“Police officers of the Ministry of the Interior’s internal protection are dealing with my Bobi, the donkey. Before that, they were dealing with my birdhouse and my 40-year-old tractor, but now, they are asking – where is Bobi?” Franc Kangler recently said in a conversation with our media outlet. The former mayor of Maribor and State Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior during the previous government of Janez Janša is apparently still a thorn in the side of certain people in the police, so they are looking for new affairs and stories, even if they are absurd or downright bizarre.
“I was the State Secretary, and it is very typical of the Maribor police officers to machinate,” explained the former Mayor of Maribor, Franc Kangler, who believes that the police should be dealing with current pressing problems and issues, such as “the crimes and the activities of the Mayor of Ljubljana,” and not with who he gave his donkey to and where the donkey is now.
“According to my information, someone said or wrote somewhere that I supposedly gave Bobi to a certain policeman, and now they have come to check whether the former Secretary of State really gave his donkey Bobi to a policeman,” Kangler explained. When asked why Maribor police officers are dealing with such absurd matters when there are so many other, more important matters to deal with, Kangler said he believes that they are deliberately creating affairs and stories – “instead of dealing with crime, they are dealing with who I gave Bobi to.”
Judging by his Twitter post, it seems that “Klepec” is the key word that alludes to the person in question, who could be the author of the “anonymous note” Kangler is referring to. “They were dealing with my tractor, then with the birdhouse, and Bobi was also published in one of the online media portals at one point in time, where he had a high viewership,” he said. In the past, some of his photos were also posted on Instagram, where he made a bit of a joke about Karl Erjavec and Borut Pahor, who started to actively work on getting likes on their posts on Instagram. But Pahor and Erjavec were then challenged by Kangler, who likes to share photos of his farm on social media, as he posted a photo of his donkey – Bobi.
But Kangler was also happy to share information about Bobi’s whereabouts. He explained that the donkey has been living on the Španiger farm near Ljutomer for four years now, where they also have three female donkeys, with whom Bobi has made some offspring, too. Apart from the fact that bothering the Maribor police officers with the location of Bobi, the donkey, is bizarre, Kangler sees no problem with it, even if he would have actually given the said donkey to someone. But he wonders whether “freedom” has really gone so far that “you can already be imprisoned because of where the meat went,” Kangler said, a little jokingly, but also with some seriousness, pointing out that Bobi the donkey is now in “paradise over there in Ljutomer,” said Kangler, who also shared some photos with us.
Kangler is still “in charge”
Kangler then argued that the Commission of Inquiry should actually check “who in the police has the right to check where Bobi has gone?” “My Bobi is popular,” Kangler said, although it seems that it is Kangler’s popularity that is attracting attention. Namely, it seems that the Maribor police officers and, consequently, the government are still threatened by Kangler, who is apparently still “the man in charge” in their eyes, because, as he himself stated, he is also “still the main negotiator between the government and the police, appointed by a government’s decision, as I haven’t been dismissed yet,” he explained, joking that in the future, he would call a coordination of the trade unions.
Tanja Brkić