Yeeeey!!! Romanians voted. Yeeeey! Romanians expressed their will. Booooo! Romanians changed masters Booooo! Romanian problems will only get worse.
And that's pretty much the outcome of the Romanian presidential election which took place last November 16th. However, for any intent and purpose we could say exactly the same from any other election that took place since… well… modern democracy was implemented. Romanians just replaced one bad choice with another. If you want the details, just go to Hotnews - Romania and search for the article "PM Victor Ponta admits defeat in Romanian presidential elections"
THE CONTENDERS
Victor Ponta
He is the current prime minister. From his campaign it has been said:
"sinister campaign"
"took no prisoners"
"abuse"
"preventing thousands of people from casting their vote abroad"
" total lack of progress in guaranteeing the constitutional right of Romanians anywhere to vote"
"electoral tourism"
" falsified votes"
" breaches of audiovisual legislation"
" most influential TV news channels covering Ponta's campaign in a strongly manipulative way"
And so on.
As you can see, Mr. Ponta is a shining democratic light in the midst of a horrible, horrible storm unleashed by those coward and uninformed Romanian citizens who still don't get it and actually attempt to express their will through the vote. No sir. It is clearly not sufficient to tell them what's good for them, it is necessary to impose it.
Now, let's not be hasty. This only happens in far, far away and remote countries that nobody has ever heard or cared about. It's not like it happened… uh… let's say US in 2000 in the Bush-Gore election. No sir! These kinds of things never happen in "our" countries.
Klaus Iohannis
This is a person who:
"joined national politics this year"
"mostly attracted support by standing against Ponta"
"delivered little proof that he has what it takes to be a president"
That's right ladies and gentlemen. And in this corner we have the invincible Klaus with zero national victories, zero national experience and mostly known for being against whatever political power is currently in power. With such an exceedingly curriculum we can only expect the absolute best from such luminary thanks to his innumerable years of experience at the helm of a government. After all, a person who has served for 14 years as the major of the city of Sibiu… whose primary industry is… tourism, this person is clearly qualified to drive a country... and not into the ground…right? Right?
THE CHOICE IS NO CHOICE
It has been said that the Sunday the vote took place there was a massive increase in voters in protest for the "abuse" in "preventing thousands of people from casting their vote abroad". Let's be clear. Romanians came out and voted against the government because the government took their abuse a step too far and started a chain reaction. But let's look at this objectively. Ponta's actions were described as "demonstrating his expertise at dismantling the rule of law" while being the "head of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSD), the country's most powerful web of post-communists" since he took over the government. How nice for a former prosecutor.
Faced with this debacle, a newcomer with clear lack of expertise capitalized and profited from the generalized sense of outrage. Clever, clever guy.
And so the people had the choice to vote for more debacle or something else which is clearly not up to the task (as if anybody on earth would be up to a similar task). The choice boiled down to choose the lesser evil and this is significant. Isn't it interesting how over the last few decades all political choices expressed through votes always come down to choosing the lesser evil?
If you have a very long memory you may actually remember the time (long gone now) when people used to vote for somebody and not against somebody else. But consider something else. When we make choices for ourselves, typically we do not choose against something, we choose for something. This is so because most of our choices are designed to satisfy our needs. Choosing against something means that our needs won't be satisfied or at least they won't be satisfied to a large degree.
For example when you go to a supermarket, do you make a shopping list against supermarket A? Of course not. You make the list for your necessities and then you determine which supermarket you will use, A or B. Which supermarket you choose will be the one that satisfies your needs better. If you are on a budget, you may choose A. If you are in a hurry, you may choose B. But if you are on a budged, typically you will not choose against B, you will simply ignore B and move on to A. You choose A because it is cheaper, not because B is more expensive. Our choices are mostly determined by the capacity to satisfy our needs.
Now take a look at the situation in Romania. Clearly Ponta is a disaster but is Iohannis any better? Will Iohannis provide what Romanians want? Will Iohannis satisfy Romanian needs? Who knows since the primary characteristic of Iohannis is that he is against Ponta. To choose Iohannis is to choose against Ponta, not for something better. Consequently, we will go so far as to bet that it won't make any difference in the mid to long term. The wellbeing of Romanian people will continue to decrease.
A STEP FORWARD
OK, OK. It's Romania, unlike France or England or Brazil where their leaders are soooooo much better behaved than their predecessors. Because their leaders have not been printing and borrowing like drunken sailors. Because their leaders have not spent countless billions in government boondoggles. Because their leaders have brought so much peace, prosperity and above all, sustainable well-being that we can't even begin to enumerate it all. Of course not. The world is sooooo much better now that we are in a full blown world-war currency war (see Operation Scorched Earth - The New Economic Policy) and our -formal- debt levels have matched the annual production of the entire globe (Happy Breakeven Year) and we are soooo much safe (The Aggressiveness Of Modern Democracies). No sir! Thanks to modern leaders this is a figment of…somebody's imagination. It's not real. We are all living in a wonderful, wonderful socialistic worker's paradise.
Dear reader, WAKE UP! It does not matter where you are. It does not matter who you vote. Your vote will always be for the lesser evil. Your vote will always be unsatisfactory because only you can make decisions that satisfy your needs, not politicians.
POLITICAL EVOLUTION
However, having said that, we fully understand that asking Romanian people not to vote is simply ridiculous. Romanians have been released from under the communism only a few years back (and some would say that not even that). They look at democracy with hope and as such they are in the "democratic" stage of their political evolution. They still have a long way ahead. It is as impossible for Romanians to consider not to vote as it is impossible for them to walk over water. We fully understand them but it is our job to point out the obvious for future reference, for a day in the future when Romanians will come to understand not the futility of voting but the downright destructiveness of so doing.
CONCLUSION
Romania concluded their presidential election. Nothing has changed. That's it.
Then again maybe you are a Romanian voter who voted because it felt so right to get rid of Ponta. OK. We get that. Just remember that you have just mortgaged your future for that vanishing feeling of satisfaction. May you never have to regret having taken this decision and may your sons and daughters never have to live with the consequences. Yet, something tells us that they will. It was your choice. You made it. The consequences are all yours. Never forget that.
Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.
