/ world today news/ “I’m looking and I can’t believe my ears”, as one of the most attractive admirers of the right-wing governments in our country said. For several months, propaganda material on the subject of smuggling has been shown on television.
Smuggling is bad, he teaches us. It tells us not to buy and use contraband if we want to have a good life, shiny and wide streets, clean nature and security. Solving the smuggling problem in this way looms as the key to a bright future, and that concern is ours, because we will cut down smuggling sharply by stopping buying it, whatever that means.
“Yes, but no”, as an equally convinced apologist of the right used to say. Because if we think about what message is hidden behind the artistic development of the government, we will see that the visible messages are far less effective than the invisible ones. The story is a bit like the one with the invisible shot from the cinema.
On first placeairing such a clip is a de facto admission by this administration that it is incapable of dealing with border control and customs clearance. “The state can’t solve the problem of smuggling, so you, the citizens, solve it” is the first invisible message of this clip. The transfer of a problem of this magnitude from the government to the people is not only puzzling, but it rightly begs the question, do we even need a government that doesn’t know how to deal with it?
On second placelooking at the campaign material, we can’t help but ask ourselves whether the cynicism of this administration has not reached new dimensions that we did not know about before. How is it possible to expect the people of the poorest country in the European Union, whose average income is only about 350-400 euros per month, who are struggling to feed their families and have no meaningful prospect of living, to stop buying smuggled goods. So, if the government is unable to deal with it, and if at the same time it has allowed poverty and unemployment to reach these proportions, does this government have the moral right to wag the finger at us from the television screen for the fact that today the poor have preferred to save some leva? It seems to me that it is exactly the opposite – a responsible government should sit down and work to ensure a better life and future for Bulgarians and, only if the Bulgarian has this life, teach him how not to stimulate with search for contraband. In this line of thinking, the hidden message here should be something like: “Bulgarians, actually the government doesn’t really care… about you, so it doesn’t matter how you live and whether you want your life to be better.”
On third place it seems inevitable that we should also reflect on the elementary skills of government to set priorities. Without these skills, there is no way to be sure that someone knows where they are leading us.
Think how those several hundred thousand working poor feel, who were deprived of the opportunity to recover 408 BGN from the tax. You are struggling to make ends meet, and September 15 is approaching – the beginning of the school year. We need money for notebooks, textbooks, clothes for the winter… These are the same 408 BGN that were taken from you and are now being spent on unknown things. This could be the money that financed this clip. I.e. the poorest paid to have a video made for them encouraging them to prefer the expensive…
Take fuels for example. How is it constantly happening in our country that every increase in oil prices on the world markets automatically leads to an increase in the price of fuel, and every decrease in the world price, even close to double, results in nothing more than a series of interviews with experts, which explain to us that there is no such dependence that a reduction in wholesale prices leads to a reduction in retail prices? At least in Bulgaria, such regularity has been missing for several years. The only thing this administration came up with years ago was to freeze prices at their peak, so as to ensure the maintenance of apparently cartel conditions in the fuel market on the backs of us all. And that our Commission for the Protection of Competition cannot deal with cartel agreements, so we need help from Europe.
Imagine you are a small farm dairy farmer watching this clip? Your animals are starving, there is no market for your milk, and the purchase price of both meat and milk has hit rock bottom. Because of Russia’s sanctions and the ban on importing Bulgarian products into its territory. You look at a shiny reality that is foreign to you and you think: well, yes, well, but the cheap imported dairy products that flood our market are subsidized by European countries, aren’t they? Isn’t importing them at these ridiculously low prices also a kind of smuggling, not in the narrow sense of course? Although not prohibited by law, it is morally reprehensible and the rebuke is even stronger due to the inaction of the government to ensure that the Bulgarian manufacturer receives compensation for the losses it suffers from Russia’s sanctions. Because there are other member states where governments are making efforts to mitigate the effect of sanctions on their small producers. And there are those who openly take a position against the apparently ineffective and short-sighted policy of sanctions.
There is no way that this non-standard policy is a consequence of some meaningful national priorities. So, in the end, which is more important, not buying contraband, or the government making it so that you have no incentive to do so? And so the following hidden message to the people emerges: “Citizens, your government is completely incapable of defining and defending nationally responsible priorities, and in an open and honest tone shares its shortcoming by playing the clip in question several times a day.”
It is inexplicable enough to be raised in an independent problem, the fourth in a row, that against the background of the Bulgarian reality, someone’s head gave birth to the genius idea of making an apparently expensive clip and playing it on all kinds of television for a long enough time. It still seems to me that those few hundred thousand could have found a better use. For example – to better equip checkpoints, to stimulate customs officials to be more vigilant and to improve control and discipline in their activities. Yes, a sum of such size will not solve all of Bulgaria’s problems. However, how do you explain to people that at the same time as this spending you cut and froze 14 social rights, that you took money from the working poor in a rather morally questionable way by canceling their ability to get their income tax back, that you voted against progressive taxation and saddled generations with multibillion-dollar loans…
The hidden message of the clip from this perspective is that it is clearly not so much about solving a specific problem, but rather about spending significant funds to serve someone’s interests.
Things will not change as long as our rulers demonstrate such an attitude of cynicism and irresponsibility towards their own people; while they spend our money in this irresponsible way and don’t hide that they don’t care at all… enya. Yes, I know that there are elections coming up and for some the airing of this clip must be important, but that someone is not the people. At least not the 99% whose problems I wrote about above. And not the idealess and passive appeal to them to stop buying contraband against the background of the political color of GERB is the way to make their lives better. Therefore, my dear reader, survive as you can – living conditions as created by the government are those that will best guide you in your choice between contraband and legal.
#managers #pour #cynicism
