Mid-november thoughts

Almost everybody I know talks about the presidential elections these days.

In case you don't know, the second round of presidential elections in Romania will take place on Sunday, November 16th, 2014. The two candidates still in the race are the socialist Victor Ponta and the liberal Klaus Johannis. While Victor Ponta is widely known for the plagiarism of his Ph. D. thesis, for being a spy - against our NATO allies, it seems - and for 2 years of governing Romania with bad results, Mr. Johannis became known as the German-native mayor of Sibiu, one of the most developed cities in Romania under his mayorship, being re-elected twice and fundamentally changing the image of that city for good. As somebody who visited Sibiu in 2012, 2013 and 2014, I can tell you that the 2007 European capital of culture (Sibiu) is, now (also due to the efforts of Klaus Johannis) one of the most developed places in the country, along with cities like Cluj, Timișoara or Brașov. That being said, I don't hide the fact that I will vote on Sunday. And that my vote will not be in favour of Victor Ponta.

However, the Sunday elections, or their result, are not the subject of this article. To be honest, as long as Romania will keep its EU and NATO membership, I try not to get too involved in this. But there are things that bother me and I want to write about them : every time we have elections in Romania, the social tissue is weakened. All the fractures and exploitable differences are used by the candidates, in order to get a few more votes and, under this respect, I think we just had the ugliest campaign in the last two decades, as normal people are turned against each other because of their political options. I am most offended by how the socialist candidate used religious faith (Christian orthodox, against the Lutheran faith of his rival, in a 86% Christian Orthodox Romania) as a mean to get votes, instead of tangible results as a PM.

Our politicians only know how to use hate as an instrument. This goes as well against the liberal candidate, in the present case. And this is a lose-lose situation. Our society doesn't have the antibodies to that. It seems we have not yet discovered the secrets of a normal political campaign and the logic of cohesion, and that we are not let to. It seems also that those in power, now or in the not so distant past, are not interested by - nor capable of - normality. They are only interested by the power, they are by no means interested into fortifying the society - and thus the Romanian democracy itself.

Kindle your mind,