Political scientist Filips Rajevskis: Government is doing plastic surgery through a distorted mirror

"For now, the speed of vaccination here is deplorable. This slow pace will have serious economic consequences. In addition, there are many problems with which vaccine to use, which vaccine has been approved, which is not, and so on. Together, they show the reasons why Minister Viņķele is leaving. The situation once again proves the axiom: people who fundamentally fail in elections must not be made ministers,” says Filips Rajevskis, co-owner of the public relations agency Mediju Tilts and political scientist. About this and much more - in today's interview.

It is said that you, as part of the National Guard, took part in curfew raids with the police for three nights. How did it go?

People were disciplined. I saw only one real offender, and he himself was so scared and unhappy that he did not even qualify for punishment. In general, I concluded that society is obedient. Possibly because it may be afraid of penalties and aware of the risks, but overall the result is good.

It is not clear to many why such a multi-night curfew was needed, when we know that it is only the night from 31 December to 1 January that people walk around and party.

I think it was more because of young people. They are more likely to meet up. And not just the one night you mentioned... A long vacation is the perfect time to meet up. And if everyone keeps meeting up, the infection numbers go up.

A much crazier gathering occurred when, a few days before Christmas, our government said that large groups of goods would be banned immediately.

Of course. Shortly afterwards - an outbreak of infection. The gathering rate was increased artificially. It was not possible to drive around Riga, the traffic jams were huge, there were no free parking spaces by the shops. I do not understand the logic of government decision-making... What was normal and adequate was to close British flights. It would have been normal for the government to make a decision in the evening to close the shops the very next morning. And that's it. There would be no crowding for two days.

And what about the list of banned/permitted goods that was composed by the current government? It is, to put it mildly, incomprehensible. On December 28, I sent 12 specific questions to the State Chancellery. Nine days later, I received a response worthy of the Soviet era - an example of formalism. No specific answers! Can this be called normal communication?

Let's not forget that there are many communication specialists in the State Chancellery. But, in my opinion, it works like this: the more communication specialists there are, the worse the quality of communication is. I think it would be normal to determine: these shops are open, but these - close. It is not like we just have grocery stores. We have mixed stores: food plus other goods. And here the problems begin. Rimi is open, but the adjacent Drogas does not sell food, although the assortment intersects: both have both socks and dishcloths. If Drogas is banned from selling dishcloths, but Rimi is allowed, Drogas will be able to go to court - a competition case. That, in my opinion, is the only explanation for all the nonsense with these lists*. To be equivalent, Drogas must put a box of milk on its stands and sell it. But I don't understand: why can't it be explained to people? Maybe there is some other logic...

Your logic of these prohibitions is too clever. And people will never - never! - understand why it is forbidden to also grab socks or dishcloths when buying bread and milk.

I think there are only legal reasons, the ban creators are trying to protect themselves from court proceedings.

So why do such redundant and pointless work?

There is no answer. But it is unfortunate that it is not possible to get a coherent answer from the State Chancellery. And decisions are made that cannot be explained by either those decision-makers or their professional interpreters. The Budget Committee of the Saeima had convened a meeting where communication issues were also discussed, and one of the problems was: no PR person is able to explain a problem or rule to the public if the client is unable to say what it is all about. A communication specialist can answer the question - how to communicate, not - what to do?

This inconsistency and confusion of government decisions, the inability to explain them - what does all this do to society?

I have a feeling that the government is functioning in response to social media. But social media does not reflect public opinion. That's what sociology is for - it gives an insight into what society really thinks. What the government is doing now is performing a plastic surgery while looking in a distorted mirror. Therefore, communication comes out just like that - distorted. The government looks at social media and concludes: things are in dire straits! What are the consequences? By responding only to what is said on social media, the government leaves the majority of society, so to speak, unattended. Because they contain only a small part of society. The government, in fact, does not know what the majority of society thinks. And this is wrong. There should be qualitative research to have the ability to qualitatively assess how people perceive what is happening emotionally. You can't communicate with the public without empathy! But here it is the other way around. For a politician about 70% of his qualifications is empathy.

That's how it should be, but...

I do not want to say that they have absolutely no empathy. I think politicians are simply not "equipped" with information.

How so? Don't they have an army of advisers whose duty would be to "equip" them?

Of course, you should always have your hand on the pulse to know what public opinion is. But this information is missing or catastrophically lacking. It may have been deeply researched, but it is not being made public. Although it should not be hidden.

Somehow, I don't want to believe that the government has any information at all about how the public is dealing, for example, with lists of allowed/prohibited goods. But most of the society are practically foaming at the mouth about it.

Of course, the government could normally answer the question: how did you come up with such a list? Ministers could say that, you see, there has been a virus transmission in such and such shops. And that would be evidence-based communication. But there is nothing like that.

So, it is not for nothing that people have the feeling that the government is living on another planet, so they do not understand what is happening here on Earth.

This is a problem of quality, which is then reflected in quantitative data called party ratings, trust in state power and government.

SKDS research has just shown that trust in government is lower than ever.

The comment was amazing: trust is higher than in 2009... At that time, only about eight percent trusted the government. But now is 2021: many industries have been destroyed, people have lost their jobs and their livelihoods. The main problem is that there was no complete recovery after the 2009 crisis - I am talking about government ratings. They are still crawling on the ground. But rejoicing that now the ratings are not lower than the 2009 ratings... It's not like you can fall lower than the ground.

You can dig a hole and fall even lower...

Socially, digging such a hole would mean unrest.

Unrest is not common in our mentality.

I would not rely on mentality.

On what then?

And the general economic situation. People evaluate their opportunities. For example, after announcing that such and such goods would not be available, people ran to stores in droves. So, they still can afford to buy things. And such people are not interested in running to protest rallies. Let's compare it with Belarus. Why are there protests almost every day? Because the small businesses were destroyed there. You have your shop, your pastry place, you have to bake and sell, you don't have time to run to protests. But there is no small business in Belarus anymore, so there is a lot of free time. Why is the middle class inert here? Because you have to deal with family and home, you have to work while you have a job. No time to protest. But when everyone is deprived of their jobs, there will be time for protests. That is why vaccines are so important now: the sooner we reach a level where the number of people infected is declining, the sooner the average business will recover. For now, the speed of vaccination here is deplorable. This slow pace will have serious economic consequences. In addition, there are many problems with which vaccine to use, which vaccine has been approved, which is not, and so on. Together, they show the reasons why Minister Viņķele is leaving. The situation once again proves the axiom: people who fundamentally fail in elections must not be made ministers.

Undoubtedly. Viņķele is going to the exit, but will the next minister be the one to take us to the promised land?

Let's admit first of all that everything is long overdue and the virus is out of control. Second thing: is there anything that can be improved in healthcare if there are 1,200 Covid patients in hospitals? I think that the minister's activities can only make this situation worse. Hospitals will be able to cope on their own. The minister only needs to hear the demands of the hospitals, the minister does not have to teach how to treat patients. However, vaccination is a political issue. And our "liberal" society likes to form queues, and that dates back to Soviet times. Instead of saying that everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be vaccinated, those responsible for vaccination keep trying to create a "fair queue" to remove the tension. But there will always be tensions around vaccines, because the presence (or absence) of vaccines will affect business and life as such. The only thing that can remove the tension is the pace. A person will forgive if he does not receive it today, but will receive it in a week, not - maybe! - by the end of the year. For example, a businessman is planning his schedule, he knows that he has a work trip to Asia in October, he and his people need to get the vaccine, but he senses that it likely won't happen at all this year! This means that the business will be damaged. And then the businessman becomes very nervous and has a lot of questions. In addition, do not run after those who do not want to be vaccinated. There will be many more who want to. And when those who don't want vaccines will to see the large crowd who want to get them, no campaign will be needed.

Now that Ilze Viņķele is "going to the exit", is the rating dropping for party association Development/For! (Attīstībai/Par!, AP)?

Parties always destroy themselves, just as coalitions destroy themselves. There are no external destroyers, because no one knows you better than you yourself, as a comrade and an ally. Seeing the fall in AP ratings - what did we expect after the scandal caused by Māris Mičerevskis? Such fundamental political scandals usually take place after absolutely irrelevant things. The price of the scandal was a couple hundred euros, and everyone understood this amount: the public missed some scandals for a hundred million euros, but for 250 euros - everything was clear to everyone... And it was not a stranger who caused this scandal: they themselves incited it, they themselves encouraged it. Even Minister Viņķele could not sink the rating as much the Mičerevskis scandal over Minister Pūce's 250 euros. Hoisted by their own petard.

If Ilze Viņķele was dismissed, it would be just as deserving - if not more so - to dismiss Ilga Šuplinska - for her education "reform", for trampling on higher education institutions.

We are currently looking at everything through Covid prism. Waiting for the second wave in the autumn, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education were unprepared. It was talked about loud and long. If the Minister of Education had prepared for this second wave, she could trample on anything and everything, because Covid is a good cover for doing things - if you do them right and if you do them at all. Because all the attention is paid to the Covid, no one is looking at anything else. You see, Juris Pūce succeeded in adopting his administrative-territorial reform, and who is talking about it now? No one! Now everyone talks about Covid! And Pūce knew what he was doing, and the Covid just helped him. The same applies to Šuplinska: if she had set up the school preparations for Covid, she could have disbanded and liquidated Latvian universities in the backdrop of Covid, and no one would have even noticed.

Probably did not think so far...

Since she didn't know how to use Covid, there are now many more things addressed to her. But there is another moment: public satisfaction with education.

And how is it?

Let me say that the quality and level of our education is very low. But in this case, it is not just the responsibility of the minister. All who fight against the ministry are also co-responsible. There is also quality education, and those are the quiet and peaceful higher education institutions, they raise good students, but when someone tries to touch them, they immediately get a rap on the knuckles. A good example in this respect is the Stockholm School of Economics, popularly known as the Swedish School of Economics. I do not know what we would do if there were no such university that produces quality business people. Stradins University is also doing relatively well. These universities do not fight with the ministry. In the case of the Ministry of Education, the struggle between Šuplinska, who is not strong and competent in the field of university administration, and providers of inadequate education is somewhat... bland. And society evaluates: some are pathetic, others are weak, there are like miniature fights. People watch it as a show, but do not insist that one of them should be expelled from the battle room.

Do you have any vision for the future of the state and society?

I would urge you not to expect huge revolutionary changes from this Saeima. Only what we can see now will follow from this fragmented formation. The policy will be shaped exactly as it began two years ago. The only thing I want to expect is political stability.

Stagnation.

But I would urge you to remember how we got to the current Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš. There were also two other candidates for the position of Prime Minister: Jānis Bordāns and Aldis Gobzems. When it went to Kariņš, I crossed myself and thought: at least he's an adequate politician. Of course, we can find hundreds of shortcomings in every politician, but we think of everything in comparisons. And in this case, our most important goal is to get out of the Covid situation as not the last place in Europe. I would like for us to be the first, but... There is a lack of ambition. If we had the opportunity to be the first to get out of Covid by vaccination, I cannot imagine which of the politicians would be the ones to say that a vaccine is too expensive for us. The balance of costs is incomparable, the benefits for those who will be the first to return to normal life will be enormous. In such cases, saving money would be madness. It would be like gathering pennies in front of a road roller: while you are picking them up, you will be dragged under.

So why has everything happened with these vaccines so slowly, so opaquely and - I would even say - strangely?

...Viņķele is not a fool, she is educated and smart. Let me express my version: she has other interests. She has a lot of experience, she is not encapsulated in her ideas, she has a wide range of contacts. I think there are... great interests under it all.

I'm afraid to even think what kind.

Financial. I believe in human reason, but I do not believe in coincidences. Oh, well, because of some coincidence, one specific vaccine was decided. I think such things are lobbied. Such plans are lobbied. It must be understood that the health sector is a very lobbied industry and there is always a huge monetary interest. All that happens is very powerful lobbying battles.

Somehow I don't feel hope in what you said.

Everything is going to be fine. In general, we have an adaptive society. In addition, various apocalyptic predictions have not materialized, as evidenced by the fact that we are able to adapt to the economy. By the way, Viņķele represents the wing that always speaks of solidarity, while the policy of that wing is the exact opposite. Liberal politics is survival of the fittest. However, now is the time to show solidarity with the people who work in sectors that are suffering not for reasons of their own making. And to just exclaim - oh, hotels and restaurants are closing, well, let them close! - it is despicable. Right now, solidarity must be demonstrated, not a "let the weak die" policy.

*Following waves of public dissatisfaction and thanks to the persistence of journalists, the government added some more items to the list of permitted items on 7 January.