EU chief slammed

BRUSSELS: A group of European parliamentarians have called for EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell to resign after a “humiliating” trip to Moscow. During last week’s visit “Mr Borrell repeatedly failed to defend the EU’s interests,” a letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen by more than 80 EU lawmakers read.

Borrell visited Moscow to call for the release of Alexei Navalny.

After a press conference with a hostile Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russia expelled Three EU diplomats for alleged participation in protests for Navalny. The signatories said Borrell ought to have countered Lavrov.

THE government should immediately procure alternative vaccines and not allow the country to be caught up in the geopolitics of jabs.

It’s an open secret that there is an ongoing vaccine war between Western powers like the US and the Brics countries such as China, Russia and India.

China, Russia and India have produced the Sinopharm, Sputnik V and AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines, respectively, while the US developed the Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna jabs.

Both economic groups have punted their vaccines as the most effective in the fight against Covid 19, and openly discouraged their allies from ordering jabs from their rivals.

While SA opted for the AstraZeneca vaccines, the shocking revelation by the health ministry that the jabs are not effective against the new Covid-19 variant has thrown the vaccination campaign into disarray.

It has undermined efforts to inoculate front-line health-care workers, and later the public, and thus achieve herd immunity.

Most importantly, it has also raised serious questions about the government’s priorities, and the quality of the advice it is getting from the ministerial advisory committee.

The government failed to order the vaccines on time, took delivery of the AstraZeneca vaccines that are set to expire in April, and found itself in an awkward position when President Cyril Ramaphosa was accused of failing to acknowledge the Serum Institute of India for allocating the country the jabs even though it had not ordered on time.

All these point to two possibilities: either our leaders are short-sighted and sleeping on duty, or they are caught up in the vaccines geopolitical battles.

However, it’s not too late to salvage the situation before it moves from bad to worse.

We need to cast the net wider, order Chinese and Russian vaccines, and not get stuck with the AstraZeneca jabs alone, before our health-care system and economy collapses.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. ARISTOTLE Greek philosopher