There should be just one target for the budget now that it has been approved; get it done! Still this must happen with the clear aim of resolving concrete problems concretely, not rhetorically, and then too with long term resolve. Budget provisons surely cannot be allowed to remain as a paper trail...
Indeed, the 2021 budget carried a number of well thought out and timely projects... even if some came recycled from previous exercises. Still, I know of no budget in which for one reason or another, this did not occur!
In the difficult times of crisis and controversy created by Covid 19, it will be important to ensure that while decisions are being carefully implemented, as soon as circumstances change and according to how they do so, the ability remains to adapt whatever is being carried out to the new circumstances.
Given our small size, flexibility is the best tool with which to counter emerging challenges and threats.
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NO RELAXING
It is commendable that as seems to be happening, public health regulations are increasingly being enforced with rigour in the interests of the general safety. Clearly doing so is not going to earn more votes for the government. But it needs to be done.
All over Europe, the public health situation is in crisis. It is true that measures being carried out to contain the situation undermine the morale and lifestyle of numerous families. However, what can be worse than giving them a false sense of security till they then find they too are infected, with some ending up in deep trouble?
I always believed that for those who run a democratic government, it is better to lose votes and maybe an election, than lose the lives of citizens when these could have been kept safe.
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IS TRUMP GOING AWAY?
No. Trump is staying. Not as a politician, independently of how he does in the lawsuits he will be running to contest the results of the US presidential elections.
The truth is that he achieved the political success and impetus of recent years because he stood for wide strata of American society which felt that other US politicians, more “civil” and “correct” than he could be, were not giving expression to their disquiet, nor defending well their interests.
Those people are still there, with their discontents and their fears. Perhaps with Trump and all, these have increased. For Trump – no matter what he said and how he strutted around – actually allowed all the issues which were dragging them down to become sharper.
What could happen following his eclipse?
Ironically, the Biden administration might have a better opportunity to address the disappointments of people who feel betrayed by “modern” transformations which as they see and experience in their day to day lives, have marginalised them (even when they benefitted from them) and were of limited interest to their families.
An essential element of Biden’s message – packaged naturally in American political jargon – was that it has become necessary to give a stronger social profile to the American state. If he could succeed to do so in a consensual manner, he would be doing quite a lot to fade out Trump’s continuing shadow over US political affairs.