We shall be what we used to be and even more

Beyond all the explanations analysts are seeking for the local election results on Sunday – from the controversial implications of the Red Telephone, the Costea and FNI affairs, to the structure and behaviour of specific segments of the electorate faithful to the main parties engaged in the race – there is a simple but basic explanation: the failure, first and foremost the economic failure, of government in the last four years. An unequivocal failure that meant a plunging standard of living, wide-scale poverty, with eight million Romanians now forced to live with less than one dollar a day. At issue are the direct consequences of the three years of constant economic decline, unusual in peace time, followed by a fourth year when a frail recovery is barely in sight.

It was the period of severe belt-tightening, reminding of the Ceausescu times, when everything went to repay the foreign debt, as well as dramatic bankruptcies, whose cost was unfortunately laid, again, on the shoulders of the populace. The over-used technology of the “heavy-burden inheritance” from the previous government didn’t work! Because, although this inheritance did exist, the populace, often treated to such words in the past, was fed up with explanations and chose to look only at results.

And it did so for a simple reason: it found that others kept amassing wealth, in a defying and illegal way, that, just like before, corruption was king, that the newly arrived were no better than the ones before them, that, on the contrary, some of them were even more avid for money, more penniless and more shameless, that, generally, rulers have rather mocked than respected the many, that they always demanded sacrifice without making none themselves. And in fact, in the ’96 vote they didn’t ask for an arm and a leg, but for more honesty, moderation, less defiance and ostentation than those before them, and perhaps, they asked them to be upright.

In 1996, most of the votes were not for today’s people, but against those before them, for reasons much more moral than economic or political ones. Four years later, a similar process is in the works. Those who arrived in power in ’96 are sanctioned by none other than those who voted for them back then, namely because they failed to be better than the previous ones, as the electorate had hoped. PDSR is now an indirect winner, as CDR was in 1996. The rulers of the last three years are responsible not only for their own defeat, but for compromising the alternative, if not hope itself.

Had it not been for the economic failure of the last four years of government, the Red Telephone and Costea affairs would probably not have made their way onto the political stage, because they wouldn’t be a worth a try. And the staging of the FNI disaster would have simply failed. But since the issue is an economic failure, the FNI scandal easily caused destabilisation, eating away more points from the government, and the Costea and Red Telephone affair did nothing but add to the resolve of the PDSR electorate, instead of diluting it, as probably expected.

So the alternative – perfectly democratic – that still exists today is to forcefully bring PDSR back into power and, even more than that, unexpectedly revive the old-timer FSN, of course not as a political structure but as an alliance of parties that split off from the same core and perhaps the same state of mind. Mr. Basescu’s clear warning that he would not negotiate his votes in case he is ruled out of the City Hall vote (that is, he will not advise his voters to support the Convention) is a direct invitation to an alliance with PDSR for the future government. After ten years, Romania is falling back to square one. And perhaps it’s not exactly so, but from one standpoint – an essential one – it is! Because the current coalition leaves the crucial issue of ownership almost in the same stage, an issue FSN didn’t even consider addressing, PDSR only wanted to give it a gloss, and PD systematically opposed a solution to it after ’96. But there is another first-rank responsible factor. It is the CDR, which, at PD’s obstructions, was unable to respond to the blackmail by accepting the break-up the coalition, because the CDR ministers, senators and deputies liked their chairs more than the property issue.