Referendum: Now what?
(Photo source) The 'lumière' hasn't exactly 'fut' in terms of the results of yesterday's referendum. Well, it has and it hasn't. The last I heard was that BEC have given their partial results: participation (including diaspora), which falls short of what is required (50% +1) for the referendum to be valid. Definitive results will be published on Wednesday. Basescu is packingto make his return to Cotroceni whilst Victor Ponta holds on to his claim that the actual percentage was 52% (or something like that), and, as far as he is concerned, Basescu has been 'removed' and that he (Basescu) is living in a fantasy world if he thinks he has won. In addition, he (Ponta) says that CCR will have to validate the results and the decision will be respected. The struggle for power continues in this strange world of plagiarism, corruption, voting fraud extraordinaire and other delights of the Turkish variety...
A good and trusted friend wrote to me earlier saying, "people who have not had contact with communism and the Securitate cannot understand what is happening here." She is probably right. I do not pretend to have the vaguest notion of the deep and murky undercurrents running beneath this whole situation and I'm relieved that that is the case.
But what I do know is this: it is no longer a question of left or right, USL v PDL. I don't believe it ever was, on a long-term scale. It is about a country being part of a community - the European Community, within which, surprise surprise, there are rules. When those rules are broken for whichever reason, the adhesion to this community must be questioned.
As you know, I'm sure, for I have voiced it many a time, I shall be glad to see the back of Basescu - when it is done constitutionally, legally and democratically and he can be replaced by someone better. One cannot solve a big problem with an even bigger one. This whole circus of a referendum has been everything but democratic. The decision to go ahead with it was carried out, in my opinion, unconstitutionally though there are many who would disagree, and they are welcome to believe whatever they want. Throughout the process, stories of voting fraud have been more than rife (and sometimes rather funny, too) and some have even been caught on hidden cameras: patients in a psychiatric hospital who have little idea of what's going on in the outside world presumably all voted. There weren't enough ballot papers (okay,that happened in the UK too, so no bones on that one - it happens) or stamps. Priests 'advised' their 'flock' on what to vote, mayors took people's ID cards from them on the pretext of sorting them out with financial aid and benefits, company bosses told their staff that if they didn't go vote, they wouldn't have a job to go back to... On and on it goes.
I wondered how democratic it actually was for PDL to have told their supporters to stay away from the referendum, for to vote would be legitimising something that has no legitimacy. Some went to the polls and voted 'NU' anyway. The rest stayed away. I would be interested to know what the percentage was and how the outcome would have been had everyone turned out to put a cross on the ballot paper. In the long run, however, I found myself agreeing with all those who supported the boycott. It was not an abuse of democracy to my mind. It was exercising it in a refusal to play along with something that had no business taking place. The press are speaking this morning about the results of the votes: DA: 87.52% NU: 11.15%. One of Ponta's arguments (and there are many, whether wrongly or rightly) that USL have vanquished is the low number of NU... he seems to have forgotten about the boycott.
(Photo source) So, what happens now? Your guess is as good as mine. It is clear that Basescu, Ponta and Antonescu cannot work together. Both Ponta and Antonescu had already declared that should Basescu return to Cotroceni, they would resign. Ponta should have resigned anyway, if not for his evident guilt of plagiarising his thesis (now rated at 115 pages of copy/paste) then for other misdemeanours. Since both sides claim to be 'winners', well, no one seems set to find the door.
This morning, I have seen two articles whereby Iliescu is talking about democracy. How one can put Iliescu and democracy in the same sentence beats me. Just seeing his face is a sickening experience. He should really be keeping a very low profile, for personally, he is the reason, the true reason, why I feel so unable to think of USL as anything other than toxic.
There was no win in this referendum. As EP said to me earlier 'there are no winners because there were no credible players'. Even Teodor Paleologu (for whom I have very little time) hit the nail on the head: 'It is not our victory, but their infringement.'
What is clear to me is that they're going to have to grow a pair, act like grown-ups all of them, and work this out. If they do not, Romania will fall apart, and it seems to be hanging on only by a thread as it is. The leu, though a little better this morning following the end of yesterday's madness, is on its knees at 4.5558 RON/EURO. The EU is finding it harder and harder to continue to support a country that cannot exercise democracy within EU standards. Investors are nervous. They no longer trust a country now internationally seen and recognised as profoundly corrupt. If the PM can get away with something as shameful (and many Romanians can't even see a problem with it) as plagiarising his thesis, then why should anyone else have any scruples. If the Rule of Law is consistently abused, legislation altered to suit the person altering and the CCR respected only when it's convenient, then why invest in such a suspicious, risky environment. They will not.
Romania needs the EU more than the EU needs them. They need it for funding, they need it for free circulation in terms of travel. They need it for investment and business. And they need it to be respected. If things continue as they are, those who are bright, talented and show promise will keep on leaving in droves for pastures new. No one can blame them. But who and what will be left behind?
As Karl-Peter Schwartz so rightly (in my humble opinion) said in an excellent interview the other day (amongst other things), if Romania wants to leave the EU because it will not abide by the rules, then fine. Go. If she wants to return to the days of Ceasescu and live another dictatorship, 'poftiti'. That's about the long and the short of it. Being part of a community means playing by the same rules as everyone else. There are no exceptions. If one cannot, then they are no longer welcome. That's the way it is. One cannot benefit from this adhesion if one doesn't play fair.
I am glad that the referendum is as good as nul and void (although, I repeat, the definitive results from BEC will be revealed on Wednesday). But am I glad that Basescu has returned to Cotroceni? Not particularly. Glad that Ponta and Antonescu are still there? Certainly not. In fact then, nothing has changed. We are back to where we were before millions got spent on this vote that the country could not afford. In fact, no we're not. According to Charles Hawley writing for the Spiegel Online today, the situation is now actually a lot worse. This referendum has emptied the coffers yet further still and produced a horribly nasty-smelling stalemate - one where resolution seems highly unlikely any time. No winner. But losers everywhere you look and a population probably as confused and as concerned as I am (I'm referring only to those that care, of course)...
For further reading, please see also: Referendum only a battle in ongoing war for power (Charles Hawley for Spiegel Online) and Don't you dare say the D word to me (Sam R for I'm More Romanian Than You).
Commentaires sur Referendum: Now what?
- Another perspective:The boycott numbers are extremely simple: PDL had 16% of the votes in the last local elections (June) out of about 10mil people that voted. So in best case scenario 1.6 million more people would have voted for T. Basescu in the last referendum. This would have been enough to validate the vote but not even close to win it. So the decision to boycott was a no brainer since the party will not be able to win a fair vote, at least for a few years. Add to this the fact that Magyar ethnics (about 1.5 mil) decided not to vote either due to a request from Hungary president and PM and the fact that in about two months from now we will have the 2011 National Census results estimated around 16.5mil people with the right to vote versus 18.2mil that were on the ten years old electoral lists and you will understand that actually this 7.4mil people that voted Yes in the referendum are, and will probably be for a long time, the most unanimous opinion our people ever had in the last 22 years. This however will not be validated due to procedural reasons. I think people should fairly understand what actually happened in Romania. Not even half of the 7.4mil that do not want T. Basescu to represent them as a president are supporting the Ponta/Antonescu political alliance but all of them want a chance to elect a new president. This right will not be granted! How is this fair?
Now this were all facts, numbers and simple logic, something of a speculation would be to wonder who really benefits from Romania’s economic instability and weak currency. The answer may be: rest of the Euro countries. Having a low RON (local currency) makes buying in EURO much more profitable for the countries that use EURO as national currency. So for a minute there I stop and wonder if Europe is really trying to maintain democracy in Romania or is just riding the wave by taking sides that are losing just to keep things a bit fuzzy as long as possible?
As there is no factual evidence to support this it will remain as a personal conspiracy theory. But the fact that T. Basescu remains our president due to a legislative trick while 7.4mil people just want the right to elect someone else remains a fact, and it’s not cool man, not cool at all! - BecauseCelmara asked why it is necessary to remove Basescu. Simply because he proved that he is not a president whith whom political counterparts can live with.
No party or president managed to be relected in Romania, just simply because of its merits. The loss of popularity and power is unavoidable in Romania.
Basescu and his troopers realized that applying conventional politics, makes their defeat unavoidable.
Therefore all political strategy of Basescu became anti-political (against anything deemed in the democratic world as democratic politics):
1. Control and subordinate the secret services and other infrastructures of power and legitimate violence. Create a parallel structure inside each service to deal with political enemies (reproduction of Nixons use of secret service and Watergate type tactics).
2. Divide et impera: If I can not be more popular then my political enemies, they must be weaker then me. This was done by infiltrating political parties and destabilizing them from the interior (Geoana is the best example) or by splitting opposition parties and creating manipulable voting instruments in the parliament (Stolojan split the PNL and joined PD - thus becoming PDL, later Diaconescu - Oprea splited from PSD to form UNPR and assure a majority in the Parliament) . Everything against the democratic political will of the majority of voters. Artificial majorities were recreated in the Parliament, against the will of the people. Off course all these instruments/clique needed to be also "motivated", therefore corruption flourished . Massive illegal flows of money were generated to sustain this artificial mechanism of power.
3. Control the electoral process by manipulating results. This was done massively in electoral circumscriptions of the PDL or in 2009 in electoral circumscriptions outside Romania. Same was reproduced in 2012 at the local elections, were against all results from the exit poll, the final numbering of votes came out at a huge difference. Statistically highly improbable. Countless evidence and testimonies exist, just nothing is being investigated since the apparatus is under the control of Basescu ( both the electoral authority and the various secret service or judicial services are packed with people of Basescu, faithfull to his clique). It is not important who votes but the one who counts the votes. This was proven also in the US general election Bush-vs- Gore see the process of counting votes in Florida - it is not a Romanian invention.
What is now happening is that the former opposition parties, realized they are sitting ducks and will be just temporarily in power, because at the general elections in autumn, Basescu will use all above mentioned power mechanism against them, impeding them to form a clear majority and arriving back in opposition. They are aware that 4 more oppostion years will be lethal, it is likely that the PNL will dissappear and the PSD will be tarnsformed into a weak manipulable party for a long time. In the same time the clique will remain in power and guard its structural power positions and influence., probably for decades.
Coming back, to the issue, it is Basescu through its unconventional power politics game s who transformed the Romanian democracy into a battle ground. The idea in a democracy is to accept periodic democratic change if it is the will of the people, which actually did not happed in the last years in Romania. All discourse againts corruption is pure discourse and total bullshit. Corruption flourished at unseen levels under Basescu, backed by bad government, lack of vision, poor economic results .
This is why a large majority wants him and his clicque out, and this majority is neither manipulable nor, stupid, corrupt, rural, communist , prorussian and any of the other bullshit his propaganda team spreads.
Sorry for the bad English, the response was written in a haste.
First day the Leu looks a little healthier