SOMEONE ELSE

Service is service, fluff is fluff

Doctors, judges and university professors belong to the cream of the public sector in Croatia, but they are often a significant threat to its functioning. All three professions significantly use the benefit of sitting in two armchairs each - public and private. At the same time, through their professional guilds and socio-political influence, they carefully ensure that these lucrative opportunities are not jeopardized

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Photo: Shutterstock
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

There is something politically very significant that binds doctors, judges and university professors in Croatia. This is their status on the labor market, and their specific relationship to the public sector. Those occupations were elite in ancient times, along with a few others. Contemporary opportunities have set them apart from all other lucrative jobs.

Namely, the doctor, judge and professor here have the opportunity to sit in two armchairs each - public and private. Moreover, they carefully regulate this benefit through their professional guilds and strong influence on state legislative and executive authorities. In the end, such a chimerical position of the narrowest social elite reflects a certain contradiction of the system. But first, let's take a look at the situation in each of the mentioned professions individually, for the sake of a more precise reduction to the common denominator.

Bilocation

It is common knowledge that doctors from Croatian public institutions work in parallel in various private clinics and practices. Their fuch was somewhat hindered during the more difficult periods of the current pandemic, but not finished. Since they are their own bosses, and sector ministers and hospital directors are often recruited from among them, there is no one to put an end to the established practice of bilocation.

The ability to physically appear in multiple places is the only way to perform two such jobs at once. It is not easy to be a doctor in any edition, let alone two simultaneously. If they don't rule the paranormal world, that means one of those two jobs is simply being neglected. It's no secret that, because the Croatian public health sector chronically suffers from a lack of highly qualified workforce, i.e. doctor. Not only those who emigrated across the border. Those who are still regularly employed in our public hospitals are also missing.

It's not a secret, as we said, and everyone knows too well that a huge number of doctors in Croatia postpone their work duties in their home institution, in order to properly perform those at the counter. Private institutions would not even exist in such a small market, or would be counted on the fingers, if the public sector did not maintain large staff on a permanent salary and mandatory benefits.

Also, not to reproduce it through study, specialization, experience. However, only the private sector prospers in this way, while everything else is supported mostly only as a substrate for that interest. Of course, the relationship is unsustainable in the long term for both public health and public financial health. That's why every now and then some initiative appears to end an impossible situation, but as a rule it fails, i.e. obstructs. We saw the last example at the end of last year, with the draft amendments to the Law on Health Care.

Then, for a short time, a provision appeared in the draft that finally forbids doctors from significantly doubling their work engagement. Soon she disappeared without a trace, without explanation, and everything went back to the way it was. The private owners of health institutions rubbed their hands, the doctors heaved a sigh of relief, the lobbies retreated back into the shadows.

Okoth

In recent weeks, we have witnessed a similar reaction in the judicial profession. The new president of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia asked all judges of county and high courts to submit an account of their extrajudicial work and paid activities. The attention of the wider audience was immediately attracted by their impressive mass resistance. The determination with which the prebendary, similar to the feudal clergy with a guaranteed income from the endowment, defends their state service was also impressive.

Whether they work in consulting or education or arbitration, Croatian judges do not want outsiders to have an insight into them, not even the heads of the very top of the state-judicial vertical. This concerns not only the data on the amounts of fees, but also the potential direct conflict of interest. So far, the judges' lobby resisted their own authorities, therefore, in the name of a stronger material status of the industry as a whole.

The endangered status of society as a whole is not so much in their hearts, but they are definitely not alone in that point of view. In addition to the mentioned doctors, university professors also found themselves in the same separate community or joint separate unit. More precisely, teachers at universities in a wider range, because they also have a chance for a job in the private higher education sector, for example. assistant professors. Not to mention the medical faculty staff who often work in hospitals. However, no one, not even the competent ministry, collects data on how many jobs someone is engaged in. The regulations are determined by the universities themselves, each for themselves, and they do not keep statistics at all.

As in the previous two examples, it is generally known that key actors abuse such privilege abundantly. At the expense of their parent public institutions, of course, but not exclusively in the private sector. They secure their extra income under the auspices of other public universities or polytechnics in a city a few hours' drive away.

Cynicism

Obviously, public institutions or even cities themselves are involved in this game of increasing the profits of individuals, in competition with each other. With their universities and hospitals, they themselves thus grow into market subjects, dictating a peculiar political rhythm to their own staff in the enumerated professions. A competition like that can claim to be more powerful than them, and mostly they are the ones with better starting positions and conjunctures, but also arrive weaker. Some cities are therefore condemned by the market to a slow and reliable collapse.

The market, it is evident, cannot do anything without public resources, and a freer spirit would call it parasitism. Doctors and judges and professors behave exactly as they are accused of doing by notorious crooks, or else the workers from myths and legends about the dead socialism of these areas. Workers who allegedly did not hold to the acquired political values, and tragically squandered them over time.

It is intriguing to realize that our crème de la crème manifests a pronounced socialist mentality with the label of arrogant self-centeredness, while workers since the end of the last century have increasingly acquired the (neo)liberal, even suicidal one. Be that as it may, on the example of these three professions, it is evident that the formerly most prominent positions in state systems were cynically used to usurp the public interest from private sources. That is, precisely those in which the state, even in the West, once had the main say on the place and scope of service.

(bilten.org)

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(Opinions and views published in the "Columns" section are not necessarily the views of the "Vijesti" editorial office.)