MEP 2014 election results III – Balkaniada  

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Now that are known and Euroscepticism discussed, after a short detour through Canadian visas for Romanians, we will finally take a look at the Romanian politics.

Today I met another European woman. Originally from Spain, she told me she worked in the Czech Republic for a while as a translator. Upon learning I'm Romanian, she also felt the need to share with me that there were "a lot of Romanians" in the Czech Republic who wanted to come to Canada but couldn't, because there is no visa treaty. When I told her that there were some problems here with Czech Roma getting visa through fraud and the visa had been suspended, her reaction was to remove her Czech work experience from her resume, out of fear that “Czechs now had a bad name.”

Romania-Unified-Right-vs-PSDIn this episode I was going to discuss the Romanian MEP 2014 results. Instead, I will rehash one of the first quotes published on this blog. It’s an article written by one Bogdan Ionescu, requesting that Canada keeps the visa for Romanians. In case you don’t know, this is a big sticking point between Canada and Romania, as the former keeps a visa requirement for the latter. Canada has nonetheless a reciprocal visa elimination treaty with most other Eastern European countries, such as Hungary (with its own proportionally large Roma minority) and Czech Republic, even though these countries have encountered, over the years, massive visa abuse issues. As you should be able to infer from the links above, it is antiziganism that prevents Canada from entering in the same reciprocity treaty with Romania as it has with Hungary or Czech Republic. That, and the attitude of many in the Romanian community, who feel they need to be protected from other Romanians.

Here’s a translation of the article I first (re)published back in 2007 in Canadian visa for Romanians and again, in 2010, in Canadian citizenship for sex, following a crime detailed in Diaspora Online: Identity Politics and Romanian Migrants by Ruxandra Trandafoiu.

Do not eliminate visa for Romanian citizens! by Bogdan Ionescu

I follow closely the events in Italy. I will not delve into details. All the newspapers and TV stations overflow with information about the crime committed by Romulus Mailat in Rome. The main news hour of RAI Uno TV dedicated, in its Saturday edition, November 3, more than three quarters of its newscast to this story. In Romanian news media the event was presented under two angles. As usual, the crime was described in Latin Telenovela style, with drama, sighs, tears and self-defeatist attitude “What can you do? Nothing you can do…” The other style played the race card: journalists as well as the officials worked very hard to persuade the Romanian and European public that Romulus Mailat is a Gypsy, thinking that his ethnicity would make his crime easier to understand and – maybe – to accept. The connector between the two angles was, unsurprisingly, the powerless sadness: “Romania’s image took another hit and once again we pay without being responsible.”

I am not among those who feel ashamed that some Romanian pulled an ATM off the wall of a German bank. I do not feel responsible for the dumb actions of some with whom I share nothing but the mother tongue. “Romania’s image in the world” is a concept that does not phase me. The image is formed by default, independent of the government’s marketing plans or some PR agency. I consider that from Romania’s point of view, the crisis in Italy (as well as those in Germany, UK and France, before it) was poorly administered. In 2007, in a world where a minimal set of values has become global, you cannot wash your hands off of your own citizens for racial reasons. For the victim, it did not matter that the attacker is Gypsy. He was in there because, as a Romanian citizen, he entered that country benefitting from the right to free movement given to European Union citizens.

In the same vein, I have first-hand knowledge of the difficult situation Romanians in Western Europe find themselves in. They are the victims of the natural tendency people have to generalize. In much the same way other nations are our victims (how many times have you heard the comment “this or that people don’t know how to drive”?). Fortunately, to this day, we were insulated from such problems. The touristic visa system has prevented the Romanian criminal wave from reaching the Canadian shore. Recently however, Bruxelles puts pressure on Canada to eliminate visitors visa for the new EU members. Many Canadians of Romanian origins saluted this initiative, seeing it as a restitution of a fundamental right. But until last week, few imagined that, together with their relatives or friends coming to visit, through the Canadian gates of entry will find their way in all the robbers and rapists thrown away by Europe. This (lumpen) underclass can destroy, in a few months, all that we’ve built in many years.
This is why, with the risk of knowing that our Romanian friends and relatives will be forces to line up at the embassy, we request that the Canadian Government does not eliminate visa for Romanian citizens. At least for the time being.

Then as now, I replied with Jon Stewart Unleavened musings on immigration.

The problem with this “isolationist” approach is that it doesn’t really work. The European propensity to blaming Romanians / Gypsies (no difference in manymost people’s minds) for everything that’s wrong with Europe, including climate change and childhood diabetes has spread, by contagion, well beyond Europe. The Canadian bureaucracy and political elite already had a deeply racist mindset coupled with a serious deficiency in general knowledge (esp European history and geography) making this Romanians=Roma connection inescapable.

The way Romanians attempt to deflect “Euroscepticism” (i.e., nationalism / racism / xenophobia) by claiming it applies only to Gypsies and not to ethnic Romanians is idiosyncratic. It is not even sufficient to call it what it is and use existing legislation and institutions to combat it, we need to do that and also change Romania’s name to Dacia. Yet none of it is happening, which is why I’m claiming Dothraki asylum.

Here’s a summary:

  1. Assume discriminated Roma to be Romanian and stop trying to emphasize the difference when any gets arrested. (Except when they’re not, as was the case a while back in Britain with South East Indians working in some meat processing plant illegally, with fake Romanian passports and claiming to be Roma.)
  2. Call prejudice for what it is. Lodge protests, use existing anti-discrimination laws
  3. Change country name / brand to Dacia

details-results-romania-mep-2014Going back to the MEP 2014 saga, these are the election results in Romania:

  • USD (PSD-PC-UNPR) - 37,60%
  • Unified Right (PNL, PDL, PMP si FC) - 36,04%
  • Mircea Diaconu - 6,81%
  • UDMR - 6,3%
  • PP-DD - 3,67%
  • PRM - 2,7%

What the above shows is that the electorate is relatively split in half between left and right (see also brain and Nolan). It is far easier for the left to coalesce, mostly because the lion share goes to PSD, a party that governed the country in the high-visibility years after the 1989. Communism is a religion of envy and until 1989 it was the real state religion in Romania. Most people are docile and fell into it by default. A small minority resisted (the real right, the conservatives) and died in communist prisons, but most learned to hide. Today’s crypt-communists (i.e., PSD) share with Western conservatives a certain social conservatism, they are only united by the demagogically professed desire to spread an inexistent wealth and the populist drive to put Basescu in jail for the sin of not saving Adrian Nastase from jail.

That is why PSD is popular and will stay popular for most of the foreseeable future: it replaced in people’s minds PCR without them even realizing it; it is now the default, the sweet smell of home, the security of the good old times when money was not a problem.

Mircea Diaconu is The Actor – though sad, this should’ve been if not his electoral anthem, at least his theme song. Enough said.

Actorul by Adrian Paunescu

O, biet actor
O, biet artist
Rolurile mor
Viata e un teatru trist.

Actorul a iesit în strada,
Sa-si cumpere ceva salam,
Era în haine de parada,
Ca Voievod peste un neam.

Printre masini, printre tramvaie
Actorul se grabea firesc
Urma sa vina-un nor de ploaie
Perucile se dezlipesc.

Si când s-a asezat la coada
Cu palos, mantie si scut
Deodata oamenii din strada
Ca Voievod l-au cunoscut.

S-au dat deoparte cu sfiala
Multimea toata murmura
Vazându-i hainele de gala
Sa ne traiesti Maria-Ta!

Republicani, ma rog, cu totii
Descoperisera alt mod
De-a da cuvânt la noi emotii
Si se-nchinau la Voievod.

Dar ploaia a venit deodata
Si ei vazând cu ochii lor
Întreaga-i fata demachiata
I-au aruncat un fel de plata:
Lasati-l dracu', e-un actor.

I never thought I’ll translate a poem by Adrian Paunescu, but here it is, courtesy of Google Translate.

Oh, poor actor
Oh, poor artist
roles die
Life is a sad drama.

The actor took to the streets,
To buy some salami, 
He was dressed for his role 
As Voivod (Prince) over a nation.

Between cars, between trams
The actor hurried authentically 
A rain cloud was approaching
Making wigs come off.

And when he took his place in the line-up(*) 
In dagger, cloak and shield
Suddenly people in the street
As Prince saw him.

They stepped aside with shyness
The crowd murmured all
Seeing his gala clothes
God save the Voivod!

Republicans, well, all
Discovering another way
To express groupthink emotions
And were now praising their monarch.

But the rain came suddenly
And they seeing with their own eyes
His whole face undone
Threw him some sort of payment:
Oh FFS, he’s an actor.

Because the left in Romania is essentially one single party, PSD, while on the right we have an entire aquarium of egos swimming in a diarrheic mix of egoes and hoes, the right will almost never be able to present a united front to the PSD behemoth, even though the latter is obviously cracking at the seams and is led by a plagiarizing dumbass with no political future, at least not on the world stage.

I still find it difficult to believe that he has not resigned. Romanians will keep voting his party in office, for the poor people they represent don’t dream to even plagiarize their way to a degree, but any world leader, prior to meeting him, gets a bio that includes a mention of his plagiarized diploma. They will be polite because he is representing another country, but there is very little opportunity for the personal friendship that Basescu was able to establish with other leaders. Also, there is no equivalence with Basescu’s punching of that child – that was simply not the big deal they tried to make it to be. And again, Basescu’s friendships, though as good as any, are sunsetting, simply because he himself is departing. The real estate marketing scandal that might land him in jail is also very similar to Clinton’s Whitewater.

And Basescu’s last days in office will very likely be as sad as Clinton’s final days. Or happy, if he has a Jon Stewart.

Sources / More info: hn-results, plus-ionescu

Thank you for reading (mulţam fain pentru cetire)! Publicat Thursday, May 29, 2014 . Similar articles under the following categories (poţi găsi articole similare sub următoarele categorii): (Subscribe), (Subscribe), (Subscribe), (Subscribe), (Subscribe) . Dacă ţi-a plăcut articolul, PinIt-uieste-l, ReddIt-eaza-l, stumble-uieste-l altora, trimite-l pe WhatsApp yMess şi consideră abonarea la fluxul RSS sau prin email. Ma poti de asemenea gasi pe Google. Trackback poateputea fi trimis prin URL-ul de sub Comentarii.
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