Some say dishonesty is the worst. I disagree. When someone is putting on a front, they’re showing that the other person is important to them. It’s worse when it gets to the point where the other person isn’t worth pretending to be. In political disputes, this means that one side has accumulated so much power that it can completely ignore the feelings of the other. They no longer have to waste time trying to manipulate, trying to influence it. So you’re saying you’re going to rebel? Clown! Poor bastard! I’ll spit in your face and you won’t do anything.
That’s how we can read the allowance for the president’s wife. 100,000 crowns a month for personal expenses. That’s about three times a worker’s salary. Yes, this is the lady who made her living under communism by making sure the army was full of convinced communists. The proposal comes at a time when everything is being cut, when pensions are being cut by extraordinary means and even disability benefits are being withdrawn. And when thousands of people are being thrown out of work. In the half-billion-dollar budget of the President’s office, this is actually lost, and if the money had been quietly allocated to Mrs Pavlova, no one would have noticed. But the pomp! It’s a spit in the face.
Fanatical supporters of the current regime will have no problem with that, of course. Of course, they don’t mind that the money goes to a person who hasn’t gone through any selection process, hasn’t won any elections, has no other merits…she’s just a relative of the monarch. Just like in the old feudal world that was once swept away by a wave of bourgeois revolutions. Being related to the king is enough.
Most will be furious or sigh sadly. Neither will do them any good. But I hope it doesn’t end there. That we will regularly learn how much the President spends on jewelry, on perfume, and on restaurants that those who pay for it cannot afford even once in their lifetime. How much her latest model cost. Particularly parents of children for whom there is no medicine after the latest austerity measures will be pleased.
The power elite can do anything, all the people have left is quiet anger. But that’s only part of the story. The other part says that sooner or later there will be a counter-elite who will take advantage of the popular anger. Already, let it be.