Today, whether you like Janez Jansa personally or not, most people have no doubt, that for crisis management, he is the only choice.
I know that the title of this column will immediately cause an allergic reaction by the left oriented readers, because of mentioning of the God and Jansa. But we are already used to such reactions, especially in recent days. When we wonder, how many people will be buried in a week or two, the mainstream media and left-wing activists afford themselves a frontal attack on the new government. On a government, that has been given empty stores for protective equipment, disorganized health care system and a plan for emergency response only to the measles epidemic. So when people like Nina Pirnat and the like, paraded in front of the public, saying that we had nothing to fear, then we had neither protective equipment nor prepared health care system and a suitable national plan for emergency response.
Why is what I write very important and why it is not in any way a shift of blame to the previous government? Because, it is a fact. The previous government had known already for two weeks before the outbreak was declared, that is going to be very severe. So, did they order any protective gear? No. Did they order any respirators? No. Have they adapted a national plan to combat coronavirus? No. Therefore, it is justified to claim, that the previous government left us on dry. They knew that the situation will be bad. They may have hoped for no worse, but hope does not protect doctors from infection. Hope does not feed people; hope does not provide them with financial aid and when the whole country is closed.
Then a new government was sworn in. On examination, they found out that we had a health system that was barely functioning under normal conditions. We only remember the queues, the lack of medical staff, the lack of capacities and the beds. All this, all this system has had to be adjusted by the new government in just a few days and that to the worst epidemic of the last half century. They then looked at how many masks we had and found that the conditions are disastrous. There were good protective masks only around 1.700. If anyone thinks this is a big number, read the fact, that UKC Ljubljana alone needs 4.000 masks a week. There were about 24.000 ordinary surgical masks. Now ask yourself how many masks Slovenia needs per day if the mask, as demanded by those who threw the rifle at corn, is given to all doctors, medical staff, factory workers, public servants, police officers, soldiers and the media. We move around the figure of 400,000 masks a day. But we had only 24.000!
The new government only did as much in a week, as it had not done the last government in a year and a half. Why dare I say that? Because they had a government session every day, that lasted for hours. Sarac had a regular government sessions once a week, some were even correspondent and sessions lasted 15 minutes each. This just means that each political party of the former coalition was left to itself. Each was arranging its lines of gardens and Sarac did not care too much about what the others were doing, until they worked against him.
Well, today is different. The whole government acts in a coordinated way, with clear instructions, tasks and guidelines. In addition to all-day meetings at home and at European level, the Prime Minister also found time to visit town Metlika and Smarje pri Jelsah, where he was briefed about the current situation on the ground. In addition, the current government has adopted as many measures, laws and legislative proposals in seven days, as the previous government did not comply with, in a year and a half. And they work forward. The systems are slowly being placed on their feet and in the right place. Doctors, cops, paramedics, civil defence and others are all working like crazy. Slovenia is doing everything possible, to prevent a critical number of infections.
Even the critics of the government, except for the most radical ones, have begun to calm down. They all realized that the devil took the joke. They are also all aware that every other government would burn on the whole line. Under Sarac government we would have an Italian script or a Spanish script in one week. Those few budget recipients, who live off the attack on the right, are still raising their voices and calling for protests. But their number is decreasing, with the seriousness of the situation. Today, whether you personally like Janez Jansa or not, most people have no doubt, that for crisis management he is the only choice.
90 percent of all the people, except the most brain washed ones, are now happy to see, that the government is run by a man who has already taken us all through several times of crisis. Jansa has only this misfortune, to always come into government in the most ungrateful circumstances. He does his best, to minimize the situation and people still spit in his face. Would any of us be so crazy, about taking the fate of two million people into his own hands, at such times? Nobody. That is why it is right to give peace to the new government. We can argue later when the epidemic will be over!