Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš said in the “TV Rīta panorāma” on March 24: “At the moment, I predict that we will end the state of emergency on this date [April 6], but this does not mean that the pandemic, various restrictions or safety measures will end. The state of emergency is now more of a legal rather than a practical concept."
Where is the lie here? Did he say something wrong? Unfortunately, yes. Extending or not extending an emergency is currently an extremely practical concept, and Kariņš knows it perfectly well. This practicality is reflected in the fact that the state of emergency forces the government to compensate a lot and to make various allowances, which might be stopped after the end of this state of emergency. So the "practicality" of this decision is so great that it's hard to even imagine a bigger one.
It is very unfortunate that, when speaking on television, the Prime Minister did not clearly define what it means to lift the state of emergency if all the restrictions remain in place? Will downtime benefits continue to be paid in the exact same way as during an emergency? Will bonuses for working with high-risk people remain? Kariņš should have answered these questions precisely, even if they were not directly asked to him because thousands of people are worried about this lack of information and uncertainty. What exactly will change in practical terms on April 7? If nothing changes, then you should have said so, not continue to keep society in the fog of ignorance.
Unfortunately, the government and its leader do not answer these questions, but instead the government has distributed a completely hollow video roll in terms of content, in which three young, cheerful people, in stylish apartments with modern laptops on the table, urge people to hold on a little more, to endure restrictions and not to complain about them. Satisfaction radiates from their faces and it becomes clear that everything is fine with them and they are ready to "endure" as long as they need to. The commercial was shot in cooperation with the Environmental Film Studio.
I do not know how much the creators of this product have received for it, but it is clear that the state of emergency and restrictions have only benefited these people. Not only have they not lost their income because of the expense of the pandemic, on the contrary - increased it.
For them, as for the ones who ordered, created, accepted this video, the many people who actually suffer from the restrictions do not exist at all. For them, the whole society is like these three young people, whose only concern is that they want to party, but they can't and they have to avoid meeting friends (although it is doubtful that anyone really does that).
They are by no means the only ones who can be considered beneficiaries of the pandemic. Furthermore, it is not just about those who benefit financially. For almost the whole bureaucracy, this is a time when not much can be done, visitors can't be accepted, but at the same time, the remuneration has not decreased by a cent. In many cases, if there has been an opportunity to get "Covid money", it has even increased.
Covid restrictions are also very beneficial to the ruling political class. One might think that nothing prevents the vaccinated Saeima deputies from regularly attending the Saeima sittings under normal circumstances in the house on Jēkaba Street exactly as written in the rules of procedure. However, it is more advantageous for the ruling coalition to hold remote sittings where virtually no serious action (debate) takes place. Parliamentarism has been reduced to pure formalism.
Even before the state of emergency and the introduction of overarching restrictions, I wrote that there is a large population around the world who benefit from strict quarantine restrictions. I would like to quote myself, because not only have these findings not lost their relevance but, on the contrary, they have been fully confirmed in practice: “These [those who benefit from the restrictions] are all people whose income does not depend on the results of their work. According to experts, about 30% of all humanity belongs to this group.
These are people who get paid, no matter what they do or how they do it. That is absolutely the whole bureaucracy, because from the lowest level of civil servants to the Prime Minister and the President, these people receive a fixed salary, regardless of how well or poorly they do their job. But it is not just about the bureaucracy of the state apparatus. This group also includes social and corporate bureaucracy. Various project writers, grant hunters and gatherers, employees of large companies and others. Covid and its restrictions are a great reason for excuses about why one or another job has not been finished or is not being done. The stricter the restrictions, the easier it is to find the reason why the works are stumbling.
After all, all these workers receive a salary on a regular basis, regardless not only of the results of their work, but also of the number of consultations physically held or paperwork completed. Money can be loosened under the guise of Covid, and it is already the eternal dream of bureaucrats and various managers. Given that much (perhaps most) of this bureaucracy does the kind of work whose sudden absence would not even be noticed, this layer is actually parasitizing at the expense of the rest of society.”
From this long-winded quote, I would like to highlight the following as a key sentence: "Money can be loosened under the guise of Covid, and it is already the eternal dream of bureaucrats and various managers." It is this dream of being able to split millions, billions and even trillions on a global scale that is also the main reason why a certain section of society is so keen to defend these restrictions. The tighter the restrictions, the looser the distribution of money.
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