Showing posts sorted by relevance for query presidential elections. Sort by date Show all posts

If you follow Romanian news, you mustn’t have missed how Victor Ponta, the current Romanian prime-minister, leader of the most popular (and also crypto-communist) PSD party and the most likely winner of the upcoming presidential race, launched his candidacy, on his birthday, on a stadium.

I try to make sense of who voted for whom in this election, and especially who voted for PNL. Surprisingly for me, PNL managed to attract a majority of women / rural / “unoccupied” voters.

Those of us who haven’t forgotten the recent elections (and this includes some of those happy with the results as well as those who predicted a PSD win, were proven wrong and keep looking for a reason to save their reputation) are still somewhat surprised. I know I am. So while looking for a well laid out contrarian opinion, I discovered the blog PoliTichii, obstinately hanging on to a pro-PSD viewpoint after having [wrongly] forecasted a PSD win.

I don’t like to adopt a nationalist stance on any day of the year and least of all when you are supposed to do so, such as on December 1, Romania’s national day. Rather than pen yet another pointless, devoid of meaning nationalist article, I’d much rather look at a few forgotten issues.

I am one of the remaining few who remembers life before the Internet. It was cloudy. And back in those times, good, watchable, fun commercials were few and far in-between.

Extreme division in the public opinion is not new and is not common only to Romania. What is special about our situation is how ludicrous and paranoid their claims are. In this article commenced long ago, we look at how “tunnel vision” and “excessive focus” ruins politics, and implicitly, electorates who fail to censor the politicians who succumb to it.

When it comes to presidents, I prefer them quiet and subdued, but when I look back, I kept voting for the loud ones. I’m much like a woman who claims she’s looking for good guys but constantly ends up with bad boys. I’m not the only one, judging by the recent results of US elections. So I’m hurrying to finish this article, in a McDonald’s with non-working Wi-Fi, fueled by their free coffee promotion with only 30 minutes left to go. 

It has recently come to my attention that today is St Andrew's day and also Scotland National Day. Tomorrow is Romania's. Or, since it’s unlikely I’ll finish this article and publish it today, subtract one day from all the temporal adverbs above. We will also learn here who put the ‘X’ in XXX.

I have two votes coming up - one for Toronto, Canada (Oct 27), two for Romania (Nov 2, 16). And as usual, I will make a serious effort to vote - I won't wait in line 10 hours, for instance, but I will give it a couple of hours of my time. I thought I go through the possible candidates for election and why I (mostly) won't vote for them.

Sriracha is a 'sauce piquante', SRI is the Romanian Secret Service, fall is autumn, and in Romanian "picant" could also be derived from 'to fall' which is 'a pica.' We look at the consecutive declarations of Romania’s president, an allied journalist and finally, the candidacies of other president-hopefuls, from the head of the Romanian Secret Service, Melescanu and to the former Justice Minister, Macovei. But most of all, the title is a tip of the hat to Vlad Petreanu and his excellent expose, with a title that translates roughly as “The [secret] Services Autumn.”

As shown in results, in the runoff, Romanians will get to choose between Iohannis and Ponta. I wrote extensively about Ponta (dottore, virgin suicides, beligan-ponta, greatest plagiarizer, plai cu plagiat, roi rouge, geoana, partisanship, nastase), so before I tell you why I'm voting Ponta, I'll take a look at who is Iohannis.