The last two weeks have been a fairly quiet period. After a total chaos in January, where the Interior Minister as well as the Transportation Minister clearly failed to manage a serious crisis within their departments, it was followed by a soap opera performance, where the Prime Minister Fico successfully showed how a lawyer should never have behaved. Obviously, it did not bring him any Oscar and neither increased his political credibility. The storm suddenly calmed down, whereas now we enter the comedy stage.
While other governments are being controlled by weekly cabinet meetings, external audits by specially assigned state institutions, Slovakia's Prime Minister is conducting a repetitious ritual of visiting all individual Ministries, to check on his colleagues, whether they did their assignments.
I am truly curious how this goes in practice; Fico arrives, the respective Minister ushers him into his luxurious ante-chambre, where his long legged personal assistant brings the aromatic freshly brewed coffee. Immediately to business - there's much to do. Fico asks, about the achieved goals, any specific highlights, any areas of concern. Goes on a guided tour to shake hands with nicely dressed and trimmed staff. Shakes hand, a few mobile-pics to be taken for the family, and then after some hours of intense briefing off they go to a press conference.
Prime Minister Fico, with a nostalgic pathos of foregone times is generously hailing the achievements of another Ministry, which has truly fulfilled all its duties and goals. Even one case, a solemn "never before has this Ministry been managed as by the present Minister" as been pronounced. It reminds me slightly of teh Soviet-styled party monologues about fulfilling another 5-year-plan (while the whole economy was in complete shambles). I could not help but rolling in laughter, when seeing such pathetic non-information.
But apart from that, with our modern communications - where we shoot data through the virtual highways within fractions of a second to each other, why must a Prime Minister waste weeks of his time to go through this farce? And truly, there are enough serious problems, that should be addressed very urgently.
Well, it is after all election time, and not only has the present government proven to be far remote from being a serious and a professional government, this simply adds up to the whole show: Circus has come to town!
MS
Another well written piece Michael and yet again, if it were not so serious, it would indeed be very funny. Talking of circus's coming to town, how about this one in Topolcany http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUCCmgrJdNA This had many of the women in tears, and not all of them were tears of laughter, as the crude chauvenistic humour exhibited by these fine gentlemen almost defies belief.
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