My Orchids, Phalaneopsis. Three scandals cannot be whitewashed. Photo ET
Luxembourg Crisis. Mr. Juncker’s Fantasia - Genesis of a Downfall
I would characterize
Mr. Juncker’s career, that when he graduated from College where he had majored
as Prime Minister, he became Prime Minister. Of course it is a little
cartoonish, but it helps to understand the story. Being the Prime Minister at a
very young age carries some problems. Such as, what is your career perspective,
except to slide from boring reelection to boring reelection in a boring small
country? The therapy is a European ambition, in that vast field of unelected European
positions.
His dream was to become
the first European President. Mr. Sarkozy killed that. Maybe become President
of the European Commission? Not good enough. The second Prize was acceptable
though: President of the Euro Group, or “Mr. Euro”. He would cumulate this job
with his duties as Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Any military commander knows
that you can’t command the whole and also a part of the whole. Something had to
give, and that was to care about his Luxembourg duties. He governed
superficially as an absentee Prime Minister, something the Luxembourg voter
tolerated. Of course, if you don’t pay attention, you pay a price. In his case he
pays for a succession of scandals during his tenure.
The first scandal was a
real estate project combined with a "National Stadium" in a wetland zone.
Developers, politicians and environmentalists got into a brawl that killed the
project. An effort to investigate related threats and wrongdoings was voted down in
Parliament. Public opinion sizzled.
The second scandal was
the sale by Luc Frieden, Minister of Finance, of 35% of Cargolux, the national
all cargo airline to Qatar Airways for $117.5 million. Qatar also bought two
banks, KBL and BIL, and other arrangements were made for a rapprochement of Al
Jazeera with SES, the Luxembourg satellite company. Pricing and those strange alliances brought up suspicions, but an effort to
investigate wrongdoings was voted down again in Parliament. Public opinion
sizzled more.
Then emerged a third
scandal. Actually it started with a benign revelation by Mr. Juncker himself.
He revealed that about four years ago, the chief of SREL, the Luxembourg spying
agency, had secretly recorded a conversation both had. With the help of a
gadget disguised as a wrist watch. Mr. Juncker, the political boss of the
agency learned about it through a mole he had placed into the agency, but did
not take legal action. To me the story was broken by Mr. Juncker to distract
from scandal one and two, according to the wag the dog strategy, where you put
your kitchen on fire to distract from the fire in the garage. Parliament got
involved and lo and behold, didn’t dare to vote a third time against an
official inquiry. A Parliamentary investigation was set up. What was considered
as a low risk inquiry was however revealing very soon that the spying agency,
under benign neglect, had taken a life of its own. Feeding into that inquiry
were court proceedings in a 25 year old series of terrorist attacks on Luxembourg infrastructure, still unresolved but with suspicions that actually it was a plot
by security forces, including episodes of the spying agency’s involvement.
The cumulative effect
of those scandals have created an atmosphere of distrust in the government. The
Parliamentary inquiry about the spying agency’s wrongdoing is so damaging for
Mr. Juncker, its formal political chief, that the emerging consensus is that Mr.
Juncker has to go and that the present Christian Social / Socialist coalition
government will not survive.
The final outcome might
be known as of today. Though an outdated and murky Constitution makes it very
hard to predict which one of the many options it leaves open, will be adopted. A
free interpretation could be that Parliament be dissolved and new elections
held by October.
