A pigeon of peace in the land of the poor

Serbia is poor for several reasons, but the biggest one it that do to political instability we didn’t manage to transit from centralized socialist production to a capitalist one. Other Eastern European countries did, but because of ethnic tensions, wars , terrible political situation we did’t. Lots of companies failed. Lots of them failed because of criminal privatizations. So, members of political parties would “fix” privatizations to some of their palls, family members, or “partners” who would get those companies for almost nothing. Because they didn’t know how to run them, or they just wanted to benefit quickly, or just to crush market rivals most of those companies failed. Sure, not everything is because of that, lots of companies didn’t manage to adjust to capitalism. In socialism failing companies wouldn't get closed, they got the support from government. So, our country was full of social benefit jobs that didn’t produce much. Now everything is ruined. Several of productive companies are left, most of them are owned by foreign corporations. A couple of companies are owned by the government (like Telekom or EPS), but they are used for hiring people from political parties and their children. It’s really difficult to get a job in Serbia in public sector (or companies owned by the state) without some connection, and because most of the private sector is in ruins and offers low income and terrible conditions, public sector is more favored in Serbia. Those connections are mostly threw political parties in power. So, Serbia is run by pure corruption and cronyism.
Petar Milosavljevic, studied at University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy