Entrepreneur Uldis Pīlēns: Political narcissists have come to the forefront of the state

"If we are upset with something, then we get annoyed by everything. This pandemic effect is more annoying, it cannot be called a real crisis. All of this naive intervention and actionism coming from many governments around the world is actually distracting from the big questions: where we are, where do we want to go and what do we want to reach? The government is only reacting to yesterday's events, for example, how many people have been infected in the previous day,” says Uldis Pīlēns.

"In a few days, we will celebrate the 30th anniversary of UPB with the best results in its entire history: last year's turnover is 237 million euros. The company has about 2,000 employees, and no production facilities, no construction sites have stopped yet due to the pandemic or other circumstances. We are building a new, large reinforced concrete plant in Liepāja, investing in very modern technologies, building the unique Ola Foundation building complex in Ķīpsala, export continue in large quantities, so everything is still going on. If I said that I was dissatisfied with life, I would be lying,” says Uldis Pīlēns, the founder and manager of the UPB group, with a smile. Today - interview with Uldis Pīlēns.

You said a few years ago that we have not yet experienced serious crises that transform society. Is Covid this transformative crisis?

Looking at the disruption of our usual rhythms and agendas, it might seem that the pandemic is a harbinger of a crisis that would transform the world. But I don't think so.

Really?

If we are upset with something, then we get annoyed by everything. This pandemic effect is more annoying, it cannot be called a real crisis. All of this naive intervention and actionism coming from many governments around the world is actually distracting from the big questions: where we are, where do we want to go and what do we want to reach? The government is only reacting to yesterday's events, for example, how many people have been infected in the previous day.

But the big processes don't happen like that, it's wrong to think about tomorrow with yesterday's agenda! Tell me, has the pandemic stopped big industries? No, it has not. Yes, there have been structural changes in industries such as aviation, tourism and gastronomy, but the overall economic picture in the world is not showing signs of a deep crisis. Stock market indices are growing, currencies are mostly stable, raw material prices are rising significantly, the IT industry is on a real winning streak. Is the number of victims of this pandemic comparable to the number of victims of Spanish flu? Not even close. Do we often remember the Spanish flu? No. We will also probably forget this pandemic like last year's snow or adjust to the new rules of the game.

I recently listened to an audio discussion with a Swiss historian. Journalists asked him questions about crises - financial, geopolitical, environmental, etc., say, how is it possible to survive in such an era of crises? And I liked the historian's answer: what is happening now is not a crisis, that's just how we perceive it because we have never lived so well. We live in a time of consumer society - the best ever. On the other hand, in the last decade before the pandemic, Europe had not really felt the competition of global socio-economic and political models from China, Russia and the United States. And so the loss of influence of today's Europeans (and therefore of us) is more about the loss of the EU's role in world politics and the economy, which makes us more annoyed in various situations, including those related to a pandemic.

The longer we live in the past - 200 years of European dominance - the longer we panic at the numbers that show that Europe is losing ground in the world and Latvia is at the very bottom of Europe, the more scared and more insecure we will be against the great challenges and possible breakthroughs here, in Latvia.

Well, but we really are at the bottom.

But why are we there? Because we don't know who we really are, who we want to identify with, what our core values ​​are and where we are going.

We talked about this with you two years ago. There are no people who would respond to calls to set the direction and vision of the country.

Then everyone has to ask themselves the question: where do we as a society want to go? Right now, we're just angry that our living standards are being disrupted: oh, the horror, why is my favorite restaurant closed? The time when we couldn't buy even soap without ration coupons has been quickly forgotten. When I was studying at Liepāja Secondary School No. 5, I remember the time when my mother sent me to stand in a long line at the bakery to buy daily bread on coupons. Did our intellect not develop because of this, did the personal development not take place at that time, under the rule of meaningless socialism? We had the spirit and the power inside of us, despite the fact that the outside conditions were much tougher.

Why isn't it like that now? If we chant the word pandemic seven times an hour, it will not change anything for the better. That is why I am with those who abandon yesterday's thinking without understanding causation, because we need to think about the future. We will adapt to this pandemic in exactly the same way as we once adapted to the rules that were introduced after the terrorist attacks of 9/11: everyone at airports has to go through scanners. We didn't do that before.

But the reality is different for now: we live in reaction to yesterday's facts. The government sets an example of such living.

Reacting to yesterday produces characters... I don't even want to call them politicians... characters who like to dance on the empty theater stage because no professional group is performing there at the moment. I wonder who will be the first to say - look, those kings are naked!

And yet there is another reality: many businesses have gone bankrupt. You can't deny that.

Yes, many. But just as many have transformed. For example, last year was the best in the history of our existence. Despite the pandemic, despite the fact that 70% of the business was abroad, despite the fact that for a while airBaltic did not fly and we chartered flights... Look at the current development of the IT industry! And how do people view the crisis? A Chinese proverb says: when the winds of change are blowing, some who want to keep yesterday are building protective walls, others who are looking ahead are building a windmill. Look at how calmly and professionally, with high crisis management skills, without PR campaigns Gulbja laboratorija has developed its mobile testing infrastructure in a short time, filled it with qualified staff, as well as IT support - for seamless, efficient information flow, simultaneously with the new building in Riga, expanding the future possibilities of its central laboratory. It is an exemplary business response to new challenges. In a short time, the capacity of taking and processing more than 20,000 tests per day was realized and proved throughout Latvia.

But what is happening in our state structures at the same time? For example, the Minister of Health and some other Twitter-narcissists - before doing anything, they announce it on social networks: if there is no PR campaign, then the day does not end on a happy note! But in reality, nothing meaningful happens, just empty noise.

Of course, we can enjoy windmills. But what about those who lost everything during the pandemic?

This is an extremely important and serious issue. What do we want to save in the first place - our people or yesterday's economic structures?

People.

Exactly. But they are trying to save structures. And that is a fundamental mistake. From the very beginning of the crisis - instead of helping our people, families, who experienced these problems through no fault of their own, and everyone is the same in the face of the crisis - the state began to help businesses. See, there are things that will die naturally, and no one has eliminated competition. Like evolutionary processes in nature, the strongest will remain. Of course, this is very, very harsh, but large public benefits for companies are unfortunately creating an internationally uncompetitive economic environment in the future.

In a year and a half, there will be Saeima elections. Already there is an anxiety in my heart: will the talkers and inept ones be elected again? Will anything change?

It can change for the better or for the worse. In February last year, I gave a lecture at the Institute of Integral Education that this pandemic will show whether the model of liberal democracy that currently dominates Europe is viable in the future. As a result of the 1968 student revolution, interesting political transformations took place in Western Europe, which changed Europe's conservative environment to a much more liberal one, as well as changing the emphasis on values. In turn, now liberal democracy will either be able to transform itself, or it will lose its position to the model of authoritarian democracy, which already dominates in Eastern Europe, attracting a lot of populism in politics. I am afraid that is exactly what is ahead of us. If the Riga City Council elections took place on June 5 - together with the elections of other cities and municipalities, then the party association Development/For! (Attīstībai/Par!), which calls itself a liberal, could hardly hope for a mayor's chair.

What will happen with the Saeima elections? At present, due to the weakness of power, all kinds of populists, who cannot be called serious and responsible politicians, have felt their chance to climb on the stage. The mood of the public shows that at least half do not know what to vote for, and experience shows that then at least 20% of the total number of voters vote again for new populists. This trend is relatively long-lasting, which is a favorable environment for bringing political narcissists to the fore.

With such an approach, one can enter the Saeima, but with a small political representation. That is how a coalition of weak parties gets formed, as it is now. Going in this direction, not only the foundations of democracy are diluted, but also the dynamic development model of Latvia in the future. But Latvia needs such a democratic transformation that at least one political force wins more than 30% of the vote in the next elections.

Impossible.

Unfortunately, yes. We see that the reserve benches for the parties are empty, even in the basic line-up there are no brilliant players... If there are players, then from the amateur league. A lot of normal people will not join a party in this situation. The last fifteen years have put a number of young conjunctivists on the political path. All parties consist of conjunctivists, careerists and romantics. In the model of a prosperous democracy, the romantics begin the path of new parties, then they are transformed by careerists and everything is ideologically killed by the conjunctivists. As a result, the parties become increasingly more worn down.

There is no solution...

There is. Behind the empty reserve benches, there is a huge intellectual potential of the Latvian people, but it is non-partisan. There are a number of philosophers, scientists, engineers and people of other professions who love Latvia from the bottom of their hearts and are ready to do a lot for it outside party schemes and systems. This means activating this huge potential without forcing people to join parties if they do not want to. This model can be activated in a time of crisis, and it seems to me that this is a time of crisis for our liberal democracy.

Let's look at a little history: in 1996 Liepāja was full of political and economic troubles. A joint list was created, where the bloc of non-partisan activists invited the parties to join this list in order to solve the problems of Liepāja together. It ran in the election, winning nine of the fifteen seats in the city council. If a party thinks that it will be able to make significant progress in the next elections only with its "chosen ones", then it is seriously mistaken.

And more. If, after the municipal elections, the coalition parties see - and I know they will see - that people rate these parties critically low, then before the Saeima elections it would be time to mobilize the giant potential outside the parties.

But Aldis Gobzems has already founded his party, Ainārs Šlesers and Vjačeslavs Dombrovskis intend to found their own. Won't they gather much of the intellectual potential you mentioned?

As long as the political stage is free of serious political forces, various characters will always appear: adventurers, conjunctivists and populists. If it is the only repertoire, then in the Latvian political genre we will be forced to watch the performance that is being offered. There is a saying that I have said before: if the sun of political culture is setting, even the garden gnomes cast long shadows... The previous power, especially today's coalition, will leave considerable political ruins behind, I especially want to emphasize confidence in power and its legitimacy. In fact, it is also a question of ethics.

We have a lot of politicians who, when thrown out the door, will come back in through the window and not even blink.

This has always been and will be the case in an immature democracy, but most importantly - who become the leaders of socio-political processes? If those who have never been in a storm become the captains of a ship in this situation and the ship they lead runs into a storm... then everyone has problems. There are a number of mistakes, there are nonsensical, wrong or incomprehensible decisions, anger at the team. But the problem is in the captain's leadership skills, not in the team. And the team needs to be mobilized, not demobilized. It is a pity that today we do not have captains hardened by political and economic storms.

When the global financial crisis began in 2008, there was a feeling that all systems would collapse. How is it now?

Now nothing will collapse. We have not even approached the great questions of the survival of civilization. But the fact that there is a huge erosion in nature, in society, in political and economic processes, is already clear.

There is also a transformation of personality - especially in connection with all school closures, with distance learning: all this extremely degrades the individual as a social being. If we put the priorities - education, culture and socialization - as low as possible, but the pandemic is above all as the only priority at the moment, it will hit us very hard and painfully later.

So culture and education are priorities now? Does anyone hear you? If we underestimate these priorities, it will sooner or later turn into a tragedy.

Lack of socialization, degradation of education, lack of communication culture - these are injuries that will affect the whole society. It is clear that socialization is not happening for health reasons, but it is not an innovative and forward-looking approach. It's like trying to lower your blood cholesterol with cancer-causing drugs. Every company manager, leaders of every institution and organization must give positive signals to their team.

But now it is like this: the government, social networks communicate only negative emotions, society is becoming more and more annoyed, and we are getting signs of long-term collective depression. German economist Ludwig Erhard has said that economics is 50% psychology. So, if we are only talking about the bad, it is contributing to the degradation of society. We can choose: either we all go to a psychiatrist, or to the gym. How it really happens: as soon as a problem arises, lockdown! But we need, in my opinion, to do things quite differently. We need to try to see the good so that everything turns to the better again.

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