Recently the police of one small town, which is situated on the border between Austria and the Czech Republic, published astonishing statistics on the increase of crimes. After the Schengen Treaty came into force and the documentation of people, crossing the borders is increased by 50 percent.

The Austrians, normally used to a calm life, questioned, if it wouldn’t be worth to take into consideration the possibilities of strengthening security or even maybe closing the border. However, later it turned out that previously in this town two houses were robbed per year, and now this number increased up to three…

Worldwide this kind of “political arithmetic” sounds ridiculous, however, in our country it became an inseparable part of social life, and the more it goes, the more it seems that the aim of this arithmetic is not to help people understand the things, but to trick them intentionally.

A case in point could be the recent increase of the popularity of the speaker of the Seimas, Mrs. Irena Degutienė. We can congratulate this politician, as during one moth her popularity increased from 1 to 13 per cent. At the same time it is possible to announce (as it was actually done), that her popularity increased 13 times…

I don’t know why we are so unwilling to count, or we just don’t know how to count. A word “price” is almost absent in Lithuanian political dictionary. The politicians are in a hurry to phrase about their “good works”, at the same time willingly forgetting that each step, taken by the state, has is price, and that it is necessary to be able to count this price. And this ability to count is by no means less important than political will.

Every law, submitted to the Seimas, is analyzed and checked if it’s not contradicting to the Constitution and the legal acts of the EU. However, even after carrying out this kind of analysis, we can hear different kind of stories. And about the price of the implementation of the laws we get to hear rarely. While making decisions this should become a crucial argument.

Let’s recall the story of the secret CIA prisons in Lithuania that lasted for sure too long. If these prisons really existed, their construction and maintenance was for sure not expensive. However, after the suspicions were announced, the burden of the price for real or the assumed torturing of the prisoners in Lithuania became almost unbearable. And as log as we haven’t got a clear answer, the burden of the interest rate is increasing every day.

The problem of the double citizenship could be taken into account as another example. How much this would cost for Lithuania? It is possible to think about optimistic as well as pessimistic scenarios…

In case if the possibility of double citizenship will be introduced, we will have to pay for the social security, medical treatment of those our citizens who spent their whole lives abroad and pay taxes to the budgets of other countries. We would also have to pay for the education of their children… I agree though that we cannot evaluate everything in terms of money. No price could be attributed to love, happiness and freedom – the things that are the most important for a human being. They have a price though. And if we would try to find out what this price is, the decisions would obtain a different weight and meaning.

This could be called as pragmatism, the lack of which is very well seen during the electoral campaigns, when promises are abundant and when nobody talks about the costs of the implementation of these promises. Let’s not forget that the process of governing the state in most cases is similar to the solution of the equation, a solution of which necessarily has to be zero, i.e., when somebody gets something extra, somebody has to deprive of something at the same time.

When political arithmetic is pushed out of the public sphere, it becomes easier to try to get rid of responsibility. And today we should express our joy that our President Mrs. Dalia Grybauskaitė who during the first hundred days of her term managed to smoothly enter Lithuanian political life, still during her electoral campaign managed to demonstrate us, how a strict and just word can come over the sweet promises. And now, after having raised the level of political culture till the heights, that are not conceivable to many politicians or columnists, the President tries to reveal the meaning of responsibility as well.

I have in mind, for example, the decision of the head of state not to appoint Mr. Valteris Baliukonis as an ambassador in Spain. Some political columnists named this as a fact of ignoring rules, the others – as a female caprice. I would say, that by disapproving to this candidature the President showed that a signature is more than a spot of ink on the paper, that is shows our decisiveness and readiness to take responsibility.

One should not sign if he or she disapproves to something. It’s always easiest to hide oneself behind the shoulders of the others, while letting them to sign and thus to get rid of responsibility. This is an old soviet tradition. If it wouldn’t be so deeply ingrained into our consciousness, maybe the prosecutors, that were putting their signatures if the Kaunas’ paedophilia cases, would have behaved differently.

When recalling his soviet experiences, Alexander Solzhenicyn said: “In those time, when in front of the system one was helpless, the only one way to retain the feelings of a human being, was to follow the principle: “Let it be, but I will not do this by my own hands!”

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Gintaras Aleknonis, commentator and host of the Public Radio programmes, Dean and Lecture of the Mykolas Romeris University, former employee of the Radio Liberty.

Translated by Milda Bagdonaitė