The Prime Minister’s Office announced on Tuesday that Prime Minister Robert Golob will remain on sick leave for a while longer, although he is expected to resume his duties on Wednesday. The Prime Minister also did not attend Wednesday’s sitting of the National Assembly, where he was due to answer parliamentary questions on the dismissal of MP Mojca Pašek Šetinc from the top of the commission set up to investigate the “wrong” media, as well as questions about migrants, the electronic recording of work hours, and Gaza. Meanwhile, the search for his successor is continuing frantically behind the scenes – will this be a convenient excuse for him to resign due to “health reasons”? We spoke to political analyst Boštjan M. Turk about this and what it means for Slovenia to be led, even temporarily, by far-leftist Luka Mesec.
“Robert Golob cannot be trusted, he has said so many things that have turned out to be untrue. This sick leave is also more or less far-fetched. It would be interesting to see where he got the referral, when it was issued and whether he skipped the waiting times that everyone else has to face. He is always referring to justice and the little man and, despite the fact that he is Prime Minister, he should not be allowed to skip queues,” Boštjan M. Turk said of the Prime Minister’s extension of sick leave.
In Turk’s opinion, the recovery from the operation that Golob had recently is mostly based on the fact that the opinion polls are currently catastrophic for the Prime Minister and his party, “and in a way, he is afraid of coming back because he is afraid of being held accountable because he has become very entangled in this whole mess with former Minister of the Interior, Tatjana Bobnar, and, in fact, whatever he has done so far, usually turned out pretty messy,” M. Turk believes. He added that Golob has got into so many problems that the extended sick leave has probably come in handy for him – “and he will probably try to extend it a bit more.”
Will Robert Golob resign?
When asked whether the extended sick leave is a sign that Golob will soon resign as Prime Minister, the political analyst said that given the fact that Golob has made a mess of the country and that all the moves of this government are completely unpredictable and bad, it is as possible that he will resign as that he will not resign. “He himself does not even know what he should do. Now he has pulled the worst possible move of putting a man “from a Communist party” in charge of the country, which is a clear recipe for destroying the country,” Turk said of the interim rule of Luka Mesec of the radical Left party (Levica). In light of this, Turk quoted Anže Logar, who said that hundreds of entrepreneurs were considering moving out of Slovenia as soon as possible, adding that these were the consequences of GOlob’s rule. “We have never had such an incompetent government, you cannot help but wonder how that is possible – so it won’t matter if Golob resigns or not, because another person like him can come and take over the parliamentary majority they have. They will not risk the elections. And we may get an even worse man than we currently have. We have to be prepared for anything, as in the days of socialism, nothing should surprise us. But we citizens are the victims of a hopeless experiment or a hopeless game with common sense.”
Do the power centres already have a new candidate?
Behind the scenes, the search for a successor to replace Golob as a kind of “technical” mandate-holder is said to have been frantically going on for some time now. According to the media outlet Požareport, names such as Zoran Janković, Stojan Petrič and Alenka Bratušek are being mentioned. What are the chances that Golob resigns for “health reasons” and the predictions come true? “There are no health reasons that would lead to this, nobody resigns for that reason, even Janša had an operation. But Golob is making a spectacle out of it. I don’t know if the influential people from the background have already set up a new person for the position, because we haven’t seen one yet. Even Golob is still convenient for those from the background, because a weak government is good for them, as well as for the Left party, and for Luka Mesec, who is now running the country. I believe they will let Tina Gaber’s boyfriend run things for a little while longer.”
It is absurd that Mesec is the keynote speaker on the day of the founder of the Slovenian army
Since Golob is not yet back at work, on Tuesday, at the central state ceremony marking Rudolf Maister Day at 8 p.m. in Maribor, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Luka Mesec, was the keynote speaker instead of the Prime Minister. The situation is rather ironic, given the anti-patriotic and Yugonostalgic attitude of the Left party. We asked Mr Turk what message he saw in this.
“The same message as the message of the abolition of the Museum of Slovenian Independence, the same message as the message of the removal of Jože Dežman – that they are making fun of Maister – he is, after all, the founder of the Slovenian army, against which these people are speaking out the most. It is as if a drunk alcoholic would go and give a speech to recovered alcoholics, that’s roughly the logic behind this,” said the political commentator. “They are pretending to be everything; they have power and authority, and they are making fun of all of us. The only thing they know how to do is destroy and mock. However, as long as the people in the elections allow it, that’s the way it will be,” he added.
A. G.
