Looking to 2022: Serbia in the hands of the "mice"

The end of the year is an opportunity to draw a line and think about what awaits us in 2022. Towards the end of last year, the first pandemic year, the situation seemed relatively simple: essentially, it came down to the fact that, if there were enough vaccines, life would be able relatively quickly to return to normal.

A year later, despite more available vaccines in the Western world, the situation is extremely complicated - supply chains are broken, energy shortages and high inflation reign, a strain of the new coronavirus that is many times more contagious than all previous ones is spreading, and anti-epidemic measures are being tightened again. These are just some of the global problems plaguing economies that make it difficult to make economic forecasts.

However, the risks and problems of Serbia are not exhausted by the short list above. Serbia has its own, special problems - almost a decade of intensive, negative selection in the most important and largest company - the Electric Power Company of Serbia - is coming to pay for it.

Because, through a series of strategically wrong moves, the progressives managed to bring Serbia to the point where it is necessary to import electricity (in huge quantities) at times when its price is unprecedentedly high, with a complete unknown whether the series of breakdowns in the EPS has finally ended. Instead of stability, EPS has become a big source of risk, and every risk has to be paid for, so Serbia does it with expensive imports.

"I don't know what to say to you, Mićo," Vučić said on December 14 to Milorad Grčić, acting director of the EPS for many years, telling him that he expects responsibility and reaction from him - "whenever you want, today, tomorrow" - due to the relegation of six blocks from the system Thermal power plant "Nikola Tesla" and by halving (overnight) electricity production from thermal power plants.

Mica said that he completely understood the president, but he did not resign. He was also there when, two days later, the recently overhauled coal drying system exploded in "Kolubara", and when a fire broke out in TENT B26 on December 1, and when block B27 collapsed on December 2 due to an accident with the mill wheel.

Who knows how many more accidents, explosions and fires await EPS in the coming period, whether Mića is still there or not. Because Mića is a mirror of the system that SNS is pushing: it is unimaginable that a professional, an experienced expert, who would bring an efficient team of people and have his hands free to do the job the way it should be, should come to the head of EPS.

Since such a person will not come, it would mean that, even if Mića really leaves, a new Mića will come in his place, who should first ask politics for everything, i.e. the party, i.e. leader, well, if the directive is not in accordance with the economic interest of the company, so much the worse for the company.

With that, the risks of the activities of the new Mića will not disappear. After all, it is like that everywhere, only in EPS, as a vitally important enterprise for the state, it is the most visible - all these small "meats" in other public enterprises and services multiply the risks, which in the end are paid for by the citizens, with a worse quality of life, goods and service.

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