List of author's articles, page 4
Vojenské spravodajstvo
GIVEN that Slovakia has not been at war in a long time, it remains somewhat of a mystery what, exactly, its military intelligence (vojenské spravodajstvo) does.
Súboj
THE LIST of famous people killed in a duel (súboj) came close to lengthening recently. Pushkin would have been joined by an unlikely companion – Jozef Čentéš. Much has been written here about the election and appointment of the general prosecutor. But the madness has really reached new heights. It now turns out that Ľubomír Macejka, the husband of Constitutional Court President Ivetta Macejková, wrote Čentéš an angry letter:“I regret that we do not live in a time when I could challenge you to a duel. I would give you the choice of weapons.” “I wish that not only prosecutors, but also people who have thus far known nothing of you, expel you from their company, as someone humanly unacceptable.”
Žalúdok
APPARENTLY, Marián Kočner has had three-quarters of his stomach (žalúdok) taken out. No wonder, given that digesting everything that the Bratislava businessman has been through is no easy task.
Krási
IT’S ASIA week. First, Bangalore turned out to be the city deciding the country’s future. And then the Indonesian Embassy helped us to understand that our president isn’t able to write a single sentence without making several mistakes.
Horné Plachtince
IF YOU’re looking for the new El Dorado, just visit Horné Plachtince. The village in southern Slovakia, home to some 200 inhabitants, has in just a couple of days become one of the best known places in the country. No wonder. When your company plans to hand out as much as €130 million in state cash, you deserve the attention.
Nová pravica
ON THE vocabulary front, the opposition is beating Smer big time. Just in the last year, the right has contributed an entire chapter to the dictionary of Slovak politics. There is Nová Väčšina (New Majority), whose novelty seems to lie mainly in the fact that it is not a majority at all. In fact, even after including Daniel Lipšic’s name in the official name of the party, it gets around 5 percent in the polls. Former Christian Democrat Radoslav Procházka founded Alfa, an NGO likely to turn into a political party. Lucia Žitňanská and Miroslav Beblavý remain in the SDKÚ, but have their own Tvoríme Slovensko (We Are Creating Slovakia), which is at this point only an informal platform. And the SaS renegades led by Jozef Kollár now have an organisation of their own – Liberálna Dohoda (Liberal Agreement).
BAT
FOR the rest of the world, one Batman is enough. In Slovakia, there is an entire legion working under the sign of THE BAT. And just like Bruce Wayne, the Bratislava Heating Company (BAT) needs to invest to ensure its cover and enhance its superpowers. That explains the thousands of euros paid out to numerous plastic surgeons and beauty parlours. And the €15 million for accounting and HR software used by 80 employees, although the company now denies the information published by the Sme daily and claims that the software cost only €12 million and is used by almost all of its 350 workers. Given the fact that most of the staff are manual workers and repairmen, you really have to be impressed by the high level of SAP literacy at the institution.
Notebook
SLOVAK politicians have had their share of IT trouble before. President Ivan Gašparovič claims he uses Google to talk via the internet. Former Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar could not decipher a “cassette” containing the names of politicians involved in dubious financial transactions (it later turned out to be a CD and no interesting revelations ever came out of it). But failing to propose a draft bill because your notebook broke – that’s new. Let’s hope MP Gábor Gál, who was supposed to prepare new legislation on party financing on behalf of the opposition, finds a functioning computer soon.
Armagedon
JUST as we survived the end of the Mayan calendar, another Armageddon has come into view, although this one says outright that its liability is limited. The tale of Armagedon, s.r.o., its boss and owner Richard Duchovný (for all you X-Files fans, ‘duchovný’ means ‘spiritual’ or ‘ghostly’ in Slovak), and the Magic Trading Corporation, which seems to be behind all this, is interesting not only because of the collection of creepy names. It explains the feeling of doom that comes at the end of March, when it’s time to pay taxes.
Trinásť
WE WERE eleven, we remain only ten,Everybody’s saying, we are going to hang,But our number ten, silently disappeared,Letting the nine of us, face the death he feared.But even the ninth one, could not be begged to stay,So there are eight of us left, the rest have gone away.The eighth one has promised, not to be a traitor,We remained just seven, only moments later.
František
JUST because he got elected doesn’t mean I will appoint him, says Ivan Gašparovič in a joke that appeared on Facebook within minutes of the announcement that the Vatican had found a new leader on March 13. Fortunately for Pope Francis (František in Slovak), the Slovak president hasn’t been granted the power to block his instalment. Then again, that didn’t stop him in the case of Jozef Čentéš, who is still waiting to become general prosecutor. But let’s assume the boss of the Holy See will be able to keep the job. He will then be one of just a few Františeks in the recent past to play a prominent role in Slovak public life. And the fate of all of them has somehow been tied to that of Gašparovič.
Lesník
YOU REALLY have to wonder what makes running the Aviation Weather Service more difficult – the fact that you can’t walk around an airfield by yourself, because you don’t have security clearance, or the fact that for the last 20 years you’ve been working not as a meteorologist but as a forester (lesník).
Bonanno
SLOVAKIA has plenty of its own mafia clans. Yet, it’s the Bonannos who are making headlines this week. More than two years ago, a group of Supreme Court judges, the deputy general prosecutor (who is now the acting general prosecutor) and several other lawyers met in a bar named after the infamous American crime family, decorated with posters of prominent Mafiosi and replicas of automatic weapons hanging on the walls. They fooled around in blue ear defenders like the kind worn by spree killer Ľubomír Harman, held speeches where they referenced their reproductive organs and gave out the Justice Oscar, an award they invented.
Výtlky
“AT MONDAY’S Alfa event I mentioned that I just narrowly escaped potholes (výtlky). As I was returning from LŽ and MB’s event today, one of them caught up with me, and now I’m waiting for a service vehicle. Yummy.” The situation described in MP Radoslav Procházka’s Facebook status could easily happen to anyone. The winter always leaves the roads in a disastrous state, but this year they are in an especially dire condition. In fact, the only thing that looks even more battered is the opposition.
Blesky
SLOVAKS are not easily surprised by a sudden storm. The very first lines of the national anthem describe how “lightning flashes over the Tatras” and “the thunder pounds wildly”. Still, this week brought an unusual amount of news that came like a bolt out of the clear heavens (blesk z jasného neba).
Magic Trading
IF YOU want to learn a thing or two about miraculous business success, go ask the boss of Magic Trading Corporation, Norbert Havalec. Like other great entrepreneurs, he too once had a little garage firm.
Zeman
THERE has been so much talk about the election of Miloš Zeman as Czech president this week that it almost overshadowed all the news about the personnel selections our local zeman (squire) has been making. Political nominations say as much about an administration as its policies or scandals. So let’s look at what sort of people are working for Robert Fico’s cabinet.
Kotolník
IF THERE is one significant difference between the communist era and the present, it’s the status of the boilerman (kotolník). Back then, the boiler room was a place where the regime sent its enemies. Now, it is a place where it finds its friends.
Poľovačka
PRESIDENT Ivan Gašparovič is a great fan of hunting (poľovačka). And it has been rumoured for years that he was present when a fatal accident took place in 2009. There was never any hard evidence, so writing the story was impossible. All that changed thanks to Gašparovič’s office, which almost seems out to get him.
RSS
GEORGE W. Bush is not the only head of state for whom the internets are somewhat of a mystery. In the past, Ivan Gašparovič has claimed that people use Google to communicate. Now, in his letter to the speaker of parliament, in which he declined to appoint Jozef Čentéš as general prosecutor, he quotes a “reporter of the RSS daily”. Sadly, it seems his legal argumentation is no better than his IT skills.
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