard and get on with it.

For Anže Logar, this will be one more point of political and personal humiliation. But for Zupančič, this will be an object lesson that decades in the civil service, watching politicians trip over themselves, do not automatically prepare you to be a better politician.

Suzana Lep Šimenko, minister for diaspora and getting out of the way

What exactly did Suzana Lep Šimenko do to deserve this plum posting, pengovsky knows not. Being appointed minister without portfoilo in charge of relations with Slovenians abroad is probably the best job in this or any Slovenian government.

You show up to work, check your email, maybe even answer a couple of them and then spend the rest of the day looking for excuses to visit countries that have at least a handful of Slovenians living there. Double points if said Slovenians can form a folklore group or at least play an accordion. And in a show of great political force and clout, minister for diaspora even gets to disburse a couple of million euros to various Muddy Hollows-related cultural projects around the world.

Suzana Lep Šimenko has been a staple of SDS national cast since her 2014 parliamentary debut. As is the custom, she was a loyal and unwavering Party cadre. But she wasn’t really an outstanding performer either. This being her fourth straight term, maybe she unlocked the “become a cabinet minister” achievement.

Or maybe the reason for Lep Šimenko’s skyrocketing political career isn’t her great political acumen but rather the guy who came in after her. Namely, by making the ministerial posting, she had to relinquish her MP seat. You know, the little detail about separation of powers and such.

Thus appointing Suzana Lep Šimenko as minister primarily cleared the way for Luka Simonič, president of the SDS youth organisation to enter the parliament. And at a time when the SDS won as much as a quarter of their vote in the under-45 demographic it just seems good politics to have Party Komsomol chief inside the parliament.

Zoran Stevanović and Katja Kokot, parliamentary bully and his posse

When Janša sent out calls for “development partnership”, offering opposition parties early access to drafting legislation in exchange for good behaviour, GS, SD and Levica told him to go fuck himself and the horse he rode in on.

Resnica, on the other hand, realised that by taking the Glorious Leader up on his offer they could no longer pretend to be an opposition party. Even though they are very much a part of the coalition. Moreover, Speaker Zoran Stevanović and Resnica parliamentary group leader Katja Kokot have absolutely no need for such an agreement.

Firstly, their supply and confidence agreement with Janša ensure they have the Marshal’s ear whenever they need it (or else their five votes could go >>poof!<<). And secondly, in the few months since the inauguration of this parliaments, Resnica filed more batshit crazy legislation than most parties in this decade, combined.

In fact, it in increasingly obvious that the role of Resnica is to be the psychotic bully in the school cafeteria, slamming down random people’s lunch trays and daring them to punch back.

But apparently they forgot that sometimes those to fight back are the ones you least expect.

But before we get there, we’ve still got at least two installments of the series to speed-run through. For this part in the series, pengovsky promised Franci Matoz and a couple of randos, but is it actually a bit heftier than that. So, let’ get going.

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Ignacija Fridl Jarc, minister of culture (wars)

Like Tadej Ostrc for health and Andrej Šircelj for finance, Ignacija Fridl Jarc is a good fit for the ministry of culture. Not necessarily in terms of policies she will pursue, but in terms her actually being familiar with the field. By this measure, she is by an order of magnitude more qualified for her post than – to give an example at random – Anže Logar is for his.

Fridl Jarc has a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy and is an established researcher and author in the field. She also has distinctly conservative outlook on the role and function of culture in the society. Which, OK. One doesn’t need to be ideologically aligned to be competent.

But more importantly, she was also state secretary at ministry of culture during Janša 3.0. Meaning that she also knows the apparatus. Does that make her an adult in the room, along the lines of Šircelj and Kajzer? Not necessarily. But also not necessarily through any fault of hers.

During her parliamentary hearing, Fridl Jarc casually dropped that the law on RTV Slovenia will be on the chopping block and redone. This, of course, is the key tenet of the far-right element of this coalition. Abolish the RTV contribution (think BBC fee) and fund the whole thing directly from the budget. This, of course, would either make RTV SLO a classic state media, or a sitting duck for defunding drives whenever Branko Grims MEP (so give an example at random) saw a news item he didn’t like.

Theatre, dance, architecture and all the other forms of art are also super important and there are scores of people itching to hold Fridl Jarc’s feet to fire over them. But the main question is whether she will stand up to the radicals in her coalition and defend the public media. Or whether she will eagerly carry water for them.

Pengovsky is not holding his breath.

Monika Kirbiš Rojs, minister for cohesion funds, local self-government and Marko Lotrič’s ego

One of the problems with the political cesspool in Muddy Hollows is that sometimes people make it who have no business making it. Yes, Resnica and Zoran Stevanović, but also, in somewhat different fashion, president of National Council Marko Lotrič.

This dude has a long and distinguished entrepreneurial career and as he grew old and (presumably) bored, he wanted to play politics a bit, too. And so he ended up as the boss of the institutional monstrosity that is the National Council. There, he needed someone who actually knew how this stuff works. Enter Monika Kirbiš Rojs. She went on to become both the all-powerful secretary general of the Council and Marko Lotrič’s handler.

The dynamic duo was instrumental in forming Fokus Marka Lotriča party, the aptly named FML. Together with SLS they formed the ++ part of NSi++. And since it apparently helps in this coalition to have a male president, FML got a ministerial posting and SLS didn’t.

Thankfully, Lotrič realised early on that the president of the National Council is way higher on the official food chain than a mere minister. That, and the workload is much lighter. So he arranged within the NSi++ mini coalition that his right hand got the job she is intimately familiar with.

Because other than handling Marko Lotrič, Kirbiš Rojs is also very familiar with how EU funding and cohesion funds work. Which makes her a natural and – given the talent pool the Glorious Leader is working with – an obvious choice for the post. But EU funds and cohesion policy is not exactly a top-tier portfolio and she will be under constant pressure to deliver whatever minister for EU funds and cohesion policy has to deliver. Possibly, her biggest critics will not even be in the opposition (although that, too) but in SLS, the NSi++ party which was left out in the cold when it came to job dispersal.

Mateja Ribič, minister of demography, family, social affairs and flying under the radar

pengovsky was absolutely no fucking idea where she came from, what her qualifications are or how is she related to the field. Apparently she was state secretary to Janez Ciger Kralj at the ministry during Janša 3.0. But no-one really noticed because pandemic and because state secretary Cveto Uršič was the main policy maker back then.

Aparently, Ribič and Cigler Kralj go way back, but other than that, I’ve got nothing. Sorry.

Franci Matoz, consigliere to PM minister of internal affairs and public administration

So, let’s get this out the way immediately. No matter how qualified Franci Matoz (thinks he) might be to run not one, but two portfolios that are fucking huge, the fact that he was, (is?) and presumably will be Janez Janša’s personal lawyer, stinks to high heaven.

This is quite literally on the level of The Orange Menace appointing Todd Blanche as Attorney General. The difference being that Trump failed in doing so whereas Matoz’s nomination was approved swimmingly.

The conflict of interest here simply beggars belief. Sure the National Investigation Bureau and the police in general are technically independent. But are they really? They can be, if the people running them can assert their independence and if the minister heading the portfolio has their back. (See Bobnar, Tanja, and Golob, Robert).

But what if the minister of the interior is not only a Party man, loyal to the Glorious Leader, but also his consigliere personal lawyer, whose main professional activity was getting his boss out of legal tight spots for the better part of the last fifteen years?

Nice career you have there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.

The audacity of Matoz’s appointment is so huge that it almost hides two other important developments that came with it.

First, that Franc Kangler of Maribor is back from the dead to server as state secretary to interior minister Matoz. Just for funsies, go read that last sentence again, aloud. Se what happens. And as if this sort of zombie politics is not enough, Marshal Twito also merged the ministry for public administration into the ministry of interior. This effectively deprived the administrative backbone of the state of an independent and top-level seat at the table and rolled back the clock almost twenty years.

Ironically, the portfolio was established in 2004, under the government of … checks notes … Janez Janša. But it seems that the Glorious Leader has come to realise that an independent(-ish) public administration is more of an obstacle to his grand designs than anything else. Which is why he killed it once before, in 2012. But Miro Cerar revived it in 2014 and now Janša is counting on Matoz to do the job properly.

Which Matoz may well do. Unless he is hauled off by the fashion police before that. Because my dude, we need to talk about this backpack. It’s giving cringe Russian tourist.

Next up: more randos and the Truthers supporting act. Stay tuned.

This is also why prime minister Janez Janša trampled on long-established rule of PM and Prez alternating in delivering these things. Instead, he insisted that they both address the nation. Because that’s just how he rolls. Rules for thee, but not for me. Naturally, the far right element had a lot to say about freedom of expression last night. You know, decorum is for pussies, because fuck your feelings. Needless to say they go apeshit if/when situation is reversed. But through all of this, members of Janša’s cabinet politely clapped their hands. So, let’s go and meet some more of them. (And click here for part 1 of the series.)

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Janez Cigler Kralj, minister of agriculture, forestry and livestock demography

If Anže Logar landed the worst gig in this iteration of Janša government, Janez Cigler Kralj got stuck with a close second. Sure, minister of agriculture sits on a shitload of cash, but he is also continuously just one badly worded act on glyphosate away from the farmers staging a full blown sit-in, but with motor-cultivators.

OK, so farmers in Muddy Hollows don’t protest the way their French brothers in tractors do. Not yet, anyway. But being on the business end of an angry group of people who tend to be handy with a pitchfork is not a pleasant experience under any circumstances.

Doubly so when the Farmers’ Chamber (the preeminent pressure group for this demographic) is now an SDS-controlled outfit. This means that Cigler Kralj will be getting his marching orders from his SDS government boss and will be closely monitored by the SDS-affiliated pressure group. A group which still maintains compulsory membership, mind you (put a pin into that one).

On top of that, Cigler Kralj’s party boss and erstwhile rival for the top NSi position, Jernej Vrtovec will be expecting a lot of that pile of cash to be diverted to NSi-friendly projects. Which is a great way to make sure that the minister of agriculture will never be quite at ease in his seat.

All Janez Cigler Kralj wanted was to be the minister of demography (which is the new right-wing-virtue-signalling-speak for ministry of social affairs). Actually, he really wanted to be Speaker, but when that didn’t pan out he was getting ready to return to his old stomping ground of labour, family, social affairs and equality. Minus labour, which was kicked over to Logar’s portfolio, and minus equality, because this is a right-wing government, after all.

Instead, he got dumped at the produce section of the political supermarket, There, he waits to be rammed continuously by his party boss, his actual boss, and the people who have a very specific idea about how he should be doing his job.

And he still owes pengovsky a beer.

Tadej Ostrc, minister of health and dumpster fires

One wonders how long Tadej Ostrc will last as minister of health. Statistics are definitely not on his side. Over the last decade, the turnover at this post rivals that of 10 Downing Street. Sure, the British PM has a slightly larger field of responsibility, but the dumpster fire that is the Slovenian health system could give the dysfunctionality of post-Brexit Britain a run for its money.

Then again, Ostrc, a founding member of Logar’s Demokrati, was state secretary to Danijel Bešič Loredan, Robert Golob’s first minister of health. As such, he does have some on-hand experience required for this job. And with background and PhD in medicine, as well as an MA in political science, he seems a perfect fit for the position. Maybe a little too perfect.

With Ostrc, it’s not the qualifications that are the problem. It’s the fact that he – unintentionally – proved that he can be a good replacement for Anže Logar. In fact, unlike Logar, Ostrc was actually elected to parliament. True, this was mostly due to Logar’s ineptitude at picking safe precincts, but still. The sheer fact that the health minister did well for a political noob is probably giving the minister of economy and labour heartburn. Doubly so when one considers that Ostrc got the portfolio he wanted, and Logar didn’t.

Then again, the Glorious Leader is probably not playing favourites here. I mean, both Demokrati ministers got shitty portfolios and likely won’t make a lot of friends in the next couple of years. The only difference is that Ostrc wanted that particular dumpster fire and Logar was manhandled into his. In the world of fragile egos that is the Muddy Hollows political cesspool, this could be enough for Logar to start being threatened by the mild-mannered dental technocrat.

Borut Rončević, minister of education, science, youth and creationism

At first glance, Borut Rončević has similar qualifications for a Cabinet position as Ostrc does. He is a full professor of sociology (albeit at one of the alternative universities), has done actual research in the field and has served as state secretary in a previous government.

Then again, primary and secondary education was never his remit. And as anyone with at least a passing experience in the field will tell you, higher education (ostensibly Rončević’s comfort zone) is a completely different beast than primary and secondary school.

Interestingly, the newly minted minister is aware of this and yet somehow thinks of it as an advantage. He says he will overcome his lack of expertise by enlisting the help of actual experts. Which, fair, assuming it happens at all, seeing as he still has to nominate his state secretaries. But to think of your learning on the job as a flex? To put in the words of Governor Walz, that’s just weird.

But Rončević’s self-indictment about lack of expertise wasn’t the money quote from his parliamentary hearing. That dubious honour went to the sentence about how Muddy Hollows needs “ideologically neutral education”. Which everyone immediately recognised as a barely disguised conservative dog whistle.

Because this is not just about the usual stuff about Nazi collaborators being really just misunderstood good guys, which usually sends the Slovenian leftist to the barricades. No, this is about barring LGBT-related education, allowing climate change denial, Catholic religious education and – the ultimate prize – bringing creationism into the curriculum as “one of the theories”.

And if you think pengovsky is being alarmist, consider the following: over the last couple of years, SDS and NSi actively tried to do outdo one another in decrying “LGBT ideology in out schools”. There are scores of right-wing politicians who based their entire campaigns on anti-LGBT prejudice and overt homophobia (see Cigler Kralj, Janez). The other thing these types hate with passion is any form of green transition (see Grims, Branko, et al.).

Additionally, from what pengovsky hears, Church is once again getting increasingly bold in demanding a role in state education. At least, that’s the scuttlebutt coming in this blogger’s direction. Granted, not every parish and every priest are the same and sometimes what is being said depends on the occasion and the public, but the drive is there.

But perhaps most importantly, it was Rončević himself who mentioned inserting creationism in the curriculum during his hearing. He sugarcoated it with “taking scientific findings into account” and whatnot, but if there ever was a slippery slope, this is it. Once the verbiage is there it is only a question of time and enough pressure (say, from the Church, see above) to rephrase things.

And if you’re still unconvinced, the first time this was attempted (and retracted amid public outcry) was during the second Janša government, when the state secretary for education was … checks notes … Borut Rončević. Just sayin’…

Valentin Hajdinjak, minister for defence and creative math

Like Jernej Vrtovec and Janez Cigler Kralj, Valentin Hajdinjak is an NSi party man through and through. But unlike those two specimens, there seems to be a bit of an independent streak to the newly appointed minister of defence.

Being slightly older than his fellow NSi honchos, he’s been around the block a couple of times in various Janša outfits. He was chief spokesperson to the Glorious Leader in Janša 1.0, and chief of staff to then-minister of defence in Janša 2.0. In both cases it ended with Hajdinjak exiting national politics.

But time heals all wounds, apparently. Even though he skipped Janša 3.0, Hajdinjak is now back at his old stomping ground, the ministry of defence. But his freedom of action will be limited, not in the least because Marshal Twito will take great interest in the portfolio that is considered ground zero of his mainstream political career.

Hajdinjak will also be the point man for explaining why exactly Muddy Hollows still hasn’t met the original NATO defence spending target of 2% GDP, let alone any of the higher numbers that the guy who surrendered to Iran and served as an Eli Lily test subject occasionally floats.

But as ridiculous as they may sound (and given that war in Ukraine rages unabated, these defence spending targets are not that ridiculous), it is Hajdinjak’s ass on the line if the Glorious Leader needs someone to blame them for not reaching them. And odds are that even after all the creative mathematics about dual use that will inevitably be deployed, the Glorious Leader will need someone to blame, because numbers will not be reached.

The minister of defence seems to realise tha. Because while he is a team player, he did star out by poking Janša in the eye at least a bit, by nominating long-time NSi MP and workhorse Vida Čadonič Špelič as one of his state secretaries.

Now, what exactly Čadonič Špelič, a veterinarian by profession, brings to the table, is not entirely clear. What is clear, however, is that for one reason or another, Janša is deeply suspicious of her. Which, is probably precisely the reason Hajdinjak wanted her on his team.

Just to send a message to the PM that he, too, can forgive but not forget.

Next up, a couple of randos and Franci Matoz, Marshal Twito’s personal consigliere lawyer.

But before we deal with all of that – or at least parallel to that – pengovsky feels it is important to get to know the people pretending to call the shots in version 4.0 of the Janša administration. Because obviously nothing will be done without the micromanager-in-chief’s say-so.

Pengovsky still writes this blog for free. Less frequently than he would like, but still. Sometimes, this boils down to the amount of coffee available. So, if you dig what you read here, feel free to buy pengovsky a coffee. Maybe he’ll post more frequently as a result.

Originally, this was meant to be a single post. But by the time pengovsky got to the fifth person on the list, the whole thing was already turning into a monster of a text. And it will get even longer as it will be necessary to take at least a perfunctory glance at some people who are technically not in the government or in the coalition. I’m looking at you, Katja Kokot. But we’ll get there. For now, let’s start with the Big Kahuna.

Janez Janša, the homeopathic prime minister

The man. The legend. The most prolific Twitter user this side of the Potomac and the last of the Leninists west of the Volga. He built his coalition more or less in secret, skillfully guiding Anže Logar and Jernej Vrtovec into a position where they thought they had no other option. Admittedly, Vrtovec didn’t need much guidance on that point (see below).

That said, this is the weakest of the four governments Marshal Twito formed over the last twenty-six years (for dramatic reasons, pengovsky is including the short-lived Bajuk government in 2000, which would not have happened but for Janša twisting many an SLS arm back then).

With 43 votes, the Glorious Leader is entirely dependent on the confidence-and-supply agreement with Resnica. And that is already bearing poison fruits. But maybe some of the anti-science mambo-jumbo the smallest parliamentary party keeps peddling rubbed off on Janša as well and he now thinks that the smaller his vote count the stronger his coalition will get. Call it political homeopathy.

Jernej Vrtovec, minister of infrastructure and SDS VP for NSi

Pengovsky wrote time and time again that Jernej Vrtovec as the party’s big cheese meant that NSi will return into a close orbit around the black cube hole that is the SDS. The move has paid off bigly for Vrtovec personally, as he is one of only two members of Janša 4.0 who got the same job he held in Janša 3.0.

Then there’s the little detail that Vrtovec is a subject of not one, but two criminal investigations, both of which seem to have gotten legs over the past year or so. On one hand, he is being charged with abuse of power as member of intelligence services oversight committee in the previous parliament. And on the other he is on the hook for campaign finance violations. It will come as a surprise to a grand total of zero people if either/both these charges are quietly dropped in the coming months.

And as a bonus, Vrtovec also saddled Janez Cigler Kralj, his opponent in the battle for party leadership last year, with a portfolio where things tend to get fucktangular on a regular basis (see below). And he got all of that for the low, low price of killing off his party’s independence.

Anže Logar, minister of economy, labour and pissed-off constituents

When Demokrati ended up in Janša’s latest government, a lot of people on the liberal-left (and even some on the right) took a big sip from the we-told-you-so cup. But their gloating remains unfounded.

Following his personal electoral fumble of, well, not getting elected, Anže Logar was determined to not negotiate with Robert Golob from a position of weakness. In the process, he talked himself into a position of even bigger weakness, with a guy who can really hold a grudge. And even though the Glorious Leader needs the Ambitious One to maintain something resembling a functional coalition, he did not forget the betrayal.

And so he saddled Logar with the worst job in Janša 4.0 government, making him the minister of economy and labour. As such, Logar will be yelled at by the businesses that supported his political (ad)venture and will want things in return. But he will also be screamed at by the labour unions whom he managed to piss off royally, twice, even before he got to see his new office.

In short, Anže Logar will the the one-man-forum for the entirety of social dialogue in Muddy Hollows for the next year and a half, or however long this government will actually hold together. And then there are the livid centre-right voters (all four of them), who voted for Logar under the assumption that he will be the pro-business check on Golob’s left-wing escapades, but got a Janša enabler instead.

If it were anyone else, pengovsky would almost feel sorry for them. But seeing as all of this is the direct result of Logar’s hubris, arrogance and inability to read the room, the only possible conclusion is that the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.

Andrej Šircelj, finance minister and the adult in the room

The main quality of Andrej Šircelj is that he understands numbers and budgets and knows that household and state finances are two very different beasts. Which is why he wasn’t all that giddy when the parliament passed the omnibus intervention bill that threatens to blow a billion-euro hole in in a 15-billion budget, with a built-in two-billion deficit. He added that a VAT reduction on staple foods will result in higher profits for retailers and not in lower prices for consumers.

This was a poke in the eye for Anže Logar especially, since the Demokrati leader marketed this provision of the omnibus law as a real social equaliser. Then again, Anže Logar was getting roundly, um, poked about then (see above), so it is possible he didn’t really notice one more hit on his dignity.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king. And so Andrej Šircelj as finance minister is an oddly comforting fact. He is also the only other person to land the same portfolio he held in Janša 3.0. But make no mistake, he is not some maverick fin-wiz prodigy that was plucked from a board of a prestigious-if-shady international financial institution and brought home to revitalize the state finances.

Šircelj is a fully paid-up member of the Party who understands the pecking order and respects his position in it. And when he diverts too far from the party line, he, too, must make amends. Which is is why he spent most of the last two weeks walking back a statement he made upon taking office, that the general rate of VAT might have to be raised to balance the budget. That, it seems, is a bridge too far even for the only true remaining heir of socialism in Muddy Hollows.

Tone Kajzer, minister for foreign, European and Netanyahu affairs

Once it became clear that Anže Logar will not be landing the sweet, sweet gig of foreign minister (the way he tells it is that he didn’t want it because it would distract him from running the party, lol), Tone Kajzer was the most obvious choice.

As a career diplomat, Kajzer is probably a safe pair of hands at the helm (if not necessary the command chair) of Slovenian foriegn policy. Expect official Ljubljana to remain staunchly pro-Ukraine (if anything, this position will now harden even further), very much pro-European and in favour of Western Balkans accession to the EU.

That said, the flavour of these policies will definitely change and Kajzer will be the point man to handle it all. Which is where it might get tricky. In Brussels, Slovenia will probably shift to “green transition is evil and attached bottle-caps are woke” camp. It will also rediscover an affinity for populists and autocrats of the region, with the notable exception of one Vladimir P. (Putin, not Prebilič). On the other hand, Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia and Milorad Dodik of Wannabe Serbia are probably giddy with excitement at the possibilities of yet another Janša government.

The one person that might rain on this populist-autocrat parade is the EU commissioner for enlargement Marta Kos. Vučić loathes her with passion (a liberal and a woman? Eww!) and Janša simply cannot stand a senior apointee that he hasn’t appointed. So there is some scuttlebutt that the EPP is looking to lean on Ursula von der Leyen to cashier Marta Kos.

But since that would probably trigger a wider commission reshuffle, it is also unlikely Slovenia would keep the enlargement portfolio, even though it wanted it badly, across several administrations. Which would be a classic Janša move: cut one’s dick off to spite one’s crotch, or however the phrase goes…

Apart from being a career diplomat, Kajzer is also a card carrying Party man. Which means that if stuck between a rock and a Janša place, he will inevitably choose the latter. Four years ago, he got himself in quite the mess when – while serving as Slovenian ambassador to the US – he took a picture of a secret diplomatic cable with his phone and sent the picture to Janša who then posted it online, inadvertently exposing his source. As a result, Kajzer was terminated as ambassador for breach of security protocols.

But loyalty is hard currency within the SDS and sticking with Marshal Twito even though it was his shitty OPSEC that got Kajzer in the mess in the first place, he now gets to continue the tradition of former Slovenian ambassadors to D.C. being promoted to foreign minister.

In all likelihood, this will also mean carrying water for Benjamin Netanyahu in Brussels. With the Roundlegged Tartar finally ousted from his office in Budapest, Bibi will need a new man in Brussels to carry water for him. More often than not, the actual task will fall to Kajzer, with Janša taking the credit in Tel Aviv. Or just repaying the debt, depending on how you look at it.

Pengovsky is sure Kajzer will do whatever the Party and its Glorious Leader need him to do. But he probably wouldn’t mind if democracy had its way with Bibi, either.

Next up, Janez Cigler Kralj, Valentin Hajdinjak and a few others. Watch this space.

However, Glorious Leader updating his Twitter bio was only part of the task. A big part, to be sure, but this is one of those nothing-is-done-until-everything-is-done type of things. And since there is no Janša government without people for Janša to, well, govern, the grand finale started on Monday, with would-be ministers testifying in front of various parliamentary committees. Barring any mayor fuck-ups Slovenia will have Marshal Twito’s fourth government by tomorrow evening.

[…record scratch…] Yup, this is us. You’re probably wondering how we ended up in this situation… Well, this is what pengovsky.com is all about. Eventually, you may still have to figure it out by yourselves, but at least this here blog will make the experience more fun. Especially if you find it in your heart and/or kidneys to support pengovsky and buy him a coffee every once in a while.

Pengovsky had things to see and people to do over the last two weeks. So apologies are in order, to both readers who spent countless hours clicking the refresh button and trying to figure out why there’s no new content. Well, this changes now. And seeing as we have a lot of ground to cover, let’s start with what the parliamentary hearings have taught us thus far.

Adults in the room

Firstly, and this will come as a surprise to the grand total of zero people, Janša 4.0 is a cabinet chock-full of loyalists. And when pengovsky says loyalists, he doesn’t mean just dyed-in-the-wool SDS cadre. Ironically, some of the most eager boot-lickers and anal climbers in this government are not even Party members. But don’t expect the select few grown-up to put up much of a fight, even if the circumstances warrant it.

Basically, the 15-member cabinet can be divided into three categories: adults in the room, dependents and true believers.

In terms of actual grown-ups, Andrej Šircelj (finance), Tone Kajzer (foreign affairs) and Valentin Hajdinjak (defence) come to mind. Especially Šircelj overseeing state coffers is an oddly comforting thought.

The guy knows his shit and is apparently willing to call spade a spade, at least every once in a while. To give an example at random, he minced no words when he slammed the recent omnibus reduction in VAT for food items (see below), rammed through the parliament by NSi, Demokrati and Resnica.

But if any of the adults in the room think they will be able to rein Janša in whenever his lizard brain will take over, pengovsky has a bridge in Trenta Valley to sell them. Then again, these people have been around the block once or twice and probably know what they’re getting themselves into.

Dependents, true believers and Jernej Vrtovec

It could be their math is mathing different, and that the pros of being a minister outweigh the cons of being a minister in a Janša government. Or it could simply be that they don’t give a flying fuck anymore and took the plunge because you gotta do something in life, right?

Then there are dependents and true believers. And sometimes, the latter two categories are one and the same person. Yes, I’m looking at you, Jernej Vrtovec.

Given the division of portfolios, it is now beyond obvious that NSi president has, in fact, sold his party down the river for a cushy job as minister of infrastructure. And energy, let’s not forget about energy. Jernej Vrtovec will be overseeing a metric fuckton of money that is supposed to go into road, railway and electric grids. Also, the second nuclear power-plant is now likelier to be green-lit (though that was never an if, always just a when).

And, of course, Muddy Hollows is about to have sloppy seconds when it comes to coal. Because what is an unimaginative populist mediocre right wing politician without championing a dirty, money-bleeding and people-killing tech of the 18th century, amirite? But the final proof of Vrtovec being a fucking sell-out comes with Janez Cigler Kralj, NSi second-in-command, taking over as minister of agriculture.

The second-worst job in this government

Sure, being a minister is a political job, so it’s not strictly necessary to be an expert in the area one is running. But it fucking helps. Especially in an area as expansive and critical as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and such. And with a degree in political science, an agriculture expert Janez Cigler Kralj ain’t. Then again, Jernej Vrtovec majored in theology, so what do I know, right?

Anyway, the point here is that Cigler Kralj, who at various points over the past few weeks saw himself either as Speaker, or minister of demographics (think family, but more sinister), got slapped with the second-worst portfolio in Janša 4.0 government.

Just think about it: JCK’s party boss is an SDS fanboi. His ultimate boss is the SDS Lord Protector. And his primary constituency (that is to say, the farmers) are organised into a chamber that has SDS-affiliated leadership. He must really be looking forward to being screwed into every orifice, sometimes simultaneously.

And still, this is not the worst job Janša 4.0 has to offer. That particular honour goes to Anže Logar, the future minister or economy and labour. Because yes, under the new managment, labour interests and business interests will now be part of the same porfolio.

Janez Cigler Kralj may be heading into a world of pain on the party side, but Anže Logar, the ultimate dependent of the new regime will soon be begging for someone to put him out of his misery.

Career-ending self-own by Anže Logar

On one hand he will likely draw the ire of businesses who wholly expect him to deliver on his tax- and red-tape-slashing agenda (such as it is) and some of whom may have helped finance his little political adventure.

But on the other, he will definitely incur the wrath of the labour unions that play an incredibly important role in the tripartite neo-corporatist model of Slovenian society. And the relationship did not get off to a great start, either.

You see, even before Marshal Twito allowed his future minions to put his name forward, he let Demokrati, NSi++ and Resnica submit a giant mess of an omnibus bill that upends taxation, health reform, long-term care, VAT and a bunch of other areas, blowing a billion-euro-sized hole in an already iffy budget. This is the same ominbus bill that finance-minister-to-be Šircelj was not happy with. At least with the VAT portion of it.

Never bet against the unions

But the labour unions were not only unhappy, the went positively apeshit and collected the necessary signatures for a referendum initiative practically overnight.

In response, Logar and Vrtovec floated the idea of striking down the obligation of employers to automatically deduct workers’ union does from their paycheck, setting up a neo-Thatcherite fight they will lose. Sure, the employer taking care of the dues may be just an accounting operation but it keeps the money flowing and frees the unions of chasing down membership for their money.

The point here being that the future minister of economy and labour has chosen violence from the get-go, while smart money says to always bet on the unions.

Four years ago, Anže Logar won a staggering 46 % of the vote in the 2022 presidential election. Six weeks ago, he didn’t even get elected to parliament. Then he talked a big game and told Robert Golob to go suck a lemon, despite campaign promises of reaching across the aisle. Then he talked an even bigger game in the buildup to the Janša government and practically dared the labour unions to come at him. And now Janez Janša stuck him with a job that will see him dealing with the unions daily.

That, dear reader, is a career-ending self-own.

Tina Bregant had a very bad day

But speaking of career endings, we need to talk about SLS president Tina Bregant. You see, of the three parties comprising the NSi++ combo, SLS was the only one that got bupkis out of this government. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Rien.

To put it in more precise terms, after providing one of the two non-NSi MPs in a nine-member NSI++ delegation, and winning a quarter of all the votes the trio won on 22 March, SLS got exactly jack shit.

Bregant tried to be a good soldier about it and mumbled something about the goals and ideals being more important than the names of the people achieving them. But it was beyond obvious that she resented being taken for a ride.

Now, with Bregant being the only female coalition party president of the new regime, there’s an obvious argument to be made that she is on the receiving end of some good old-fashioned right-wing sexism and misogyny.

Putting the SLS leader back in her place, or something

Not just the usual profiles in patriarchy, with its systemic obstacles and built-in handicaps for women. Here, we are looking at the more visceral kind of hatred of women, where she needs to be put in her place, like it, and say thank you. Which is precisely what Bregant dutifully did in her very sad Facebook post.

Which makes pengovsky wonder how long she will even last as party leader. She has done what men before her couldn’t, and brought SLS back to the national level. Which means that is quite possible that the men in the party will now thank her for her service and even come up with some bullshit argument about how she couldn’t deliver the result.

That said, this is a full-service website and pengovsky would be amiss if he did not mention that Bregant also comes with some significant baggage from the Covid times. Back then, she was the state secretary (second-in-command) at the ministry of health and apparently authored several measures that were unhinged even by the panicky standards of the pandemic era.

Also, and perhaps this played as much role as anything else, word on the street is that she simply rubs the Glorious Leader the wrong way.

The weakest Janša government ever

On the whole, this is by far the weakest government Janša has ever assembled. But at least in the short term he has managed to offset this by saddling his newly minted coalition partners with portfolios that are just one wrong move away from a raging dumpster fire. With this, he has created a relationship where these people (especially Logar and Vrtovec personally) need his support even more than he needs theirs.

Thus, for the first time ever, Janez Janša will head a government where SDS will not have an outright majority in the cabinet. Because he can afford that. And if either reader is still unconvinced of just how much this will be a government shaped entirely according to the wishes of the Glorious Leader, consider the fact that he will have his personal lawyer appointed as minister of the interior.

That is correct. Franci Matoz, the man representing Janša in almost every criminal and civil case over the last 20+ years, will now be overseeing the entire civilian part of the security apparatus, save SOVA. The spy service will report directly to the prime minister, of course.

Franci Matoz, Janša’s answer to Todd Blanche

Matoz claims that by virtue of being an ex-cop, he has the necessary knowledge and experience to run the department. Which is kind of like saying that by virtue of running a small radio station back, pengovsky is suitable for running RTV Slovenia. But hey, what he may lack in expertise, Franci Matoz more than compensates for in cojones and loyalty.

Which, apparently, are the two qualities Janez Janša is most interested in when handing out top level government jobs.

If this reminds you of the healthy, productive and not at all corrupt relationship between Donald Trump and wannabe A.G. Todd Blanche, you’re not the only one.

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.