Golob’s ship is sinking and everyone seems to be jumping off – even those who were closest to Prime Minister Robert Golob at the beginning of his mandate. After his party’s Secreatary-General, Vuković, the Heaf of Prime Minister’s Office, Petra Škofic, Golob’s closest colleague, is also leaving. Who will be next?
Petra Škofic has been working closely with Robert Golob since the beginning of the formation of the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda), was actively involved in the election campaign, and headed the Prime Minister’s office for almost two years. It has apparently become clear to the deep state that this government will not last the rest of its term.
The team of Prime Minister Robert Golob has undergone several changes in the last few weeks. The Head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Petra Škofic, confirmed for the media outlet N1 that she is leaving the post. According to the media outlet, the reason for this is said to lie in different views on the role of the Prime Minister’s Office. She did not disclose what these different views were.
Petra Škofic has been part of Golob’s team since the formation of the Freedom Movement party. Škofic was a long-time Liberal Democracy of Slovenia party (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije – LDS) public relations officer, but she also worked as head of the office at the culture ministry during Alenka Bratušek’s government, and as a public relations adviser at the interior ministry under Katarina Kresal.
Petra Škofic is therefore the next in a series of replacements that the Prime Minister has decided to make in his office. According to the N1 web portal, Kaja Širok, State Secretary for Culture, who joined Golob immediately after the current government was formed, is also leaving on the 1st of April. The mainstream media claims that the Prime Minister decided to make the changes in order to change the persons at the head of the government. He is said to be dissatisfied with the work of Saša Leban, who advises him on economic matters, and he is also said to be dissatisfied with the head of the Freedom Movement party’s parliamentary group, Borut Sajovic.
Many believe that all the departures show the extreme dissatisfaction of the deep state with the “governance” of the current authorities, especially in light of all the scandals that have been exposed in recent months, which are bringing the house of cards crashing down with a bang and quite quickly. In this context, let us also remind you of the marked lack of confidence that Milan Kučan expressed not so long ago in the depoliticised national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS). When asked by the working people of RTV Slovenia whether he believed that the government would last another two and a half years, he replied, “What I believe is one thing, but what I hope is another; and I hope that the government will finish its term of office.” The penultimate President of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, who had also indirectly enthroned Golob, replied in no very subtle terms that he no longer believed in him, but that he “hoped” that the government would finish its term.
It seems that it has become clear to the deep state that the government as it is constituted is “not going to finish its term”, so now they want to replace everyone and save what can still be saved. Kučan’s dream of an ideologically “correct” government, which he had been dreaming of since 1989, when he said that an independent Slovenia was the worst-case scenario and that the communists would always fight for a united Yugoslavia, seems to have finally vanished: he has got a government that is more “Yugoslav” than the last years of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a government led by “his” party, the Left party (Levica), the successor of the hardest version of the Slovenian branch of the Balkan communists. Now that he has the government he wanted, it should work – but it does not. It does not work when it is made up of a group of left-wing theoreticians who do not actually want to work but would rather travel and live “capitalistically” instead.
Is this the end of Kučan’s fairy tale?
A. H.
