The government of Robert Golob has repeatedly warned us that there are no reserves in the budget and that we will have to tighten our belts. Of course, this does not include the state, like, for example, in Argentina, but only private individuals. We have already found out repeatedly that there are more than enough funds when it comes to paying for the left-wing street, or when politicians and their fellow travellers finance themselves. There was enough money in the budget for a ministry to buy 13,000 laptops without any owner. There was enough money in the budget for a micro-flight from Ljubljana to Vienna for the Speaker of the National Assembly. There was also enough money in the budget for the Director of the indebted University Medical Centre Ljubljana to choose the specific colour for the new prestigious electric SUV he will be driving.
The web portal preverjeno.si (confirmed.si) recently reported on the profligacy of the ministers of Golob’s bloated government. The most “wasteful” is the Minister of Digital Transformation, Emilija Stojmenova Duh, who has spent more than 10 thousand euros – that is, about 1,000 euros a month – with her ministry-issued credit card in less than ten months, which means that the average employer would have to pay 1,600 euros gross for an employee to be able to pay him such an amount.
The Ministry of Digital Transformation told the aforementioned portal that spending on these credit cards “is linked to official expenses, mainly the payment of expenses for official travel, for example, overnight stays and transport.” This is certainly an unusual formulation, as travel expenses (overnight stays, transport) are most often paid in advance from the funds of the ministry itself, not from individual ministers’ credit cards, which is confirmed by the portal’s sources, who say that “it is the image that is being paid for, but the substance suffers, and the former Minister Sanja Ajanović Hovnik, is said to be an amateur compared to Stojmenova Duh” (former Minister Ajanović Hovnik became better known in the public after her trip to New York with her girlfriends.) The portal’s sources say that the ministry’s service credit cards are used to pay travel expenses. We, the taxpayers, covered, among other things, the Minister’s travel and overnight expenses for a trip to China, amounting to 4,100 euros.
The other “big spenders”
The (now-resigned) fallen Minister of Health, Danijel Bešič Loredan, is also said to have been similarly wasteful as the Minister of Digital Transformation, spending 10,349.28 euros during his term in office. However, he is the only one who did not only use the excuse of “business trips” for his money habits, as he also justified his spending with “the cost of banquets for foreign delegations, and professional meetings.”
Ironically, one of the more profligate spenders is also the Minister of Finance, Klemen Boštjančič, who, together with his cabinet, has already spent 25,446.25 euros in the 18 months he and his cabinet have been using the credit cards, although it was not clear who in his cabinet can actually use the cards. The Ministry of Finance also used the excuse that “these are expenses related to payments for business trips, such as overnight stays, tourist taxes, transport, etc.”, which is again a bit of a cop-out, because, as already mentioned, most of these expenses are paid in advance.
There are also some big spenders in the ministry of the Left party (Levica), the Ministry of Labour. Minister Luka Mesec has so far spent 6,330.10 euros with the ministry-issued credit card, and his cabinet has spent a total of 9,144.98 euros. The excuse they gave for the wastefulness was once again related to paying for expenses related to business trips.
The Minister of Infrastructure, Alenka Bratušek, has so far spent around 5,000 euros on her credit card, together with the State Secretary Andrej Rajh – and she has only held her position since January.
The Minister of Justice, Dominika Švarc Pipan, and her colleagues have also spent around 5,000 euros, as has the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tanja Fajon.
In the Janša government, the “left-wing” ministers were the most wasteful
An interesting parallel, which was not explicitly linked in the disclosures, is the fact that in the previous government, the ministers who spent the most were declaredly “left” – Simona Kustec and Boštjan Koritnik – and in the even earlier right-wing government, it was Senko Pličanič, while right-wing ministers Aleš Hojs, Matej Tonin, Anže Logar and Zvonko Černač did not use the card at all.
I. K.
