Eastern approaches

THAT the Russian authorities use blackmail and smears to discredit rivals and opponents has never been secret. When the prosecutor general under President Boris Yeltsin, Yuri Skuratov, was investigating Boris Berezovsky and other Kremlin insiders for corruption in 1999, the oligarch’s television channel aired a video of a man resembling him in bed with prostitutes. Despite his denials, the scandal ended his career and stopped the probes. Some saw the hand of the FSB (Federal Security Service) in that, headed by the in those days obscure official Vladimir Putin. Mr Yeltsin's subsequent selection of Mr Putin as prime minister may have been in part reward for that.

A dozen years on, with Prime Minister Putin facing the biggest challenge to his rule less than a month before he plans to return for a third presidential term, the so-called black PR is reaching farcical levels. Compromising videos have appeared on the Internet together with leaks of hacked telephone conversations and private emails from the accounts of blogger Alexei Navalny and other organisers of the first major street demonstrations against Mr Putin. Many of the transcripts have appeared on the pro-Kremlin tabloid site Lifenews.ru, which falsely accused Boris Nemtsov, another protest leader, of spending New Year's with a prostitute in Dubai.

Now a group of hackers that calls itself the Russian wing of Anonymous has posted its own trove of emails hacked from accounts it says belong to the masters of the country’s notorious pro-Kremlin youth groups. Many of the messages over the past year appear to be from the head of the Federal Youth Agency Vassily Yakemenko and its spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik.

They are shown directing journalists and bloggers to extol Putin’s popularity and attack his critics. The emails describe price lists and payments and discuss tactics such as filing hundreds of comments on Websites and creating a video cartoon comparing Navalny to Hitler.

Blogger Anton Nosik points to obvious differences between the email attacks on both sides. If Navalny’s leaked correspondence is mainly personal and exposes nothing compromising, Potupchik’s expose details “fraud, embezzlement, and an unbridled media war against Russian citizens” about which Russian taxpayers have a right to know.

The only Potupchik email that could be considered personal outlines her rationale. Praising her boss Yakemenko, who founded the youth group Nashi, she said she owes him loyalty for having hired her. "If you think someone else can be found in our country who would create such a structure,” she writes, “who would put the refuse from our provincial towns to work, turn provincial shits into princesses of the capital, then fuck off.”

The regime has long had a credibility problem because of the gap between its rhetoric and its actions. This glimpse of the inside will make it easier for critics to portray it as not just cynical, but outright ridiculous. That's not a good start to what may be the most difficult four weeks in Mr Putin's political career. 

Readers of this blog who know Russian can read the cache of hacked emails here.

THE year started badly for Emil Boc, the now-former prime minister of Romania. A public row between Traian Basescu, the president, and Raed Arafat, a popular health-care official, over a proposed health reform sparked violent protests in January that eventually led to a government retreat on the new plans and a series of resignations. That was followed by his party's loss of the Senate last week, when two lawmakers deserted to the opposition. And now Mr Boc himself has stepped down, along with his cabinet, in an effort to "diffuse social tensions" and maintain "economic stability".

Mr Boc's Democratic Liberal Party has slipped to less than 15% support in the polls, while support for the opposition has soared. This is in part due to austerity measures taken by the government, part of a €20 billion EU-IMF-World Bank bail-out deal that Mr Boc admits has been "painful". But, he insists, the measures have also worked. The country has returned to growth and GDP is expected to rise by more than 1.5% this year. It has been revealed that Mr Boc "carefully prepared" his resignation so as not to coincide with the IMF mission to Bucharest, which ended on Sunday with praise for the government's actions and only a slight cut in the fund's growth forecast for the country, due to the persisting euro-zone troubles.

Mr Boc now hopes to rebuild support for his party ahead of the next general election, scheduled for November. But this could come sooner than planned. The president has appointed Catalin Predoiu, the outgoing justice minister, to take over for Mr Boc on an interim basis, and he has nominated Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, the head of the country's foreign-intelligence service, as the new prime minister. Mr Ungureanu and his ministers are likely to be approved, as the ruling coalition still holds a majority in the lower house. But the opposition has promised to continue a boycott of parliament started last week. "We are not going anywhere with this new government," said Crin Antonescu, head of the Liberal Party. For him and his like-minded colleagues, the only way forward is an early vote.

THE Starlight Diner on Octyabrskaya (October) Square in Moscow was doing brisk trade on February 4th, as middle-class Russians scarfed down a hearty breakfast before joining the protest march against Vladimir Putin. The crowd inside the diner was jolly and colourful. Many sported bright skiing jackets, as if they were about to take to the slopes.

In fact, it was more of a promenade than a march. Tens of thousands of Muscovites carrying creative signs and white balloons, strolled, unfazed by a temperature of -20°C, towards the Kremlin. Politically-affiliated columns of Communists, nationalists, anarchists and monarchists were overtaken and outnumbered by middle-class citizens who valued their private space too much to form columns. This was no revolutionary crowd—they came to display their dignity and demand honest elections, not to storm the Kremlin. They reject Mr Putin not as some ruthless tyrant (he is not) but as the lynchpin of a corrupt system of governance based on the supremacy of the bureaucrat over the private citizen.

The timing was symbolic: one month before the presidential election which Mr Putin hopes to win in the first round, and 21 years after hundreds of thousands of Russians marched through Moscow demanding the end of one-party Communist rule. The people who walked through Moscow last Saturday complained not about the shortage of food and clothes as their predecessors did, but about the lack of rule of law and institutions in the country.

The Kremlin responded to this latest protest with its own rally, to which it bussed state workers and people from nearby towns, most of whom were paid or coerced. The shrill speeches at the Kremlin rally, about America’s plot to orchestrate a colour revolution in Russia, contrasted with the much more calm and positive tone of the anti-Putin protest, which was highlighted by a couple of songs, including this one by a group of ex-marines. And while most people at the pro-Kremlin rally left with a feeling of resentment and humiliation, the well-heeled and independent Muscovites celebrated their outing and their resolve with a perfect “après ski”.

(Photo credit: AFP)

YESTERDAY Adrian Năstase, Romania's prime minister between 2000 and 2004, became the country's first head of government in the post-communist era to be convicted of corruption. It was a long time coming.

Handing Mr Năstase a two-year prison sentence, the judges ruled that he had used a publicly funded conference of construction companies as a front to raise cash for his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2004.

This, however, was a minor charge compared to some of the other corruption accusations that have dogged Mr Năstase, all of which he denies. "Năstase seven houses", a reference to his multiple residences, was just one of the nicknames bestowed on him by the press.

Mr Năstase was raised in the communist school of politics, and it showed. During his time in office state-run television and radio stations were obliged to follow a pro-governmental line. Newspapers that printed incriminating stories found their entire circulation had been bought up before they hit the news-stands. Mr Năstase took part in huge hunting sprees that rivalled any of Ceauşescu's, and his two wives were both from the communist nomenklatura.

Mr Năstase's truculence in the face of opposition was legendary. When asked about the significant wealth that he accumulated during his time in office, he invited his detractors to count his balls instead.

Despite such outbursts, Mr Năstase, a much-published professor of international law, cultivated the image of a bourgeois intellectual. This helped pave the way for his rival, the current president Traian Băsescu, whose populist appeal and working-class idiom were a world away from the aloof Mr Năstase. The promise of clamping down on corruption helped Mr Băsescu to defeat Mr Năstase in 2004.

Mr Năstase is the most prominent Romanian politician to be taken down by Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Does this mean that Romania is finally taking the fight against corruption, so often urged on it by the European Union, seriously? The protesters who are braving temperatures of -15 degrees in Bucharest's University Square wouldn't say so. Many of them see little difference between the corruption of the Năstase days and the Romania of 2012.

Mr Năstase, who plans to appeal against his conviction, says that he is a victim of political harrassment, and that Mr Băsescu and the head of the DNA, Daniel Morar, wanted him out of the way. The EU has indeed repeatedly chastised Romania for its politicised judicial system, and Mr Năstase's conviction is undeniably a boon for the besieged Mr Băsescu. The president has a reputation for seeking to bring corruption charges against his opponents.

Others might cite Mr Năstase's loss of clout within his own party as a factor in his downfall. Some members of his Social Democratic Party will certainly be rejoicing. Unless he wins his appeal, Mr Năstase will not be able to hold public office or serve as party president for four years; good news for his many rivals within the party he once dominated.

Mr Năstase may not even serve his jail term; he has promised to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. Yet although his sentence is relatively lenient (others indicted in the same case got six or seven-year stretches), what matters is that a former prime minister has been shown to be within the reach of the law. With luck he might stand as a cautionary tale for a political class around which the stench of graft has yet to lift.

THE "invisible gorilla" experiment (follow the link if you're unfamiliar with this remarkable study) is a useful reminder of how easy it can be to miss what should be obvious. Similarly, the gorilla of sleaze has regularly been an important player in the cosy world of Slovak politics. But too often few Slovaks have chosen to notice it.

“Gorilla” is the codename given to a wiretapping operation in 2005-06, the details of which were, it is alleged, revealed in a secret-service file leaked on to the internet in December. It has shaken Slovak politics to the core.

The file, supposedly compiled by the Slovak Information Service (SIS), does not contain direct transcripts of the wiretaps, but purports to provide raw intelligence based on them. It discusses privatisation deals conducted during the second term of Mikuláš Dzurinda, a reformist prime minister in office between 1998 and 2006 (and foreign minister in Iveta Radičová's current caretaker government).

Some Slovaks have interpreted Gorilla as an unwelcome reminder that the dodgy links between politics and business that thrived in the 1990s, an altogether murkier period in Slovakia, may not have been entirely severed. Today hundreds of Slovaks threw eggs and bananas at the parliament building in protest.

At the heart of the scandal lie allegations that bribes worth millions of euros were paid to officials to win various public-procurement and privatisation contracts. Former ministers, representatives from Austrian, French, Italian and Russian multinationals, and tycoons from Penta, an investment fund dubbed the “fifth coalition partner” in Mr Dzurinda’s second government, are all named in the file. So are all four political parties in Mr Dzurinda's second coalition government.

The intelligence in Gorilla insinuates that Anna Bubeníková, head of Slovakia's state privatisation agency, acted as a go-between for Penta and foreign investors. She is supposed to have attended meetings in a “safe apartment” in central Bratislava and an obscure hotel in the Tatra mountains. Ms Bubeníková was sacked earlier this month. She denies any wrongdoing.

Penta, which employs more than 25,000 people and took in €2.1 billion in revenues in 2010, is one of the dominant investment players in Slovakia’s small market. One of its rivals, J&T, is known for having hobnobbed with members of the centre-left party Direction-Social Democracy (Smer-SD), led by another former prime minister, Robert Fico. Both funds have been aggressive bidders for most public-procurement contracts in Slovakia.

A spokesman for Penta told me that the group denies any involvement in criminal activity. He suggested that the release of Gorilla was designed to intimidate specific (but unnamed) individuals ahead of a general election on March 10th. He says that of the 12 business deals described in Gorilla, Penta took part in only six, and that it won contracts only when its bid was demonstrably the strongest. He added that the group would be taking legal action to protect its reputation.

The Gorilla file has been known to various insiders for some time. In 2009 it reached Tom Nicholson, a prominent investigative journalist, who claims that the security services offered him “millions” to drop it. In the end he was unable to find a media outlet prepared to publish it without corroborating evidence.

Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), a free-market newcomer on the Slovak political scene and a member of the four-party coalition government that collapsed in October*, has admitted that it had the Gorilla file ahead of the last general election, in 2010.

On December 23rd, days after Gorilla's publication, SaS issued a formal complaint to the Office for the Fight Against Corruption, a unit within the Slovak police. A week later the general prosecutor's office said it would set up a team to investigate the claims in the file. On January 9th Daniel Lipšic, the interior minister, put together an investigative team to look into the issue.

Some have questioned the file's authenticity. Mr Dzurinda has said that the entire thing is a fabrication. All the political parties implicated have rebuffed allegations of corrupt dealings. Politicians under suspicion have pooh-poohed Gorilla as kompromat timed to discredit them before the election. (Waggish critics responded by placing a sticker depicting Slovakia’s coat of arms with a gorilla in it at the entrance to the parliament building.)

It is certainly true that no corroborating evidence, such as audio recordings, has come to light. But various statements from officials are chipping away at the doubts. The interior ministry confirmed last week that a wiretapping operation codenamed "Gorilla" took place, and that it was legal. A former senior anti-corruption police officer and a former head of the National Security Bureau have said publicly that the file is authentic and that the information in it is likely to be true.

On January 11th Jaroslav Spišiak, the police chief, told a newspaper that "developments could have happened in the way they are described" in Gorilla. This week Ivan Gašparovič, Slovakia's president, approved the questioning of Karol Mitrík, the SIS director, who is usually bound by an oath of secrecy.

For Mr Dzurinda, a giant on the Slovak political scene, the allegations that massive corruption in public procurement took place on his watch may now spell his political end. (There have been no suggestions that he took bribes himself.)

SDKÚ, which has dominated centre-right Slovak politics for a decade, has plummeted to 8.3% in one opinion poll, down from 15.4% in 2010's election. Other centre-right parties who served in Mr Dzurinda's government have also suffered losses of confidence.

It is not only the centre-right that has been embarrassed by Gorilla. Mr Fico is described as visiting the safe flat in Bratislava to discuss purges in his party and financing with Penta’s co-owner, Jaroslav Haščák. Smer-SD is known to have received about SKK 1.2m (around €40,000) from Penta magnates in the early 2000s. Mr Fico has said that he might have met Mr Haščák, but has made no comment on the content of their meeting.

Still, such funding is not illegal under Slovak law, and Mr Fico has long since cut ties with Penta. In 2008 he said that he likes financial groups “as a goat likes a knife”. After taking power in 2006 his government gave Penta a public rap on the knuckles by cancelling the privatisation of Bratislava airport.

Indeed, Mr Fico looks poised to win a landslide victory in the upcoming election. If the results of one recent poll were repeated on election day Smer-SD would win 81 of the 150 seats in parliament, giving it a healthy majority. No party has ever governed alone in Slovakia since the country threw off its communist shackles.

As the centre-right is dragged through the mud, Mr Fico is likely to gain from the ensuing drop in turnout, as are political novices such as SaS and other fresh faces. SaS fell out of favour after toppling Ms Radičová’s cabinet from within over the euro last autumn, but the Gorilla scandal may help it rally.

The gorilla has been spotted, but it is unlikely to leave.

* An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Slovakia's government collapsed in November.

THERE were no fireworks and no joyous, flag-waving crowds, although the president, prime minister and speaker of parliament did at least raise a glass to the strains of Ode to Joy.

Yesterday two-thirds of Croats who took part in a referendum on whether their country should join the European Union voted "yes", more than had been expected. The low turnout of 43%, however, meant that only a third of the electorate actually voted in favour. “It’s not great, but it's legal,” was the accurate if underwhelming summing-up of Zoran Milanović, the new prime minister. Still, not a single one of Croatia’s 15 regions voted against.

Indeed, one could fairly make the case that given the steady stream of bad news from the euro zone, Balkan Greece and Croatia's neighbour Hungary, a two-thirds vote in favour of joining was something of an achievement.

Croatia completed its negotiations with Brussels last year and, assuming no hiccups, will become the EU's 28th member on July 1st 2013. It will become the second ex-Yugoslav state, after Slovenia, to join.

Croatia’s EU accession was negotiated by the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which was turfed out of office in an election in December. But it was backed by Croatia's entire political elite, from Mr Milanović's left-leaning Social Democratic Party to the Catholic church to prominent academics and institutions.

Parts of the nationalist right were opposed to joining, but the wind was knocked from their sails last week when their great hero Ante Gotovina, who is serving a 24-year prison sentence for war crimes, said that Croatia belonged in the EU.

Those against accession argued that Croatia should not seek to join a would-be federation only 20 years after having won its freedom from Yugoslavia. They counted among their supporters Marine Le Pen, presidential candidate for the far-right National Front in France; Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party; and David Icke, a British former television sports presenter who argues that members of the British royal family and American presidents are descended from alien reptiles.

According to Ines Sabalić, the Brussels correspondent for a number of Croatian newspapers, the prevailing mood in Croatia was of fear. Croats have always believed that they are part of “Europe” rather than the Balkans, and have looked west rather than east. But, she says, belonging to Europe today demands a lot of optimism. Croats have had to bet that their future will be better on the inside than languishing irrelevantly, Moldovan-style, on the outside.

The Croatian vote has been greeted with relief in the rest of the western Balkans. A “no” would probably have been catastrophic for the accession plans of other countries in the region. Sceptics about western-Balkan accession in Brussels and elsewhere would have been able to argue that if the Croats did not want to join, the EU should not bother helping the rest of the region to do so.

But with the EU facing one of the biggest challenges in its history in the form of the euro crisis, don't expect much movement on further enlargement any time soon. Croatia may have squeaked in just as the door is closing.

HUNGARIANS are used to foreign rule. The Mongols, the Turks, the Habsburgs, the Nazis and the Soviet Union have all left their mark. Sometimes the locals help the occupiers, sometimes they get in their way. Usually it’s a bit of both.

These time-honoured tactics have proved less successful under Hungary’s latest overlords: the European Union, especially as the country joined the club voluntarily. Today the European Commission launched legal action against Hungary over three issues: a new central-bank law, which it says opens the door to political control; judicial reforms that will see hundreds of judges forced to take early retirement; and concerns over the independence of the new data ombudsman. Hungary has a month to modify the laws. If it does not do so, it faces being hauled in front of the European Court of Justice.

Today's ruling is a serious setback for the right-wing Fidesz government. The groundswell of concern in Brussels and other western capitals about Fidesz’s relentless centralisation of power is steadily growing.

It also comes as Hungary is seeking financial assistance from the IMF and the EU. Tamás Fellegi, the government’s chief negotiator, is making the diplomatic rounds but so far has nothing to show for it. Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, made it clear last week that Hungary will have to play ball with the EU before it can receive a penny.

So what next for Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister? In most countries enduring a fraying economy and a non-stop diplomatic barrage the ruling party would be cracking as potential rivals readied themselves for power. Not in Hungary. The faithful Fidesz flock stick to the party line as happily as their Communist predecessors.

A compromise looks likely to be found on the central bank and data protection. The question of the judges may be more difficult. Assuming the commission sticks to its guns and forces concessions from Mr Orbán, he will be politically weakened. His popularity is already sagging—one poll gives Gordon Bajnai, his technocrat predecessor, a popularity rating of 28%, one percentage point ahead of the prime minister.

Should Mr Orbán refuse to make concessions then the prospect of an IMF deal will evaporate, the forint will plunge further, bond yields will climb yet higher and the prospect of default later in the year will loom ever larger.

Supporters of the government argue that the commission's action is an outrageous attack on Hungarian sovereignty. Fidesz won a landslide two-thirds majority in a free and fair election less than two years ago, they say, giving it an overwhelming mandate for change. Brussels should mind its own business.

It’s a fair point, but as pressure grows on Budapest the focus will likely shift to the lack of a proper mechanism within the EU to bring wayward members into line. Infringement proceedings are serious but can drag on for years. The EU has the Copenhagen criteria to ensure aspiring countries meet membership requirements, but little to ensure that they stick to them once inside.

The markets' reaction to today's development has been muted. Hungary sold three-month T-bills worth €55 billion forints ($226m), 10 billion more than the target and at slightly lower yields.

But Société Générale is already advising investors to sell forints, predicting that the currency may slide to as low as 325 against the euro. (It briefly hit 324 earlier this month.) Recent reassuring comments towards the EU and the IMF from the government may be nothing more than “yet another tactic to calm markets down”, the bank said.

"POLENTA doesn't explode" is the gnomic phrase Romanians use to describe the attitude of resigned acceptance typical to the country. But this weekend something snapped. Thousands of people took to the streets in Bucharest and 40 other towns, venting their anger at their leaders' perceived incompetence in dealing with Romania's economic crisis.

The centre of Bucharest was hit by violence on a scale unseen in two decades. Traian Băsescu, the centre-right president, is the main target of the protesters' ire. "Get out, you miserable dog" they chanted, as they hurled paving stones and smoke bombs at riot police. Water cannons and tear gas were used to dispel the crowds.

Sixty people, including several police officers, were injured in the clashes. The police head admitted that his officers may have been "over-zealous" at times. Earlier today Emil Boc, the prime minister, condemned the violence but conceded that his government's austerity measures had "brought hardships upon people".

The immediate trigger for the riots was the resignation of Raed Arafat, a popular official in the health ministry, who stepped down after clashing with Mr Băsescu over a set of controversial reforms to the health-care system. Mr Boc has now offered to revise the plans, and offered an olive branch to Mr Arafat.

The Palestinian-born doctor, who emigrated to Romania in the 1980s, had helped set up a professional medical emergency system. He disagreed with a government proposal to privatise it, as part of its drive to cut public spending. "Quality does not automatically arrive with privatisation. For the patient, the system will be weaker," he said announcing his resignation. A day earlier Mr Băsescu had called Mr Arafat a liar on television, adding that he had "leftist" views.

Mr Băsescu is well known for his undiplomatic, mercurial manner. On Friday, however, as peaceful pro-Arafat demonstrations spread throughout the country, the president asked the government to pull its draft health-care law. He blamed "media manipulation" and was unable to resist noting sarcastically that "the emergency system works perfectly."

The Social-Liberal opposition (USL) has called for bringing elections forward from their scheduled November date "in what seems to be a non-governed country". Its leader, Victor Ponta, has even offered Mr Arafat a job in a future USL government. But Mr Arafat says he has no ambitions to re-enter politics. He has urged protesters to refrain from violence and to resist being "manipulated" by politicians.

What next? Violent protests are inherently difficult to read. But Cristian Pârvulescu from Pro-Democratia, a respected Bucharest-based think-tank, predicts that they could bring down the government.

LAST week the excitement surrounding the rush for shale gas in Poland was tempered with some unwelcome news. Seven people were charged with offering or receiving bribes in the allocation of concessions to look for the gas in 2011.

The environment ministry handed out the last of 109 exploration concessions in the second half of last year, most of them to foreign firms or their Polish subsidiaries. The prices, at around €100 per square kilometre, were trivial.

The sums involved in the bribery scandal are also not large: thousands rather than hundreds of thousands of euros, according to Waldemar Tyl, Warsaw's deputy public prosecutor. But Mr Tyl insists that the evidence against those accused is compelling.

The seven include the head of the environment ministry's geology department, two other ministry officials and directors of three Polish companies, all of them linked to Petrolinvest, a large energy concern. Neither the ministry nor any of the three companies were prepared to put someone up for interview.

But perhaps more telling than the investigation is what it reveals about Poland's attitude towards what many have hoped will be its new-found resource wealth. For the last few years the country has been getting ever dizzier at the prospect of ending its dependence on Russian gas and becoming a "new Norway". Last summer a US study heightened the fever by suggesting that Poland had 5.3 trillion cubic metres of accessible reserves, more than had been previously estimated.

But some experts, such as Grzegorz Pytel of the Sobieski Institute, a think-tank, have been warning for some time that Poland is as much like gas-rich Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan as it is Norway.

Starting, like the former Soviet states, with laws designed for a climate in which a handful of state-owned firms would be operating, Poland invited investment from multiple domestic and foreign companies. "If you have a system like this where you know that these licences are potentially worth a lot of money, but you can get them virtually for free, it's bound to be corruption-prone," says Mr Pytel. He says the new corruption investigation may be just the tip of an iceberg. Increasingly active environmental campaigners agree.

The Polish government sold the shale concessions so cheaply because of the speculative nature of the investment, and because the investors would have to bear all of its costs. The country has very little home-grown industry to service shale-gas development. Contrast with Norway, which manages to levy taxes worth 78% of revenues on the likes of Exxon because local service companies look after all the technical difficulties involved in extracting gas.

The Polish government insists that the system is not to blame for any individual wrongdoing. Still, it is working on a new legal framework for shale-gas exploitation. A new geological and mining law [paywall] came into force on January 1st, applying EU regulations and simplifying procedures for investors.

Environmentalists, however, complain that although the law gives concession-holders potential buyout rights to properties where they might want to set up a drill, it says nothing about "fracking fluid"—the huge quantities of water and chemicals that shale-gas extractors pump into the ground in order to crack shale rocks and get to the gas.

In the next three months the government should present a new law on the taxation of shale gas. The concurrent corruption investigation could have a sobering effect on a country caught up in flighty dreams of riches.

SLOVENIA was thrown into political turmoil earlier this week after parliamentarians rejected the appointment of Zoran Janković (pictured), the mayor of Ljubljana and a former retail tycoon, as the country’s new prime minister, a month after his surprise victory in snap elections. After several parties abstained, Mr Janković received just 42 votes out of 47 cast in the 90-strong parliament.

Mr Janković’s defeat came after coalition talks between his centre-left party Positive Slovenia and other parties proved more difficult than the premier-designate had hoped. The crunch came on January 9th, when the small centre-right Citizens’ List rejected a tie-up, saying its differences with Positive Slovenia were too great.

Danilo Türk, Slovenia's president, now has two weeks to name a new candidate or nominate Mr Janković again. Ten deputies can also submit a proposal for prime minister. If those efforts fail, Mr Türk can call a new election.

The first ex-communist country to join the euro, Slovenia is struggling with increasing debt and the threat of further cuts to its credit rating. Interest rates on its debt have soared above 7%. The export-dependent economy is close to recession. Without political leadership Slovenia’s spreads will surely widen further still.

Slovenia urgently needs to cut public spending to comply with the euro zone's proposed new fiscal pact, proposed by Germany and France as they seek to stem the sovereign-debt crisis in Europe. But austerity measures are deeply unpopular.

Most outsiders believe that the best option for Slovenia is a technocratic government, along the lines of those in Italy and Greece. This should, however, be only a transitory solution to ensure a much-needed capital boost for banks and the adoption of fiscal austerity measures. Slovenia has no time to waste on a lengthy search for a consensus government or new elections.

SIX years ago I made a radio programme for the BBC about the former Yugoslavia and the infamous Eurovision Song Contest. I noted two things. First, despite the devastating wars of the 1990s all the ex-Yugoslav constituent countries voted for one another. The second was that Kosovo, which had not yet declared independence, was not represented in the annual pan-European songfest.

Choosing to capitalise on this Yugoslav solidarity, in 2006 the Bosnians chose as their candidate for the competition Hari Mata Hari, a well-known singer whose fame dated from the Yugoslav days. The gambit almost paid off: his haunting song "Lejla" came third. (It was written by Zeljko Joksimovic, who had represented Serbia & Montenegro in the contest in 2004 and is representing Serbia this year).

In the run-up to the contest Hari travelled across the former Yugoslavia giving concerts and interviews, and generally drumming up support for his bid. His near-victory, propelled by votes from Bosnia's neighbours, was an early example of the so-called "Yugosphere" (which I first wrote about here).

As for the Kosovo Albanians, they are still excluded from the contest. After the war with Serbia in 1999, Kosovars who wanted a chance to enter had to compete for the nomination in Albania proper, hoping that their kinsmen would select them. For the radio programme I met Rona Nishliu and her friends in their girl band Flakareshat (pictured). “I said we will be the winners," Ms Nishliu told me. "We will represent Albania.”

Off mic, however, the Kosovars grumbled that the Albanians would never select anyone from Kosovo to represent them. That was then. On December 29^th the Albanians selected Ms Nishliu for this year's contest, in Azerbaijan. (This is her entry.) Although in her heart Ms Nishliu may be representing Kosovo (which is still not a Eurovision member) rather than Albania, this may be an early example of the emergence of an "Albanosphere".

Not only does Ms Nishliu have an impressive voice, she has an interesting story. (See a profile of her I wrote for the European Stability Initiative in 2007.) She grew up in what is now Serb-controlled north Mitrovica in north Kosovo (which we have covered extensively on Eastern Approaches). There is now some irony in the words of the Serbs who expelled Ms Nishliu and her family from their home during the NATO bombing of Serbia:

When the bombing started in 1999, on April 4, men with military uniform came into our home and threatened us and told us we had to leave. They beat my father in front of us; me, my mother, my brother, my aunt and grandmother. They said: "You can't stay. You've got to go!" My grandmother said: "Where should we go?" They said: "Go to your country, go to Albania." My grandmother said: "Kosova is our country. I was born here and have lived 65 years here."

The many Europeans who regard the Eurovision Song Contest as a bit of a joke may not be aware that it is taken rather more seriously in pockets of the continent. Azerbaijan views this year's show as an opportunity to burnish its rather tarnished image.

For Kosovars Ms Nishliu's presence in Baku, on the same bill as Mr Joksimovic no less, will be seen as a great triumph, not least because Azerbaijan and Serbia are close allies. As I wrote here, the pair make common cause because, just as Serbia rejects Kosovo’s independence, Azerbaijan rejects that of Nagorno-Karabakh.