Alena Schiller's budget madness.
The effort to turn seemingly isolated and often irresponsible political moves into sophisticated marketing ploys to maintain power is becoming more and more visible. And not only at the regional or municipal level, but also with some of the most exposed politicians and their offices. For example, the Minister of Transport, Vladimír Kremlík, gave a fine performance, promising literally mountains of mines regarding the construction of new motorways and first-class roads, but in no way reassuring drivers suffering from the poor quality of the existing road network and the dubious timing of repairs and maintenance work on the infrastructure. The Minister's crucial message, however, was the timing of the commencement of the works, and that too in the run-up to the elections. If we purposely ignore the news game surrounding the Ministry of Culture, we can more easily perceive the bubbling struggle over the budgets of the various ministries, where the party affiliation of the individual ministers clearly plays a role. The overall propaganda intent of the stronger of the tandem government coalition groups is also an obvious circumstance that easily overwhelms the real visions, perceptions of economic reality and the actual needs of ordinary Czechs. Worth mentioning are the failure to address pension reform despite the inexorable fact of an ageing population and an increase in the life expectancy, the dismal situation surrounding the financial provision of social services and a number of other shortcomings. The arguments made by the always unobtrusively elegant Minister Schiller, including the alleged failure to raise taxes, allude to the announced reform of the existing excise duty on cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. The increases range from 8 to 30 percentage points and are seemingly defensible on 'moral' grounds. However, the new revenue items in the state budget, which in a roundabout way rely on subtly stirring up envy and dividing society, include taxing lottery winnings, or abolishing the tax exemption for natural gas used to produce heat in residential buildings. Here, too, the ecological odor that the general introduction of the tax more than a decade ago contained is already disappearing. Neither are the tensions between the coalition partners and the known circumstances of the much weakened position of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Government very favourable to the quality of next year's budget. The fact that the self-aggrandising speeches of the hard-working captains of Czech politics are being sought wherever possible in order to continue to provide them with something to fill their voices with is logical and somewhat understandable. The problem remains that, despite the fact that taxpayers are spending more and more on the state coffers, the gratitude in the form of structural changes that respect the needs of ordinary people is not being given to society.