The Tragedy of Contemporary Romania

Submitted by Serban V.C. Enache…

After the first round of presidential elections in Romania, the political debate is lacking and Romania’s prospects are dire. The country is heading toward a de facto presidential system, with one party in charge of everything. During election day, all the counts were showing the two center right candidates – Klaus Iohannis and Dan Barna – leading the race, with Viorica Dancila of the social democrats in third place. The social democratic party’s electorate is predominantly formed of early voters, and prior to 18:00, Dancila was lagging behind Barna. However, after 18:00, both Iohannis and Barna went down in the count, while Dancila went up. The end result was 36.91 percent for Iohannis, 23.45 percent for Dancila and 14.19 percent for Barna. Some speculate that the party machines of the leading center-right candidates gave up some of their votes to Dancila, in order to ensure Iohannis an easy, large win during the second round. With any other opponent in the final round Iohannis would have had a more difficult time. Both center right parties [PNL and USR-PLUS] don’t have a program, and have based their entire platform on an anti-PSD [the social democratic party] slogan. They went so far in their demonization of the social democrats, calling them pro-Russian and anti-Western, which is 100 percent fake news; because the social dems are wholly bent to Western interests, just like every other mainstream political party in Romania.

The country’s constitution, cleverly written by its authors to create a legal mess for the nation and its future, is a hybrid system. The president is the head of state and in charge of foreign policy, the president signs in the ministers, appoints ambassadors, the chief prosecutor, and heads the secret services. However, the executive must also have parliament backing. With so much overlap and conflicting attributes, the president, the prime-minister, and parliament come into conflict with each other, and the constitutional court ends up arbitrating issues – which leads to prolonged litigation, obfuscation, and overall chaos and inefficiency. According to the constitution, the Romanian president has to be independent and not interfere in party politics. However, Iohannis, since day one of his first term, expressed the desire to have his own government, and he finally got his wish fulfilled with the newly installed administration of Ludovic Orban. Iohannis also stressed the need to have early parliamentary elections, after he secures a second term, in order to secure a PNL only or mostly PNL majority in parliament and keep “his” government in office for as long as possible.

Last year, during the 100 year celebration of Greater Romania, Iohannis was asked during an event about reunification between Romania and Moldova, when will it occur. Unenthusiastically, Iohannis said it will happen when the people of both countries will agree to it. That is utter sophistry. A majority in both countries for reunification has existed for a long time, and still exists, albeit with less ardor from the Moldavians, due to the chaos in Romanian internal affairs. Let me be perfectly clear, there will be no reunification, so long as Romanian political elites will refuse to invite the Russian Federation at the negotiation table. A considerable ethnic Russian minority resides in Moldova. Moscow wants guarantees that this minority will be treated fairly, and it also wants security guarantees for itself. It doesn’t want Moldova to become new territory for NATO, on which military bases and missile systems will be placed, their sights trained against Russia. Western-slave politicians in Romania often lie on the tele that these NATO systems aren’t designed to threaten Russia’s security, but to protect NATO countries from foreign threats like North Korea and Iran. Only an utter moron would believe such a brazenly false narrative.

I also want to make a short comment on Crimea. Many in the West have compared the referendum in Crimea to join Russia with the Austrian referendum from 1938 to join Germany. To claim that there was no great majority of Austrians desiring to join Germany out of their own, free volition is to lie to freeze the waters, to utilize a Romanian expression. People of the same blood should belong in the same Reich, that was Hitler’s philosophy, and no doubt it was shared by the vast majority of Austrians – who shared the same language, religion, race, and culture with Germany, a revived super-power at the time, led by an Austrian national. Imagine the United States with a Mexican national as president, who proposes a referendum in Mexico for it to join the US. A majority in favor of such a move would be very easy to secure.

Crimea had been part of the Russian Empire since 1783, until the Soviets transferred it to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954. In a survey from 2013, a big majority of Crimeans [82 percent] said they spoke Russian at home, 3 percent said they spoke Russian and Ukrainian equally, and another 3 percent said they spoke Russian and another language equally. In that same survey, only 20 percent claimed to be ethnic Ukrainians. Language, culture, and religion are the most important things to have in common. With the Western-sponsored orange revolution in Ukraine [political instability, violence, and Russophobic messages], meant to end the buffer zone status quo between NATO and Russia, both Moscow and Crimea acted accordingly to protect their interests. Much like the people of Basarabia acted in 1918 to join the Romanian Kingdom and leave the Russian Empire, who at the time was engulfed in a terrible civil war between the monarchists and the revolutionaries. Among the rules formulated by the Country Council [Sfatul Tarii] in 1918, Basarabia would remain autonomous, with its own diet, elected democratically; the rights of minorities had to be respected; two Basarabian representatives would be part of the Romanian government, and Basarabia would send to parliament a number of representatives equal to the proportion of its population; with all elections carried out through direct, equal, secret, and universal vote; freedom of speech and of faith to be guaranteed by the constitution; and all individuals who had committed felonies for political reasons during the revolution to be given amnesty.

In 1940, after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR pressured Romania, on pain of war, into withdrawing from Basarabia, allowing the Red Army to annex it. The core parts of the region were transformed into the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova, while territories inhabited by Slavic majorities in the north and south were transferred to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. Aligned with the Axis Powers, Romania recaptured the region in ’41 and lost it in ’44 as the tide of war changed. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut river was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty [which ended World War 2].

During the breakup of the USSR, the Moldavian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics proclaimed their independence in 1991. During the transition years, when Romanian political elites had successfully brought US geopolitical influence in the Balkans, instead of playing between NATO and Russia to retain sovereignty and carve out a truly independent path, they completely went with the US, and fell into the trap of having zero bargaining power vis-a-vis Washington. Better said, they trapped the country while receiving tremendous bribes and perks in the process. With the help of Romanian oligarchs and the mercenary Romanian secret service, Western business groups looted the country in a thorough and systematic manner, far exceeding what the Bolsheviks plundered after WW2. That was the price for acquiring IMF loans, for joining NATO and the European Union. As a side note, the infamous Ion Iliescu of the social democrats was the president who got Romania into NATO; so all you trolls saying that PSD are Kremlin stooges and anti-European can sod off.

Conclusion

The final round of elections, due on November 24th, is a joke. Dancila is a strawman, a strawman chosen by Iohannis himself and the powers that be. Iohannis will win by a landslide, will most likely dissolve parliament to trigger early elections, ushering a center-right epoch for the next five years at least, with all power de facto concentrated in his hand. So long as Romania will behave as a colony state for NATO and the EU, and manifest open hostility toward Russia, reunification with Moldova will never happen. Only in a Westphalian, multi-polar setting can reunification be plausible and successful; but there’s no political desire for such a thing, nor popular will for that matter – this especially includes the Romanian Orthodox Church, so impotent, so corrupt, uninterested in anything else but material gains [money-making avenues]. This nation is cursed for the foreseeable future, condemned to division, thralldom, hypocrisy, and self-hatred.