Hey Mr. Boc, them Bulgarians are laughing at our financial crisis!

Hey Mr. Boc, them Bulgarians are laughing at our financial crisis!

Yet another one of our illusions has bit the dust: Romania now does badly in the "at least my neighbors are doing worse" political/economic indicator. Until now, whenever somebody complained about how hard we have it here, he was immediately bombarded with examples of nearby countries. But Bulgaria just "went for our jugular". The Prime Minister of our neighbors down south boldly stated that Bulgaria will face its economic woes better than Romania. And to make it all worse, the important Mr. Baker, the head of the IMF mission for Bulgaria and Romania, said he's right, declaring that Sofia has already entered a period of economic recovery. This is devastating for some politicians whom only a few years ago would get publicly incensed that the West is putting our country in the same pot with the preserved tomato producer country. It's like... the crisis has just started here and the Bulgarians, led by active Prime Minister Boiko Borisov have already gone through the worst of it all?!? What's more serious is that after cutting 25% of salaries, Romanian state employees and teachers will have wages smaller than their counterparts across the Danube. Worst off are doctors, who will be making 27% less than Bulgarians.

The explanation for the phenomenon is fairly simple: from the point of view of anti-crisis measures, we will for years be trailing behind the Bulgarians, who were more resistant to political demagogy. They didn't cut salaries, they froze them; but they didn't touch taxes, which would have affected private enterprise. As a matter of fact, 20 of the adopted anti-crisis measures are from trade unionists and businesspersons. Instead, they did everything we're talking of doing and not doing. For example, in Romania, Berceanu spoke of overtaxing those with powerful cars, and nothing happened. The Audi Q7 is the Dacia Logan of the political class; let's just be happy politicians didn't vote subsidies to buy them. On the other hand, Bulgarians have long since adopted overtaxing vehicles that have more than 150 HP. They proceeded with increasing the retirement age for women, as the European Commission recommends, while our Government is taking opposite steps and preparing to lower it. They slightly increased excise taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and fuels and didn't look at combating contraband as a budgetary resource to be used someday, we don't know when.

Practically, Emil Boc is a Prime Minister for small reforms, more suitable to a city hall secretary than the head of a government. Recently, Boc triumphantly spoke of how he reduced the fuel quota for some public institutions, as if that was some great anti-crisis measure. Even here the Bulgarians operated simpler and more efficiently, by directly reducing the number of work cars. In just one day their Parliament was deprived of 40 of its limousines, so fuel consumptions went down, expenses with repairs, drivers, etc., went down too. The head of the institution, a Bulgarian version of Geoană, drives around in a ten year old BMW and he doesn't brag about it. But Emil Boc, Videanu, Udrea, aren't even now crisis ministers. They remain politicians stuck in sterile disputes with the opposition, and keep saying "but you stole more!". It's alright, Mr. Boc, you're right: the Social Democrats and the National Liberals, they were thieves and incompetents, but this has nothing to do with the fact that you're supposed to be doing something, now! Wake up! Bulgaria may have surpassed us, but Albania is coming strong behind.

Intră în comunitatea Facebook Gândul, locul unde ziarul vorbeşte cu tine