Yes, this letter is to you, Ramūnas Karbauskis, Agnė Širinskienė, Saulius Skvernelis and all others, who still think that you have authority. By the way, you no longer have authority. It’s just an illusion. Yes, you hold office. You can vote on laws, propose ever more outlandish projects. But you no longer have authority, Tomas Janeliūnas wrote in the letter.
You are doing everything to retain authority. You are desperately clinging to it as if it were your salvation. But you no longer have it. It is only a matter of time when you will lose your offices as well. But you lost authority already at some point in the past.
This is because authority is not in offices. Authority is the ability to perform meaningful work in the name of the country and the nation. You forgot this.
In 2016, when you formed your cabinet, people had many expectations. And you truly had goals. Perhaps some of the approaches were not particularly good, but one could feel that you believed in your goals.
Rokas Masiulis took to draining such swamps as Lietuvos Geležinkeliai [Lithuanian Railways]. Tomas Tomilinas finally made sure that children’s money is allocated and would at least a little aid family experiencing the most hardship. Vytautas Bakas took the fight to MG Baltic and all of the reeking corruption that has enveloped politics. You finally allocated adequate funding for state defence and almost reached 2% of GDP in financing. Jurgita Petrauskienė was perhaps the first to take to tackle the challenge of higher education institution mergers. Žygimantas Vaičiūnas prepared a finally ambitious energy strategy and reached agreements on synchronisation. You even began to reduce alcohol accessibility. Ok, some of the methods really were absurd though.
Strange decisions
Ripping out pages from foreign magazines that featured advertisements for expensive whiskey looked absolutely idiotic. But it could at least be somewhat understood – you wanted to seriously tackle the problem of alcohol consumption. So be it.
You held authority then. You had goals and you pursued them. Better or worse, but you did what you thought had to be done.
But at some point, you wavered. You broke down and lost sight of authority.
Perhaps it happened when you failed to expel from Seimas Mindaugas Bastys, who was in breach of his oath. Because a part of the former Social Democrats looked more necessary to you than the Constitution and conscience. Perhaps when you realised that the old “beaver” gang might be more important in maintaining a majority in Seimas than the prospects of operating based on more honourable politicians, who in the end wouldn’t be servile to you. And thus, you became marionettes for the “beavers”.
You forgot your fundamental goals. The only goal that was left was to remain in office. Gediminas Kirkilas and Juozas Bernatonis’ “moustached beaver” gang took you hostage. They convinced you to change party financing regulations so that the new breakaway party would somehow stay afloat up to some elections.
You were infected with a deadly virus, which left you as the “walking dead”. You have long ceased to care about how to reduce social inequality. You no longer care for either education or healthcare. You only care about yourselves and Social Democrat Labour, who attached themselves to your body, as if a parasite, unable to survive independently.
AND YOU EVENTUALLY BECAME PARASITES YOURSELVES.
Honourable people have abandoned you. Vytautas Bakas withdrew. You expelled Rokas Masiulis yourselves. Yes, the same R. Masiulis, whom S. Skvernelis threw in to quell the teachers’ strikes, himself hiding in the cabinet offices. Is that how a leader acts? Only a conformist, afraid for his ratings, acts like that.
From then on, S. Skvernelis lost authority and was left as a common political parasite. When the teachers’ crisis had to be managed, R. Masiulis was greatly needed. But when your supposed majority began to crumble, you lightly replaced R. Masiulis. WITH WHAT?? That post-Soviet clown? Unable to speak any foreign language, but Russian, dining away for others’ money!? We have not had a minister like J. Narkevičius for perhaps twenty years now, but you still think that it was necessary???
What happened to you that in the name of your offices, you invited Waldemar Tomaszewski into the coalition?? Did you ever care about the country? He isn’t even Polish, just an elementary soviet fool because no self-respecting Pole would ever wear a ribbon of St. George or praise the Soviets, who massacred Poles in Katyn. To W. Tomaszewski, all of this is “jerunda” [doesn’t matter], his Russian jargon has long overshadowed his Polish honour. And you invited such a figure to the coalition?
All of your recent steps are desperation. You manipulate legislative projects and seek to change election procedure. Is this in the name of the country??? In the name of democracy?? Don’t try to pretend that by reducing the electoral bar to 3%, you are caring for democracy! You pitifully care for various pieces of political refuse, starting with Social Democrat Labour, the puteikists and kamblevičists because without these parasites of the state, you cannot imagine being able to retain your offices.
YOU HAVE BECOME PARASITES OF THE COUNTRY!
Instead of working in the name of country and nation, you have been mired in a personal vendetta. Is Viktoras Pranckevičius the biggest state problem, to the point of needing so much effort and energy to replace him? Is Austėja Landsbergienė the big problem of Lithuanian education to the point where you absolutely must change private school financing procedures and then everything will “recover”? Or perhaps the Conservatives are the demonic power, with whom you must fight to the end, forgetting everything?
WAKE UP! The Conservatives are themselves only buoyed by the same 15-17% of public support, inertially engaged with a never-ending marathon of mockery, but long without any action plan of what to do. You are chasing after demons conjured up by your own minds, akin to crazed and feverish patients.
You no longer have any intellectual resources and ideas. You no longer have ANY meaningful idea of how to prepare at least a somewhat decent looking budget.
It’s not a matter of lacking funds. Just look again at the proposals of the National Audit Office, the IMF and all other experts – they all clearly point to where the money is. In the blooming exemptions, endless “animal farm”, meaninglessly wasted funds.
You did not have any will to take up real tax reform and place more tax on those, who pay immorally low taxes off of their revenue and property. But now you cry crocodile tears that there’s no money for teachers, doctors, lecturers and most other civil servants. At the same time though, you find 300 thousand euro to repair the prime minister’s road.
THIS IS A MOCKERY OF ALL OF US!
If you have no will to seriously perform budget reform, then why the hell did you enter government??? To repair roads???
Real authority figures do not do this. Only parasites do.
It is namely you, who are parasites of this country right now.
That’s not a government.
Resign as soon as possible and quit draining the country’s energy for your lowly and dishonourable needs, which revolve only around how to remain in office as long as possible!
Tomas Janeliūnas is a professor at Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science.
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