For a handful of euros

Did you see this? - one bald and tattooed inmate of the Penitentiary in Lipovica threw to the manager of the library, returning to him "Družba Pera Kvržica" and yesterday's newspaper, open to the news about new salaries for members of parliament and high government officials. "Plenković's salary," the bald man read, "will now be five and a half thousand euros."

"I saw," laughed heartily the head of the prison library, an older gray-haired guy with a strong southern accent, meticulously writing the date of Pera Kvržica's return on a small card. "By God it wasn't like that in my time."

By God, it wasn't like that in the better times of the library manager of the Penitentiary Home in Lipovice, seventy-one-year-old prisoner Ivo Sanader, whose father's name was Ante, born on June 8, 1953, who only fifteen years ago received only twenty thousand kuna for the same job as Plenković , barely two and a half thousand euros. Twenty thousand kuna, my godfather, so you stretch from the first to the first. And there are no paintings by Antun Motika under five thousand euros. Only a ticket to the opera in Verona is three thousand kuna, dinner is still as much, so you poor thing watch "Cavalleria rusticana".

It may be funny to you and Sanader, but we know that a sense of humor is the only one of all the senses that the multifaceted Prime Minister Andrej Plenković is not blessed with. There was nothing funny, nor should there have been, when Plenković announced a dramatic salary increase of sixty to seventy percent for members of parliament and high-ranking government officials, the personnel department calculated that under the new rules, ministers would have four to five thousand euros in salary, and Prime Minister Plenković then explained at a press conference that "the basics for officials have not changed for years", that "minimum and average salaries have also increased", that "after responsible management of finances, entry into Schengen and all these achievements, it is time to ask of ministerial salaries on the agenda", and that "our salaries should be in the context of the Croatian economic and social moment", and after all, dead serious, he added that one of the reasons for increasing salaries is to attract people to engage in politics, because "it's time that those who stand for election and who are appointed to political positions have a more adequately valued work".

There was nothing funny about it, and there was nothing funny, nor should it have been, when in the end Plenković cited the fight against corruption as perhaps the key argument for increasing MP and ministerial salaries! Not a single muscle on his fat cheeks twitched, so in a magnificent finale, the prime minister called the salary increase nothing less than an anti-corruption measure. In those very words: "We believe that salary increases are an anti-corruption measure."

This was not the case in the time of his predecessors: the head of the prison library in the Lipovica Penitentiary, you understand, would not have asked that Hernadij for ten million euros if his work had been "more adequately valued" and if someone was "after the responsible management of finances and all achievements put the issue of his salary on the agenda", and certainly "in the context of the Croatian economic and social moment" - that, in short, he had the salary that God commands, and could go to Verona as a gentleman, and not to be a caucus scratching his head with the director They swim, so that he has to sell the largest pharmaceutical company in the country to the Americans in order to watch "Cavalleria rusticana" and "Pagliacci" with Jose Cura in peace in Verona's Arena.

Now.

Aside from the fact that Plenković exposed the matter to the end and cited money, i.e. a good salary, as the reason for engaging in politics. The time of enthusiasm for noble ideals, fervent patriotism, common good, public interest and other anachronistic ideas from the nineteenth century is long gone, "those who go to the polls" do not go on this adventure to change the world - one does not go into politics to change municipality or county, let alone the world - one goes into politics the way one used to go into any secure and decently paid civil service. This thing is even understandable, the Croats did not invent it: in Strasbourg, out of seven hundred and twenty members of the European Parliament, at least seven hundred of them are there only because of the basic monthly salary of eight thousand euros, rich health insurance, three hundred and fifty euros per diem, five thousand euros monthly for office expenses and another thirty thousand euros in the budget for personal assistants.

The European Parliament has thus become the most tempting and sought-after political palace, every five years young and not-so-young people from all over Europe jostle for one of the seven hundred and twenty seats, connections are made and phones ring, lavish gifts are offered for a high place on the electoral list, so it is not it's no different in little Croatia, where only twelve lucky people get the chance to be carried away by noble ideals, warm patriotism, general good and public interest for eight thousand euros a month.

As in all other branches - just as everything that knows how to do anything for a living fled to Germany and Ireland, so there are no cleaners, bricklayers, waiters, taxi drivers and nurses in Croatia anymore - so they run away with their bellies on top of their belts for bread on top of cakes and everyone who doesn't know how to do anything, desperately looking for a job at a baustel in Strasbourg. Just as cleaners in Croatia today work for fifteen or twenty euros an hour, so also representatives, ministers, prime ministers and presidents are attracted by salaries of four, five or six thousand euros, just to stay here and not run away to the European Parliament, where they the sun of another's sky will not warm who warms this, where there are Greek morsels of bread, where there is no one's own and where there is no brother.

As an aside, I said, that: we knew that even before Plenković, in a fit of honesty, admitted that they were only there for the money. To you, God knows, it may seem like four or five thousand euros and God knows what kind of money - in Strasbourg they get twice as much - but you must know that we are talking about people who know absolutely nothing about anything and who, if it were not for politics and the HDZ- and, thank him where he heard and where he didn't, they were overjoyed with three hundred euros of social assistance for a beer in front of the supermarket and a ticket in the betting shop. Another thing from Plenković's brutally honest presentation is much more interesting to me - his shocking admission that all those in the Government and the Parliament are just petty thieves after all.

"We believe that the salary increase is an anti-corruption measure." The prime minister, you understand, did not find it appropriate to consider, I have no idea, an increase in the salaries of all civil servants, tens of thousands of unknown teachers, doctors, policemen or municipal court judges as an anti-corruption measure, but he considers an increase in the salaries of members of parliament, ministers, the president of the Republic and himself as an anti-corruption measure. in all for a hundred or two people very well known to him and to us, the cream of HDZ and Croatian politics. Plenković knows them all, he has more than half of them from Hadeze in his mobile phone, and when he says that the increase in their salaries is an "anti-corruption measure", he - trust him - knows what he is talking about.

Which is one thing. Plenković explained that the only chance to prevent bribery and corruption among them - a slim chance, but still a chance - is to increase their salaries by two or two and a half thousand euros, and thus publicly admitted for the first time that all of them are basically just thieves short for a few thousand euros. Those few thousand euros, however, is another matter.

Except, of course, if you really believe that that piece of paper with seven zeros and an offer that cannot be refused will be returned by a future health worker in Marcellin with "no, thank you, I have a salary of five and a half thousand euros and I don't need your change". , an anti-corruption measure with a two thousand euro higher salary means either that everyone in HDZ and Plenković's government are a) petty thieves, or that b) everyone in HDZ and Plenković's government are petty thieves. There is, of course, a theoretical possibility - a thin one, but still a possibility - that they are not. In that case, either all other Croats, including you who are reading this, are c) imbeciles, or it is only d) Andrej Plenković.

And Andrej Plenković, let me tell you immediately under full material and criminal responsibility, is not an imbecile. He just knows what kind of henchmen, pickpockets, and scumbags he's dealing with.

Once upon a time, during Sanader's golden age of the HDZ and the Republic of Croatia, bribery and corruption among thieves in the government could be solved by increasing the salaries of ministers and prime ministers by ten million euros. Today, bribery and corruption are solved with a raise of two fucking euros. So much for the "context of the Croatian economic and social moment".

The head of the prison library in Lipovica Penitentiary has been laughing, they say, for three days now.

(portalnovosti.com)