Six votes short to remove the Speaker. The Democrats have exactly six.

Seven hours for the Speaker of the National Assembly (DZ). Six hours for the Deputy Speaker. Thirteen hours of debate in total, and at the end two secret ballots, each needing 46 votes out of ninety.

The number that decides will not fall in those thirteen hours. It fell long ago, in the summer and in September, when the proposers were collecting signatures and did not collect enough. The news agency report that nearly every outlet picked up this morning says so in its last paragraph, after the reader has already given up:

"Neither of the dismissal proposals has the 46 signatures. The majority needed for dismissal could be provided by the Democrats' MPs, who have not signed either proposal." (translated)

Thirteen hours of debate on two votes that, as everyone knows since the morning, the proposers cannot win on their own.

Six

None of the articles published today works out exactly how this adds up. The calculation is ours, from the official results of the 22 March election.

The National Assembly has 90 MPs: Svoboda 29, SDS 28, NSi-SLS-Fokus 9, SD 6, Democrats 6, Levica and Vesna 5, Resni.ca 5, plus two representatives of the national minorities.

The proposal against Speaker Zoran Stevanović was filed by Svoboda, SD and Levica. That is 29 + 6 + 5 = 40. Six short of 46.

Anže Logar's Democrats have exactly six MPs.

The proposal against Deputy Speaker Nataša Avšič Bogovič was signed by all MPs of SDS, NSi, SLS and Fokus, plus four Resni.ca MPs. That is 28 + 9 + 4 = 41. Five short of 46. The Democrats have six.

One party, six ballots, two dismissals. The first only just adds up with them, the second with one vote to spare.

And the Democrats are the only party that signed nothing. They did not sign the opposition's proposal, even though they are in a coalition with the party that filed the other one. They did not sign the proposal of their own coalition partners either.

The ballot nobody will see

Both votes will be secret. That is not a procedural detail, it is the whole story.

In a public vote, the record the next day would show which of Logar's six MPs did what. In a secret one, it never will. Six people will decide the fate of both offices in parliament, and no record of it will exist, neither for voters nor for their own coalition partners.

Thirteen hours of speeches ahead of a ballot that nobody will read.

A defence that undermines itself

Stevanović is accused of violating the constitutional order, taking part in the abuse of parliamentary procedure and failing to protect the constitutional rights of the opposition, all because the National Assembly did not order two opposition parliamentary inquiries.

According to the agency report, his defence is that he convened the extraordinary sessions with the requested items, and that the majority's decision to reject the agenda is not his responsibility.

In August, Levica co-coordinator Asta Vrečko answered that with a single fact:

"She stressed above all that he voted against the agenda on which the DZ would have set up an inquiry committee on Black Cube." (translated)

The majority he cites was not something that happened to him. He was part of it.

When the opposition parties proposed an advisory referendum on his dismissal, Stevanović replied:

"It is clear how the Speaker of the National Assembly is appointed, and such a form of advisory referendum is a farce." (translated)

On substance he is right. The Speaker is indeed dismissed by 46 votes in the chamber, not at the polling station. Today those votes will be counted, and by everything we know, there will not be 46.

The missing signature

The second proposal, the one against the Svoboda deputy speaker, was signed by Resni.ca. Four of its five MPs.

The fifth is the Resni.ca leader and DZ Speaker Zoran Stevanović, who at the end of August himself mentioned to Avšič Bogovič in the chamber that they might have to start collecting signatures for her dismissal.

"So for now the question remains open why Stevanović ultimately did not sign a proposal whose possibility he had publicly announced." (translated)

The Deputy Speaker herself replied like this:

"And now I am the problem. Because I do my job. Because I chair sessions by the rules. Because I point out violations." (translated)

There are three deputy speaker posts. By parliamentary practice, one belongs to the largest opposition group, and that is Avšič Bogovič's seat. Another is held by Danijel Krivec of SDS. The third by Franc Križan of the Democrats.

So the party that decides both dismissals today, and signed neither, already sits in one of the three deputy speaker chairs.

What was taken off the table a day earlier

All of this happens exactly one day after the coalition, SDS, NSi, SLS, Fokus and the Democrats, removed from the agenda the items on ordering parliamentary inquiries into the Black Cube affair and the circumvention of party financing rules. These are precisely the two inquiries that prompted the proposal to dismiss Stevanović in the first place.

On this withdrawal, RTV noted a detail worth reading twice:

"The withdrawal, proposed by the coalition parties SDS, NSi, SLS, Fokus and the Democrats, was also backed by the Resni.ca MPs, apart from DZ Speaker Stevanović." (translated)

In July he voted against the agenda with the inquiry. Yesterday, a day before the vote on his own head, he was the only Resni.ca MP who did not vote for withdrawing the same inquiry.

The coalition's explanation is that it must wait for the 11 October referendum on the amendment to the parliamentary inquiry law. Levica MP Nataša Sukič called it something else:

"the peak of political cynicism and a brutal attempt to silence the opposition and the truth" (translated)

This was the third time the inquiry committees were not set up.

What is missing from today's articles

Why there is a vote at all today. In August, Svoboda MP Matej Grah said when filing the initiative for an advisory referendum: "That is why we are ready to wait with the DZ vote on the proposal to dismiss Stevanović for the result of such a referendum." Today there is a vote. What happened to that initiative is not stated in any of the sources we have.

What the Democrats will do. None of the outlets asked them today, or none published the answer. The only party that can decide both dismissals on its own is quoted nowhere today.

How many signatures exactly are under which proposal. The agency says only that neither has 46. Our numbers, 40 and 41, are derived from the sizes of the parliamentary groups, not from counted signatures. An MP can break away from their group.

That last point is the only thing that will truly be new this evening. Not what anyone said for thirteen hours, but how many slips fell into the box and how many were in favour, with nobody knowing whose they were.