By: Dr. Vinko Gorenak
You know, right now you are reading an article of an author of the famous statement about Šarec’s “throwing in the towel”, which I first made a few days after the resignation of Marjan Šarec a year ago on Faktor TV with Bojan Požar.
An interpellation is a constitutional and legal remedy against an individual minister by which the opposition draws attention to violations of the law or the constitution by an individual minister. Believe me, I know the interpellation from both angles. I was both in the role of the minister who was interpolated in 2013 (allegedly lost signatures for the referendum, which was not confirmed by the KPK, the police, the prosecutor’s office, the information commissioner, the inspectorate for the civil service system, but I experienced the interpellation anyway), and I was in the role of opposition MP, who also defended the interpellation against several ministers. A typical example was Katarina Kresal in the role of the Minister of the Interior, who in 2009 was accused of abusing the law when renting the NPU building, which she rented from her personal friend. The interpellation did not succeed, but Katarina Kresal resigned in 2010 for this very reason.
But let us go to the interpellation of Minister Janez Cigler Kralj. The reason for his interpellation is 130,200.00 euros, which the ministry he heads, in a public tender, awarded to the Institute for the Culture of Life ISKRENI. But watch out, what does Janez Cigler Kralj has to do with the said institution. Before taking office, he said goodbye to the association in terms of co-founding the association, and stayed only as a volunteer in this association to help it. And what is wrong with that? Nothing! Minister Cigler Kralj also did not decide on how many European, beware European and not our funds, which association or organisation will receive. This was decided by a commission of which the Minister was not a member. Let’s look at how the funds were distributed.
The ISKRENI institution is under number 5. It is clear that each institution received as much as it wanted. So what is the problem? There is not one.
Well the problem, of course, is. The KUL coalition has it. They are aware that the interpellation against Minister Janez Cigler Kralj will fail. After their candidate threw in the towel for the position of prime minister, Jože P. Damjan, and after the same thing happened to Karl Erjavec, it is necessary to file interpellations. They are or are not justified, it does not matter at all. According to Janez Cigler Kralj, they are already announcing an interpellation against the Minister of Education, Dr Simona Kustec, and against the Minister of Culture Dr Vasko Simoniti, the others will also get their turn. In my opinion, this only strengthens the coalition. The chance of success of interpellations is zero, which is why the chance of increasing thrown away towels is so much greater.
Maybe they are forgetting in KUL that Slovenian voters are not stupid and are not oafs. The latest Parsifal poll shows that the KUL coalition (SD, LMŠ, LEVICA and SAB) together has only a good percentage of more voters than the SDS itself (if the elections were held last Sunday). Just go on like this in KUL, and slowly the pile of thrown away towels will be so high we will no longer be able to look over it.
Dr. Vinko Gorenak is State Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia.
Source: http://www.vinkogorenak.net/
