For the last seven months, we have been on a kind of executive power rollercoaster – with Robert Golob as the conductor. We have never seen anything like it in Slovenia, even though with each new face, we were told that it could not get any worse than this. But they managed to surprise us yet again. Robert Golob is the latest and, hopefully, the last manifestation of new faces, but unlike the previous apparatchiks, who were just happy to be driving around in a black BMW, he is not fearful at all. On the contrary, he loves to talk to everyone about his opinions, like some kind of a “pub Wiseman,” oblivious to the fact that he is putting the full extent of his ignorance on display for the domestic and world public. This recently culminated in an incredible speech at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry awards.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia recently presented the Outstanding Economic and Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards for 2022. The Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia graced those gathered at the ceremony with his presence and speech. Namely, he gave a speech that will mark generations of Slovenian politics. Perhaps this speech will even be remembered as the last stage of the politics of new faces.
In addition to all the necessary sweet nothings (about the determination of the Slovenian economy, etc.), he dropped a whole bunch of bombshells that will give his PR team weeks of headaches before they, with the help of the media, can make sure that the general public will stop laughing at Golob.
Healthcare is collapsing, but Golob talked about the space programme and the investment cycle of one per cent of Janša‘s cohesion funds Golob announced the biggest investment cycle ever. The investments will be worth more than 100 million euros, at it will be spent, among other things, on the green breakthrough and to kick-start the space industry. The people in the hall wondered if their hearing was still okay!
The space industry? While people with life-threatening medical conditions wait outside healthcare centres and while pensioners fill the Congress Square every month in the hopes of getting at least a euro supplement to their pensions, which are similar to those in third world countries? And while, on the 1st of January, the government stole from the entire population a share of the salary guaranteed to them by the Janša government? Even the people in the hall were not sure whether the Prime Minister was joking or being serious.
And let’s not forget – we have invested five times the amount of what he promised as the “biggest investment cycle” in the bail-out of the decrepit Slovenian Power Plants Holding (HSE) alone. Not to mention the fact that the Janša government has provided Golob with around 10 billion euros of EU funds through an effective cohesion policy. Which is 100 times as much as Golob has promised to invest in his “biggest investment cycle.” In the global industrial world, 100 million is just enough to supply two weeks’ worth of materials for a major international conglomerate.
In addition to the “space” programme (maybe after Sputnik, they will take socialism into space again?!), the main focus of Golob’s speech was, of course, green energy – with wind turbines and solar panels (in which the Prime Minister himself has a strong economic interest). Apparently, the lesson that they just recently learned in Germany, which released a trillion euros into the air for the so-called “energiewende” and ended up polluting more, is not enough for us, and the painful lesson will have to be repeated at home. After the 100 million (and another 10 billion euros of EU funds) have evaporated, perhaps we, too, will realise that it is because of the green Golob that we have lower wages, and by then, he may be laughing at us from some tropical destination.
As one Twitter user put it: “We have trains running on the tracks at 80 km/h max. We have buses that spend more time standing in traffic than driving. We have a number of cars that run on electricity with nowhere to charge them. For commuters from Primorska and Štajerska, getting to Ljubljana on time for work is like higher-level physics, but we want to go to space.”
A service for failed entrepreneurs
At the end of his speech, Golob said something so unusual that people in the hall started looking at each other with doubt in their eyes, wondering, “Did he really just say that?!” Here is what he said:
“If one of you fails, remember us; come meet me. We have a dire need for people with business experience in the public administration sector. We will find a job for you, too.”
What are all of the things that our Sun King was unwittingly communicating with that sentence?!
He lives on his own planet, where a failing economy is saved with taxpayers’ money – and failing entrepreneurs are future leftist politicians – but this logic is understandable, as his hobby project, the “green” company, was bought out by a state conglomerate, and he then became a director of a joint venture company with an exclusive contract for cheap nuclear power from a power plant we built with our collective sacrifice. In the world of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) and neo-LDS politics, it really is this easy. When you fail, come to politics, and we will take care of you. They desperately need the failed entrepreneurs there.
“I’m sure we will find a job for you, too,” is also a self-admission for the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption that the Prime Minister is handing out jobs in a nepotistic way – he could defend himself by saying that he will just recruit them in cabinets, but the cabinets are mostly already fully staffed, and there are far more failed entrepreneurs than cabinet jobs. So, Golob is offering nepotistic jobs for failed entrepreneurs in front of the public. Such people would function perfectly well in a government led by the Left party (Levica), whose only real programme seems to be the complete sabotage of the country and the economy.
The people applauded – some in fear of losing their state subsidies, others because they were amused, and some because they did not exactly hear what the Prime Minister had to say. But there was a certain tension in the room, in the sense of, “Do we have a Slovenian Caligula?! How is my company going to survive this frenzy?!”
Andrej Žitnik
