Friday, August 17, 2018

Romania's political reality - letter to a worried foreign friend

Kelly, a 10 minutes read about what happens in Romania.

After centuries of being at the gates and under the influence of some of the most miserable empires of modern ages, the Otoman (turks) and Russians, and after having communism exported from Russia for almost 50 years, until the 1989 revolution, Romania is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Poverty attracts corruption, so even 15 years after the '89 revolution which broke down communism, my country was on the same line, maybe in a state of regress. The revolution was in fact confiscated by the same communists, the ones that were least visible and who shifted a little in the direction of an "original democracy" - they made people think that they lived in a democracy, but in fact, behind the courtain, it was a new communism, softer, but full of corruption and abuse, with the state controlling the justice, which led us to nowhere. But after 2004, as some new young politicians won the elections, things started to change. As we negotiated to become part of the European Union, the country started to make significant and good changes on all fields, especially the independence of justice. A National Anti-Corruption Direction was created, which started to hunt down the big corrupts, from the politicians and important businessmen who made fortunes in the dark period after '89. In 2007 we became part of the European Union, and until 2016, things looked very good, more and more corrupts were arrested, the country started to develop fast and everyone believed that things will remain like this.

But on the 2016 elections, many of the big fishes who suffered because of the anti corruption law grouped behind the same party who ruled after '89, the descendents of the communists. They won the elections because of two things: they proposed an enthusiastic election program, full of populist promises, of doubling wages and retiring pensions, and this brought many votes from the poor and elders. Besides, some of the young population saw the country was progressing and they lost their vigillence, so they didn't go to vote. This brought the current rulling party, PSD, a big success in the December 2016 elections. But their leader was an already convicted man for previous elections fraud (such an irony). And behind him, an entire crowd of politicians and businessmen who went to prison after being investigated by the DNA (anti corruption direction) who vowed to retaliate and regain power. All they needed was to promise impossible things, win the elections and then ... showtime.

They immediately started to soften the anti corruption legislation and hit the independent justice with some decisive moves. But, in an impressive turnaround, they awaked some latent "deamons". The civil society responded with some large protests in Feb 2017, when 600,000 people demonstrated nationwide against the Government and Parliament's actions to subdue justice. It was an unprecedented move in EU, to have so many people out on the streets, demanding not bigger wages, not things for themselves, but standing out for an idea: to have an independent justice, to maintain the harsh anti-corruption laws and basically defending the democracy and our path to become a developed european country.

That government fall under the pressure of street, but things didn't change. 2 new governments continued their fight to subdue justice, with this one being populated by the most sinister ministers this country experienced in the last 50 years. PSD selected as ministers only functional illiterates, guys who can't even offer a decent argumentation in their speeches, who are not intelligent and don't have a strong personality to have make their own decisions. These "qualities" combined best into our prime minister, a completely dumb woman who can't even read nor address in public speeches without making a lot of mistakes. They are all the perfect slaves into the hands of PSD. As shocking as this is, this is the situation in Romania now. Besides their slaves in the Goverment, the Parliament managed to have the chief prosecuter from DNA fired, a women who became an european figure in the anti corruption war: Laura Codruta Kovesi. And they managed to pass a shocking legislation, which defend corrupts and fellons. The civil society has been protesting againts this legislation, which is still in debate on the Constitutional Court (the Supreme Court), which itself is under a vague control of PSD (the toxic rulling party). More and more institutions got under their influence, there are only a few which remained independent.

And this brings us to the last big protest, 10th of August, when I went to Bucharest among other 100,000 people, from which maybe a thirs came from abroad, in an unprecedented move where romanians benefited from their August holiday to come home and protest against political injustice. For some reasons, PSD was afraid of returning romanians so they orchestrated a scenario. All the other protests were peaceful, people came with their kids and pets to protests, there were no tensions with the police. But this time, they had a scenario in mind, they spread gas among us for no reason, they tried to create tension to make the crowd respond. They didn't succeed to do so, but after I left (had to drive 230 km back home), they basically attacked the remaining citizens, beating them without reason, spoiling gas everywhere. It's something this country hasn't seen since '89. We were all shocked of this. Now the justice started to investigate and unvail their plan, but they do all they can to obstruct this. But I think that this situation scared them as well, they are all pointing at eachother for guilt after that night. I don't think that the things will escalate, we are not at risk of being harmed or endangered more, we are still an EU country and not in Africa. But you can never know how things will advance.

This is the situation in Romania now. A political mafia keeps an entire nation captive here. I am ashamed by this, we are a NATO and EU member, we are not in the 3rd world here, the country is peaceful and romanians are nice, welcoming people..  but this toxic political party tries to bring us back to the dark ages of this nation. Luckily, their social and political credit runs off quickly, we have one of the most powerful civic society in EU (these 2 years made people organise well here) and we do all we can to break their plans. We hope into a better support from the beaurocrated EU, which is very slow and it needs years to respond to any threat, and we have a strong partnership with USA, which supported the anti-corruption legislation so far. We hope that soon enough, all these forces will combine and we will overthrow these idiots from their toxic government and things will get back to normal. We lost a lot of energy already, young people neglected their businesses, their families to dedicate time to fight this mafia, all this lost energy, invested into ourselves would have brought so many benefits to the society (for instance, instead of analysing the last client you sent, I lost one hour to write this :). But first thing now is to overthow them, then we will have to reconstruct this nation and avoid this things to happen in the future.

That's it, you know more about Romania now and what we stand up for. Thanks for your concern and for reading :)