EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Bulgaria is entering a second lockdown. The entire education system is switching back to remote mode, restaurants and malls are closing, and even sporting events, which are without an audience anyway, are stopping. There are several conclusions from all this. The main one is that the comparison of running a country with driving a jeep has gained another dimension: shifting into reverse can be quite abrupt.
The other conclusions are less poetic and much more alarming. The situation in the health system seems to be really dire. The tens of thousands of sick people every week suggest hundreds or thousands of deaths in the next few months. The new decline in economic activity will make meaningless all forecasts so far about the economy and its potential recovery. Restaurants and non-food stores that failed to go bankrupt in the spring will get another chance in the winter – and even worse, they will miss the busiest days of the year, those before Christmas.
However, this is not what Bulgaria should be worried about. The real worry should come from the complete inadequacy in the management (or attempts to manage) of the crisis so far. Boyko Borisov's government has practically no idea what it is doing. There is no shortage of examples.
A day before Health Minister Kostadin Angelov announced the new measures, including the complete closure of the education system, schools were preparing for the return of in-person learning. Sofia Mayor and GERB Deputy Chair Yordanka Fandakova also spoke about the "phased return of students between grades 5 and 12."
The suspension of sporting events, which are already without an audience, is a completely pointless measure that seems to have been added out of habit since spring. Most professional football players, for example, have already overcome the coronavirus and do not endanger anyone by performing their profession. On the other hand, without professional sports by spring will certainly lead to a new wave of bankruptcies.
Until yesterday, Borisov was repeating that "there will be no closure." Now Borisov will probably repeat something else: that this is not a closure of the state, although it is exactly that. His words from Monday are that "we should not overdo any measure," which, of course, means absolutely nothing and is the most imprecise direction that can be given in the situation.
Angelov's argument that "we are not imposing a lockdown, but we hope that together we will impose it" sounds absurd and meaningless. The way the new measures were announced is unlikely to arouse anything other than anger among those who do not want a lockdown.
The reality is that Borisov does not have the right move, for which he alone is to blame. In March, the prime minister single-handedly decided to close the country with a minimum number of cases. The main argument then was that this is what they do in the West and that nothing is known about the infection. The problem is that now, when the infected are thousands, and the deaths per day are hundreds, no one has confidence in the government, even less in the attempts to impute personal responsibility to people. Until today, there was no logical argument why there was a closure then, and today - not. Today, there is no logical argument why yesterday a closure was unthinkable, and today - not. And for many people, there may be no change at all and they will continue to go outside. As they do today. If you don't believe it - go outside or look over the balcony. Life outside continues.
There are two big reasons for reaching this point. The first is that those in power have neither the capacity nor the trust to govern. The time between spring and autumn was used for nothing other than cheap political intrigue and explanations of why a resignation should not be submitted. The second is that the resignation was not submitted anyway, which means that elections are coming. And Borisov preferred not to stop the economy, especially before Christmas.
To his dismay, things have gotten out of control. The health system is effectively collapsing, the majority of the population doesn't care, and all you hear on TV, radio, and print media is news about the sick, the dead, and overcrowded ambulances and hospitals. And so at one point you have to back up while you're already driving at 100 km/h. Without knowing what's going to happen.
Borisov can only pray that the measures will work, because there is a huge chance that this will not happen, due to factors beyond his control. If the temperatures outside drop, the air becomes polluted, people continue to not comply with the measures, and there is no control again, it may even come to the extreme measure of the prime minister getting out of the jeep.
