Two cases of culpable homicide (1)
Kenneth Roy
Two cases of culpable homicide (2)
Bob Cant
Mihai Razvan Ungureanu – Romania’s new hope?
In the last two parliamentary general elections held in Romania, the total number of votes cast was around 40% of those eligible to vote. Or, to put it a more interesting way, 60% of Romanians eligible to take part in the election of their government consistently fail or refuse to do so.
On 9 December this year, the winning coalition of the Social Liberal Union (USL), comprising three parties, won 57% of the 40% of the electorate who did vote, while the fragmented opposition of coalition groups and independent smaller parties shared the rest. It is therefore fair to say that not one single political party in Romania can claim more than 15% electoral support in the country and that the new governing coalition stands at around 25% of the total electorate. These figures are very rough but the message is clear. The lack of involvement of 60% of the Romanian population in the election of their government is Romania’s real and continuing political crisis and helps to perpetuate the existence of all of the country’s many problems.
In effect Romania’s political parties are working only with and speaking to their core voters – the die-hards with life-long affiliations who will vote for the party label no matter what, the people who hate the other guys so much that they will go out to vote against them in any weather, and the people who have been bought for an icon or a few euros in these dreadful financial times.
The parties are completely failing to engage with the rest of the population, the 60% who are not voting because no one is giving them a good enough reason to go out in bad weather to express a preference. The 60% who are not impressed by parties who construct campaigns around personal insults. The 60% who may actually want to be presented with programmes for government telling them how the country’s economy, health service, education and infrastructure will be managed and improved.
The 60% were amazed but not surprised by the government’s incompetence in trying to privatise a state-owned chemical producer that was 700 million euros in debt, had stopped making anything and whose workforce was on strike in lieu of several months of unpaid wages. Perhaps only in Romania would government expect a real private company to bid around 45 million euro (in addition to the debt and substantial necessary investment) for the privilege of owning such a prize.
The unfranchised 60% may wish for much better than to see their country’s president calling the incumbent prime minister names (‘pig’ and ‘kitten’ to name two) on national television and then claim that he would be unwilling to accept the nomination of the leader of the winning coalition, the incumbent prime minister, for the post. The same 60% may even hope for a positive future for the country before they feel obliged to head for the airport to find a better future for themselves and their children elsewhere – Romania has lost three million of its best people in the last 10 years. These are the 60% who crave but are not being shown any vision or leadership by their political class so why should they vote?
Romania’s political culture consists almost entirely of the promotion of personal interests, extraordinary egotism, the use of public scandal as a weapon, imperial levels of patronage and breathtaking corruption. Government in Romania is an ideology-free zone utterly devoid of public policy creation, discussion and implementation. Yet in the run-up to the election of 9 December a new party emerged – Forta Civica (Civic Force) – led by a young ex-prime minister, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, and supported by a group of middle-class professionals who had, until now, shunned participation in politics.
Now it seems to be finding its voice and took part in last month’s parliamentary election for the first time. Forta Civica even has a public policy programme, a manifesto, outlining a long and impressive list of reforms and policy initiatives that would bring Romania and its economy into 21st-century Europe.
Being small and only a few months old, Forta Civica allied itself to the larger but unpopular Party of Democratic Liberals (PDL) and the coalition did very badly at the polls. However, if it gets over this initial bad experience it should grow into a political force that can begin to meet the aspirations of the currently non-voting 60% of Romania’s electorate.
In the meantime we can expect another period of economic under-performance and political theatre perpetrated by a group of people who seem to have no idea of how to govern Romania as a modern country. The long-suffering 60% will have to suffer a little longer.
Ronnie Smith was born in Largs and now lives in Romania, working as a professional training business consultant and communication coach. He is also a teacher of political science, a political and social commentator and a writer of fiction
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