SINTEZA 11/DECEMBBRIE 2014

25 years. What hasnt changed?

A quarter of a century means facing changes, at least when it comes to addressing the speed
level of development in the society nowadays. This issue of Sinteza is dedicated to the
celebration of 25 years of freedom in Romania and aims to give a bigger picture of the
changes that have occurred since then. But what hasnt changed? There is a list without any
comments or explanations, similar to someone drawing some rocks, one after the other, rocks
that are still and unable to generate a movement in the wave of change
Twenty five years later, we still dont know whether it was a revolution or a coup dtat, we
still dont know who aimed at us on the 21st and on the 22nd, or later, when most of the
people died. Nobody was held responsible for the crimes committed during the Revolution,
and the ones bearing the files ended up having great careers while practicing the law. We have
tens of thousands of revolutionists by profession, who receive allowances, land and are
exempt from taxes, while the descendants of the deceased have been long forgotten, with no
one left to fight for them, the widows and the orphans can no longer fight the squires.
The only thing left is fear and a terrified politics, especially when it comes to electoral
years, years of change. There is a constant fear of governing, of making courageous decisions,
even if there have been consistent majorities at times, politicians would still govern in a
minimalist way and today are still governed by the fear of losing power, and it is for this very
reason that they have been losing power every single time. When politicians are afraid to take
charge of political values or to adopt a clear identity, the end result is a form of surrogate
politics: the ongoing political war among leaders becomes the very reason of being in the
competition, and sometimes it dresses up in the form of a surrogate program. The fear of
political isolation crosses the entire spectrum, from left to right. For 25 years, politicians have
been passers-by, but the fear remained, like a fog, like a memento of emptiness and
incertitude, of chaos, signalling the death of the system.
We have not escaped the need of a daddy yet, respectively an acute sense of presidentiality
allotted to power. People dont trust rules, the Constitution or institutions, they always want a
president who can deliver wages, retirement pensions, and can bring peace and quiet. It seems
that we now have a president, in a way, predestined for Romanians, Santa Klaus. And the new
President, even if maybe not happy about it, will be stormed with reverential regards, letters,
kisses and different other means of massaging the/his presidential Ego, for this has been the
practice for centuries on the banks of the Dmbovia river.
People are still happy about getting their country back, and will emerge in activities such
as the slaughtering of the pig for Christmas and other winter celebrations and parties,
warming the dream that the country is going in the right direction without them, for all they
have to do is look at the pay stub and the pension coupon and see how the amount of money is
growing. Even if a quarter of a century passed by, Laszlo Tokes still intends to instigate
Hungarians to revolt, and Vadim Tudor is still writing pamphlets aimed at the people that
could maybe give him something in return for his silence.
The discourse of anger still dwells in the public space, although nowadays is more
visible in the virtual public space. The elderly asking for pensions are being attacked, the
people living in the countryside who are not progressive are attacked as well, together with
the assisted people of all kinds and the representatives of the rural communities who need gas,

roads and sewerage systems. The new diaspora is not demonized for not eating salami with
soy, but for voting without contributing to the GDP, that is for not working here with us, sideby-side. The diversions with the water poisoning and the rows of armour-clad machines are
part of the Facebook revolution, as well as the tanks coming from Russia that need to be
stopped with the chests of likes.
The anticommunism that brought people out in the streets is back, 25 years later, although,
at present, we deal with a form of anticommunism that has no real object. George Soros
maxim is still available: It is always easier to mobilize people against something than for it.
The autonomy of the Hungarians and of the Szecklers is a project situated at a more advanced
stage today, but still awaiting better times meant to allow for the marking of a small boundary
around the ancestral estate, The Szkely Land.
We still have schools, although the numbers dropped from 30.000 to 7.2000, and the
numbers are still dropping, and, in the meantime, this past quarter of a century of freedom
resulted in building five churches to one school. Our GDP is still very low and we are among
the last countries in Europe, although the GDP is five times higher than it was in the year
1989. We still have publishing houses, although book sales have dropped 85%. Our public
scholars write pathetic appeals and call people out in the streets, after 25 years of democracy,
in order to erase governments from the face of the earth.
Romanian entrepreneurs are treated as thieves, bandits, corrupted and ragged, and the
proportion is greater than it was during the first year of freedom: back then 80% of the
population were of this belief, 25 years later 93% of the population shares this opinion.
Foreign investors are seen as saviours and get aid from the state, while Romanian investors
are arrested for corruption when documents come to discussion or when are asked by central
or local administration to backhand money in order for any documentation to be issued.
Generally speaking, the political bribery still works instead of some strategies of economic
development: the myth of the foreign investor who comes only to bring jobs to the
autochthonic space, the economy of the market which alone brings wealth, the flat rate are
seen as the only ways towards wealth and economic growth. The IMF and the World Bank
give us health certificates and put together the budget project for the upcoming year, and the
myth of wellbeing is left to refer to a period further away than the one we used to see with the
mind and the soul in 1989.
The Romanian state remained the only source of power, the only choice left for
legitimizing authority. The local administration is invaded by the centralized state, an
objective weve worked on for two centuries, therefore what we have is a local or regional
authority simulacrum, for these are mere extensions of the central organisms into the territory.
The force of the centre makes local barons look like copies of the barons of the centre. Such
forms of politics do not represent the community, or the people in the community, but
reproduce an abstract scheme created at the centre, and it is of political nature: social
democrats vs. liberals, pro-Europeans vs. conservatives, corrupted vs. innocent etc. Therefore,
25 years later, the central power rejects any projects that could be truly relevant to real people
and real communities.
Today, as it was at the beginning of the century, we have a political left obsessed with
maintaining the power of dominance and a political right that pathetically cries over open
letters and public calls while believing that by passing state property onto the hand of recent
capitalists the real revolution will take place (but they havent read Marx, who shared the
same beliefs but wanted it for the working class). And now the leaders of the right are still

hired by the state, although a small Romanian capitalism is in the making. The civil society is
absent from the public space, but, from time to time, a few of its representatives awaken,
former ministers or members of the party, and start invoking it and speak on behalf of it.
Thousands of organisations fight for social assistance politics, for the solidarity of the
community or for other purposes, instances in which the state forgets about the people. Such
organisations are run by young people, and are usually unnoticed, but we are still stuck with
the lists of support for the intellectuals and with the open letters to a leader that runs for a
function.
We idolize for a while the young people that came out to vote or fought on Facebook for a
new world, as back when they came out to die in front of the tanks, but soon everybody
forgets about them, about their jobs, their studying conditions and about how we must help
their careers, with the raising of their children in order to benefit of big, fat pensions out of
their work.
We still dont have a project for the society, we dont have a map of the future andwe dont
have a proposal for a trajectory. The governments are communicational and emphatic. A
quarter of a century later we dont have a plan, we lead the country with bookkeeping
instruments and with our eyes shut. Our natural resources are taken away every day, and we
get involved in the personal wars of the leaders. We lost more population than during the most
devastating war, last year only 180.000 children were born and the birth rate is continuously
falling. Nobody panics, nobody is terrified of what this unplanned future might bring, and it is
not something good. This is the shocking naivet of a nation that was proud of resisting for
over 2000 years at the confluence of the empires. These empires died, but we, Romanians, are
still here awaiting the new empires to step on us. It is the basic inconsistency of a nation that
has been waiting for almost a century for the Nobel Prize in literature and is frustrated with
not receiving it.
After 25 years of freedom, history still takes vengeance on us, by repeating itself, as
stated by Nicolae Iorga a century ago.