No Pilot in the Plane

Airplane! (translated here as Is There a Pilot in the Plane) is a well-known film parody by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Abrahams. The comedy, which was released in 1980, received an excellent reception from both audiences and critics, mocking various film classics such as Jaws, E.T., and Star Wars, as well as its sequel.

And as far as that part is concerned, it has a lot to do with the situation in our beautiful country and the events of the past few days. Namely, if we look at the news from which, even if we wanted to, we simply cannot escape, the first thing that comes to my mind is – who is joking here? The second logical question is – who exactly is leading this country and, more importantly, where to? One of the news items is that women in this country are not equal, and that some can retire at 65, while others can do so at 55 years of age. Clearly, female members of parliament will retire earlier, while, for example, masseuses will come to their workplace ten years longer. A joke? No, and it should be noted that masseuses do not vote on amendments to the Pension Insurance Act.

No one could have missed the news about the smiling married couple Pevec, who are going to trial with handcuffs on their wrists, among other things, due to the accusation that they had deposited tax refunds belonging to the Pevec company into a private Austrian account over two years, thus evading 3.8 million kuna. According to some information, Mr. Pevec’s defense is based on the fact that he has no idea what his wife, with whom he has been married for decades, was ‘messing around’ with secret accounts. A joke? No. Although it does have a bit of a soap opera feel to it. And not a Turkish one. At the same time, it is revealed that another gentleman and lady – Ivo and Mirjana Sanader – were renting an apartment in New York for 6 thousand dollars a month. He renounced his income. She is a professor. I soon expect an explanation that this married couple rented in their name, but it was actually paid for by Neven Jurica to offset the tickets Jurica bought for Sanader’s daughter, and he actually wanted to buy them for her boyfriend because he helped him with some jobs while living with Sanader’s daughter in that apartment in New York. But only on weekends.

On the same day, while the former prime minister shows a children’s excursion the Parliament, the current prime minister is surprised that the entire population does not applaud her because the budget for 2011 has been passed, and ‘it’s only November.’ A joke? No. It seems the prime minister does not understand that, as far as the wise part of the population is concerned, it would be better if there were no budget at all than to be thrilled about its adoption in November with a deficit of 14.8 billion kuna and a bunch of unclear ideas it contains. And without clear solutions on how to not just survive the recession, but to thrive. The economic advisory team of that same prime minister claims that after the adoption of the economic recovery program (which is just about to become mandatory literature in economic schools around the world), they have no further influence on the Government’s economic policy. Yet, they still call themselves the prime minister’s advisors. And they can actually say whatever their hearts desire because they have no influence.

What a shame, because at a gathering of economists in Opatija, one of the advisors, Željko Lovrinčević, rightly noted that it is the Government that must take responsibility, as insisting on consensus among all is an impossible task. It is a pity that no one takes him seriously. The culmination of almost unbelievable news this week is that the accusations from once-loyal associates against Sanader regarding the siphoning of money from state companies will not hold because his signature is nowhere to be found. This borders on science fiction, but it is still not a joke. The ‘believe it or not’ column is a cat’s cough for news from our small country in just 48 hours. Unless, of course, the media are again to blame for unnecessarily disturbing high officials who do not even have time to drink coffee and lying to the citizens of Croatia that the situation is dire, when in fact it is not.