The title means “Romanians vote anticorruption”, but then I realized that Romanians know what happened, it’s foreigners who might be more interested in what I have to say about it. I wish I could write a celebratory article, but I can't. Most Romanians who lined up seem to think that they are voting against corruption, but have they really?

I voted today, Sunday, in the afternoon. I wasted a significant amount of time taking a supposedly faster route to the Romanian Consulate that is no longer downtown, and ended up rotting for about 1h (after another hour to get there) on the last km of Eglinton Ave, which is in construction, with traffic moving at snail pace. I was in a TTC bus, but it reminded me of the days I was still "driving" my car, being mostly stuck in traffic, before I had sold it to rely solely on bicycle.

In case you’re wondering, the posted image is a screenshot from a forum, provided by a friend involved with USR when I asked why didn’t any of them answer my query (like Comsa, PSDi did). She’s also suggested that USR strongly supports online voting (usr-ov, sen-ov). For what is worth, I’m not convinced they deserve their great victory – I just don’t see candidates who are incapable to answer questions and interact with voters before the vote, do so after.

Still, I am cautiously optimistic, much like most of my friends – and not only:

Si acum intre noi romanii. Bai, stam bine. O alianta nou formata cu agenda pro-europeana si liberal-progresista (wishful thinking asta din urma, perhaps) reuseste sa ia un sfert din voturi, echilibru electoral intre trei partide mari, participare politica semnificativa. Sigur, vot de protest sau mesianic, absenta ideologiilor si a politicilor clare pe termen lung, problema finantarilor partidelor si a incurajarii competitiei politice. (ru-critiq)

So I entered Dundas subway station at 1pm and arrived at the consulate at 2:40pm. Google Maps had 3 different routes, with the “recommended” being more than 15 minutes longer than the fastest; I chose the fastest and I learned why – it became the slowest. I then proceeded to wait in line another 2h. Halfway through, some good Samaritans brought 2 jugs of coffee, but I declined - I was already wired. I spent most of my waiting time playing Duolingo – I’m now in the Gold League. :)

The Hague saw police brutality in dispersing Romanians who were unable to vote (fb-haguevote1, fb-thehague2) and there were problems and people who couldn’t vote even in Germany (hn-mach), so much so that even Euronews covered them (en-angryro).

Toronto, in comparison, was “reasonable” - I posted a photo of the line-up in Toronto (again, about 2h or so lineup). There’s the lineup visible in the photo and inside the building there’s a lineup for the elevator (taking 5 people at a time) and a lineup once you come out the elevator. Seniors and those who brought kids to vote got priority. Halfway through, good Samaritans brought jugs of coffee for everybody.

Once I finally entered the Consulate (which, let me be clear, is not that entire building, but rather a room or two on some upper floor), I found about 10 people sitting, of which the first was a male (likely MAE employee) who took my name down, checked my passport and asked me to go to one of his colleagues to get the bulletins. I was asked twice (almost incredulously) if I want both the bulletins for the referendum and of course I said yes, both times. After I had been given the bulletins, I had to wait for the stamp to come out of the cabins.

One lady suggested that I return the stamp as soon as I vote, even before I deposit my bulletins in the urn, which I did, hoping to help speeding up the vote, but the moment I returned it, she started asking me questions and proceeded to stamp my passport, while I was struggling to hold and fold my bulletins in one hand. It wasn’t a good experience, since I was trying to protect the bulletins from any markings, stains or accidental damage and that was hard. Though it seemed at first that she was trying to help, the way she reacted when I brought back the stamp to her firstly, before depositing my votes, suggested ulterior motives.

results

If I’m reading the Hotnews results (hn-lvrslts) correctly, in Romania PNL won with PSD 2nd and USR 3rd, while in diaspora USR came first, followed by PNL, PMP and PSD 4th, with only 6% of the counted vote. This means PNL 10, PSD=USR=8, PMP 2, UDMR 2, PRO 2 (hn-impartirea). LE: despite HN (C.D.)’s claims that Ciolos and Ponta will vacate their mandate so that someone else will take it, the lists are supposed to be fixed and I cannot find any declaration in this direction, on the contrary: dcn-cioret.

Apart from having censored Dragnea/PSD, the news of Dragnea’s condemnation (and his subsequent trip to jail) was for many the cherry on top. What else?

• CTP’s “antivote party” (he’s calling them the “vote suppression party”, much like the Republicans of today or the Democrats before LBJ – rpb-pav)
• a Recorder retrospective on Dragnea’s past (rec-d1
• UberEats having launched in Romania via someone’s video (UE had started in Toronto and I had fun doing that myself; Toronto is not as bike friendly as most European cities, but in comparison, Bucharest is HELL).
• skimmed through a few videoclips (TVR special 1:20, Iohannis-PSD, Iohannis-luni, BEC-rezultate, TVR-tj)
• found that 40% of respondents agree that this diaspora vote fiasco will make voters more “partisan” in the future (click the image above), and read a few other Hotnews articles before they started to return 503 errors (checked Monday afternoon EST – hn-*)
• while I agree with Augustin Zegrean, I don’t think he should be making statements and giving interviews – Justice should be above the political fray (hn-zegrean)
• Poland attacks the EU copyright directive passed under the Romanian/PSD rotating presidency (sc-plcopy)
• Dragnea is in New York Times (nyt-dragnea)
• I fear the introduction of online voting under PSD, as they could really screw it up (hn-melescanu). Ministrul a adăugat că a solicitat elaborarea în regim de urgență a unei analize la nivelul Ministerului Afacerilor Externe, „pentru identificarea de soluții concrete și propuneri de modificări legislative care să contribuie la dezvoltarea unui sistem de votare adaptat nevoilor Diasporei”. Reacția lui Teodor Meleșcanu vine după ce, duminică, la mai multe secții de votare din străinătate, precum cele din Roma, Londra, Dublin, Roma sau Offenbach s-au format cozi, sute de români așteptând să-și exercite dreptul la vot. Cozi s-au format și în fața secțiilor de votare din Bruxelles, Roma, Verona, Offenbach, Dublin, Londra, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Lille, Berlin și Regensburg, românii declarându-se nemulțumiți, pe rețelele de socializare, că așteaptă ore bune la coadă din cauza organizării slabe a autorităților române.

The USR victory is for me bittersweet. Insofar as they failed to answer my questions, I see them as a step forward, but still far from the kind of new politics and level of public service that Romania needs.

Let us now try to make sense of who voted for whom.

Sources / More info: hn-lvrslts, vc-bltne, rpb-pav, fb-haguevote1, fb-thehague2, fb-berlin, en-angryro, usr-ov, sen-ov, rec-d1, ru-critiq, hn-intractv, hn-refrezpart, hn-zegrean, sc-plcopy, nyt-dragnea, hn-mateescu, hn-mach, hn-impartirea, hn-melescanu, hn-nimic, dcn-cioret