Vilnius - European Capital of Culture
2009-10-30 10:31
Unfortunately Vilnius city can not make boast of itself or be proud that at least with satisfactory marks it passed the exam of the organization of this European-wide cultural event.
Inhabitants of Lithuania themselves gave to this event a different honorific - „Vilnius - European Capital of Corruption" and actually this title is much more suitable for the definition of this event. The organization of "Vilnius - European Capital of Culture" became a wonderful opportunity to pump the money of the tax-payers to the pockets of the persons and the groupments that were close to the event's budget. (The groupments in Lithuania are usually called by entitlement, which is a very comprehensible one in Europe - "political parties".)
For the organization of the event there were imposed not clever, but loyal leaders, such as Elona Bajoriene, who titles herself an ambassadress of the culture field. To commemorate the very beginning of the project for the fireworks of New Year celebration there were spent about 600 000 Euros. Such a waste of money was a shock for people, who were still right thinking in Lithuania - a country, which was just convulsed by the crisis.
Unfortunately even the fireworks didn't make an expectative impression. The web pages in an Internet were created for more than 200 000 Euros. These web pages are being viewed by less than a hundred people per day. The city is "decorated" with sculptures - pipes, which cost over 100 000 Euros and shuddered the representatives of art. These pipes probably will best symbolise this tiny event of pumping the money.
There were funded not the events, which citizens of Vilnius already like and which are popular, but the events of unseen representatives of art, which will hardly have any prolongation after this event and which didn't make a big response, in this project.
Conclusively it became hardly possible to watch the things we already have, because of the business group (which likes to make business with the help of the courts) "helped" an air company "Air Baltic" to move out of Lithuanian market, but this business group itself wasn't capable to do business with a national air company "Fly LAL", which announced a bankrupt in the beginning of this year. In the background of this situation Vilnius became Europe's back-country, where you can fly to only if changing several planes on your way (with the rare exceptions).
We apologize in the name of these, who already bent their necks fighting with our bureaucratic government, which took the same administrative methods as were in our past, when we lived in the Soviet Union. This government only tries to represent itself like having swithched-on manners. Come to see different Lithuania - with a wonderful, in a lot of areas untouched nature, to see Vilnius, which becomes more and more beautiful with a help of enthusiastic people, come to see our towns and villages, to their events, which attracts tens of thousands admirers even if these events have no funding from our government.