Formally, the discussion below will focus on the President's meeting with journalists. In fact, it will be wider. But I will allow myself a little introductory text, may the clever and benevolent reader will forgive the author. It will not be an empty fragment - it will be subjective, however, the position.
I am deeply convinced that the right to a public voice has a price. When people judge something that they do not know from the inside at all; they judge something that they did not learn, “risking their own skin,” to do it, moreover, it is difficult and of high quality - this is not good, because it leads to nowhere. In some pseudo-intellectual taiga, for shamans and a tambourine.
White noise is harmful to society. The "white noise" of people who do not delve into and do not risk their own skin generates Brownian movement in the information field, chaos and devastation in their heads.
For each word written below, years of life, effort, comprehension :), as payment for the right to vote. To be eligible to write, the author spent years of his life in journalism, where he started back in the 1980s. Spent many years on analytics, where he started as an adult in the mid-1990s. Apart from two small, valiant victories in the Small Academy of Sciences :) a decade before. He wrote texts for top politicians, was a political consultant. I saw a lot of headquarters, campaigns, as well as government agencies, corporations from the inside :) I spent, and continue to spend, years of my life to be a qualified psychologist.
I'll tell you right away, this article is not a hint. I am not looking for employment in politics. I am completely satisfied with the degree of freedom and independence that is in my current profession.
But let's continue, dear reader. I am sure that in the same way, you need to spend many years of your life to become a qualified reader of analytics on The Ukrainian Post. To become that competent reader, without which any competent author hangs in the void, like a spherical horse (whatever) of power in an intellectual vacuum.
In order to see something “beyond the horizon of the banal,” one must constantly walk beyond such a horizon. Pay an honest price for the right to see, understand and speak publicly.
Exactly the same fair price thesis applies to politicians, including presidents. The fair price is not about being elected or appointed. An honest price about the path that your word-not-sparrow traveled :) before flying out into society . And about its consequences.
What has been said below is not a claim to dogma, but a personal, subjective and therefore inevitably limited author's statement.
Now I invite dear readers to the main theses.
1. Basic. No one in this world can cross out the essence of things. You can call a chair a light bulb, but it will not give light. The first person in the state must clearly understand and distinguish between the essence of PR and state information policy. And for this it is important to understand why the state exists initially, fundamentally, in essence . This eliminates a huge number of errors.
The everyday life of an ordinary citizen is tied not to the processes in the PR space, but to the real processes in the country. The refrigerator, since the collapse of the USSR, regularly wins over the TV, no matter how corny it sounds. But this does not teach anyone anything in Ukraine. Because any government is pleased to believe in a miracle. PR people know how to convincingly promise this miracle :) But to fulfill, alas, alas ...
So, the state for a citizen (!) exists to overcome chaos. This is the very essence of its existence. It is for the sake of this mega-function of the state that people transfer (donate) to it a part of freedom, money, etc. If, after the press event of the head of state, an ordinary citizen feels that there is more chaos in understanding what is happening, and not less, this is ... an ineffective or even harmful press event. It runs counter to the very nature of government policy and inevitably hurts citizens' perception of power.
When the state is near, the citizen should become calmer and clearer, and not more alarming, lost, dimmer, more hopeless, and that's all. Even if the upper circles in Ukraine traditionally do not understand this.
2. The state exists in order to set the maximum time frame. More than even the largest business can ask. Sometimes more than human life encompasses. If at a press event dedicated to the "equator" of the government, the first person focuses on an event in the weekly horizon and extinguishes PR fires - this sends a strong signal to society about the (briefly) temporary nature of such power, its lack of priorities and prospects. What kind of light at the end of the tunnel (and the tunnel exists) can the government show to the nation if it itself is dancing nervously on a square meter of slippery sleepers, waving off the ghosts with a torch?
3. If you describe the general impression of the President's meeting with journalists in one word, this word will be patchwork. While one of the basic functions of the state is to integrate. There are many people and groups in society, and they are different, but there is only one President in the country. Does this mean something to the President and his entourage? I don't know.
4. The state is needed to respond to the biggest challenges and provide answers to the biggest questions. Because it concentrates huge resources, ideally, both information and intellectual resources. In modern Ukraine, there is no one to think well and systematically for the state. No one else has such huge resources at hand.
For any literate Ukrainian it is obvious that the main, long-term sentimental question that the country will have to answer (long time ago) is the question: "Where will Ukraine get the money?" Everything rests against it! The country today will not "sell" a single major issue without money. And what have we heard about this?
We only heard about how huge sums will be spent in the future. With unclear economic effect.
The idea of "big construction", for example, is not entirely new. This inextinguishable phoenix hatched from an egg... Well, from the desire to become a transit state between huge resources and the large consumer market of Russia and the European Union, which processes these resources and consumes Russian goods. Today the situation has changed radically, and even the most beautiful roads, which cost the deficit budget a lot, will bump into a Russian dead end. Same as it happened with not even Russian, but Kazakh coal buried somewhere in the virgin Kazakh steppe in front of the two-headed imperial border.
It's not that the Ukrainians themselves don't need good roads. But the main priority (!) of the authorities worries about 9% of citizens according to polls. To put it mildly, this is not the optimal way to prioritize and respond to national challenges.
Can we invest in something that will really make good money? Or at least pay off before they get even more interest? Or, as usual, according to Masyana (popular cartoon hero - ed) - “re-borrow to re-lease”, at interest, tamping the country into a hole in debt without a bottom, sun and chlorophyll?
Still, the author would have noticed that the idea of "big construction" ("transport corridor") was originally based on the same obsessive, but close to the negligent heart of the Ukrainian elite, the topic of existence on rent. The same one that is being given now by the clap of one Zen Buddhist palm in the giant, but "empty" domestic gas pipelines.
Also, the author would have noticed that all this "Pelevin-Chapaevskaya emptiness", firstly, the payment for the stubborn unwillingness to consider the main source of the country is wealth of people. And, secondly, for the unwillingness to consider the intelligence of the Ukrainian people as valuable, perhaps, sometimes, their physical labor. Already more like servants of the peoples.
Therefore, for tens of years, billions of dollars have not been invested in intellectually intensive areas and products. Therefore, education has been imitating reforms for decades and no one takes responsibility (why?). Therefore, new proprietary technologies are almost not being introduced (where?). Because people, incl. very qualified people, millions are leaving the country, dying out, going into internal emigration (why not?). They are not valuable to their own country. Their knowledge, skills, and abilities can only be assessed abroad. There, not here, the IT specialists mentioned by the President for a decade (not a quarter of a century or more) become richer than Ukrainian oligarchs - with their factories, newspapers, steamships, deputy groups, ships and other jokes.
But has something changed in this specific, our next short voyage to the equator?
I repeat, after the equator of government and many reports on the successful implementation of election programs, the main thing is still absolutely incomprehensible - where will the money come from other than the sale of our nation's assets and redistribution . In addition to further tightening the screws, which has reached the smallest businesses with a cunning key (in a pandemic, when you need to help, not rip off!) and the most vulnerable segments of the population.
Elites can, of course, despise their own people (for which they usually pay once, although this usually does not teach anyone anything). But the state cannot afford it. Not a single state, even the most totalitarian one, totally gave a damn about the opinion of its citizens. They always tried to influence, but totally ignore, leaving without the most important answers - no. A non-totalitarian and modern state, in the age of universally educated citizens, social networks, information wars, information pandemics, etc. can’t do it even more so.
5. The state is the main communicator with citizens. That is why the speeches of the head of state are partially or even fully broadcasted by the leading TV channels in almost any country.
Communicator. Not a hypnotist. When the authorities try to persuade society head-on that everything is good for it (society), and society thinks that everything is bad for it, this is a communication dead end .
Opinion polls show the same picture: people give (the authorities, elites) a steady feedback - the situation in the country is developing in the wrong direction . One power after another, like the elites as a whole, say that we have got a bad people, they do not catch their happiness. And we work for them. She is working (as was said in well known advertising of Yulia Tymoshnko - ed), he is working. It's just that people can't see the results of their labor: "Go buy glasses!"
It’s dumb at the top (more than once tried to convince, it didn’t work) to accept a simple but invaluable truth for correcting the course - the people believe precisely because the situation is going in the wrong direction, because it has been going in the wrong direction for decades .
Management is not devoid of emotion, but rational. It is impossible to manage anything effectively without common sense and common sense of feedback. And it is impossible to deceive people, at least for a long time. Don't even try. It will cost you more.
When you are about to talk about the main thing, talk about the main thing. If you say you’re going to be honest, let’s be honest. Honestly (as far as possible in real circumstances) and about the main thing. And immediately.
It concerns a lot. But we will not touch on the most painful in the moment. Therefore, the main thing in the long.
It is unpleasant for the author to listen to “old songs that are far from the main thing” in the hundredth circle. And there is reason to believe that the author is not alone.
For example, does the government (whatever) really think that by selling a quarter of the country's banking system at once, you can simply present the Ukrainians with a fact? After all the miracles of Ukrainian privatization.
If we sell Privatbank, which was bought out by the state for billions in recalculated dollars (super-deficit at the most difficult moment for the country), then I, as a citizen, want to understand why. Already today it brings our country a direct and significant income. What do we get in return?
Why and how will Privatbank be divided? If the toxic assets of Privat do not go to the investor, but are dumped on some vaguely designated second “part”, they will be dumped on who exactly? Is it not the state with its ruined citizens? Maybe not. But I still haven't heard the answer.
In our country, the lion's share of privatization is the distribution of profitable enterprises (for example, mines) to private individuals, with the hanging of unprofitable ones (long live subsidies from the pockets of pensioners, soldiers and officers, teachers, doctors!) to the state. With shifting from a sick gnome to an unhealthy one.
An important nuance. What will happen to the huge amounts of information about Ukrainians, about Ukrainian companies, their payments and partners (in today's world - big data, all this can be analyzed with a snap of your fingers), which are transferred into the hands of other players?
Create at least a hundred Bureau of Economic Security. If you do not answer the main questions clearly to yourself in advance , then who will answer them when everything has already happened? Who will take the rap for the strategic miscalculations of others?
For example, who will be responsible tomorrow for yesterday's (and even the day before yesterday's) short-sighted decisions on Motor Sich, which turned into a $ 4.5 billion lawsuit against Ukraine? The people of Ukraine? They, as usual, did not decide anything, but will answer for everything?
- And have not you already ripped off us the last skin to tear for your own greed and stupidity? - people will, perhaps, ask. And it seems to me they will be right. And, notice that initial impulse came not from below, and not even from the side.
6. Technical, but so important! The head of the country (abstract, anyone, but with whom you can really go somewhere and about something), talk to me, a voter, a citizen from within yourself , do not play with an anxious face. Beg. Do not broadcast from the depths of your high chair full of hemorrhoids. I believe that you are not very sweet. That's why you stay alive for me. It is important for people that you are still alive in the abyss of this merciless soul-eater chair. Alive, you symbolize hope for the nation (at least for the millions of the nation) .
I am alive - you are alive. It's hard for you, it's hard for me, it's hard for all of us. This does not divide, but unites all of us Ukrainians . And we are all imperfect. What's the problem? What for is this layer of bureaucratic bronze, as heavy as a theatrical chandelier, between us?
During the session, a good psychologist notices (a good psychologist cannot fail to notice, unlike a politician who inevitably speaks from armored cars or in a car rally mode) the client's reactions. There was once such a wonderful song about “these eyes in front of you” without parting :) The client continuously gives the psychologist feedback: “Now you are not with me, now you are with me” . If and as soon as the psychologist loses the position of a living person and puts on a mask, the client begins to get bored, fidgety, irritated, and withdrawn.
When the authorities, changing their faces, tell how they work hard far from the fields of ordinary mortals or with whom they communicate, at a level incomprehensible to the profane, somewhere in the foamy clouds of Olympus or the golden rays of the international "Elysium", this does not convince the "ordinary" Ukrainians.
I am so sorry, being burdened with the hardships of our earthly life, devoid of wings and upper chambers. Guys, you all forget too quickly how difficult it is in our country “below”.
Just pay attention to the practical result of such communication about the works invisible in the distance. Yanukovych also met a lot of people abroad and a lot of people talked to him. Not to mention Poroshenko. So what?
In short, there is a lot that could be said, but the publication is not rubber :) Sorry that, probably, it is not written in a journalistic and not a writing style, rough. In my real world, I don’t have time to stretch and grind. As the sultan used to say in a famous joke: "What can I do" :)
PS Those personalities and structures who react too sharply to criticism. Guys, don't look for a black cat where there is none. Do not seek, do not invent, do not imagine and do not build enemies where they do not exist. Work with real problems. You asked for constructive criticism from a smart society with a complete lack of insults - you will get it. But you yourself will learn to be adequate.
PPS The author represents that part of society that is not indifferent to the fate of the country, which does not like the fact that our country staggers and talks. And it staggers and chatters not only because it is done from the outside, but also because of the many mistakes inside. This is not only yours, but also ours. You will not sink alone. Therefore, we are not silent. We hasten to say while there is still time.
And further. No matter how stormy overboard, the captain is always responsible for the state of affairs on the ship.
Sincerely.