Editorial: Sensitivity

Fuel is of vital importance for the economic functioning of a society and for the daily life of its members.

From that perspective alone, the state should place particular emphasis on the fuel market, and not allow consumers to be at the mercy of crooks.

Unfortunately, the opposite is happening. As one long prepared, the market shifted to consumers the cost of the price increases wrought by the latest clashes in the Middle East, even as consumers were already suffering from the effects of the contraband liquid fuel market, taxes, and price gouging by distributors.

The price gouging hikes are the product of an arbitrary, monopoly mentality, and they prove that the market is operating without rules or any substantial regulation. It also seems that the price observatory does not in the least impede price gouging.

A government is not a statistics bureau that merely observes and records incidents of price gouging for the record.

This is especially true for a government which considered contraband fuel one of the causes of the crisis. It dropped innuendoes about its predecessors’ willingness to combat it, and so it must be doubly sensitive.

It must be sensitive as regards the plethora of promises it made while in the opposition, but also towards already burdened citizens that it further burdened by choosing to skin them with taxes.