I’m starting to realize that it’s not just democracy that Romanians need some training on but also how to be a political party.
It’s been obvious for years that the “majors” were horrifically inept on almost every level, even as an organization, with multiple broken alliances and members defecting to other parties. Now I see that the PCM and the Szekelers in the middle of Romania are idiots too.
If you’ve read my book you’ll know the history of all this and how there are two “kinds” of Hungarians, one of them the “regular” Hungarians and then the ultra special band of “elite” Hungarians known as the Szekelers.
The UDMR, the political “major” party that represents regular Hungarians has been incredibly buffoonish and inept over all the years I’ve been watching them. Now I see that the PCM, effectively the pro-Szekeler Hungarian party, haven’t got half a brain between them as two days ago they “pulled the trigger” and whipped out a brand new flag to represent their quest for “autonomy”.
The douches running Hungary (the country) were obviously in on this little stunt and began screaming and throwing feathers in the air for support of Szekeler Land autonomy and the waving of their flag whilst condemning Romania for their initial attempts at a crackdown. Of course the Romanian government run by the USL and Ponta out of Bucharest didn’t have a fucking clue what to do and so did effectively nothing while the PRM and other fascist morons got their face on the television to spout some anti-Hungarian diatribes.
What makes this so stupid of course is that there’s already an indigenous move to “regionalize” Romania, effectively dividing it up into more or less historically congruent regions and decentralize some of the control coming from Bucharest. A lot of Romanians have their own reasons to back this but when the PCM fucknuts start doing incredibly antagonistic things like this then Romanian support immediately evaporates. Supporting regionalization is portrayed as endorsing Szekeler independence.
The Hungarians back in the “mainland” are all in a froth because their economy sucks and they spend an enormous amount of money drumming into their children that their cousins in the “lost lands” need to be gathered back into the fold. With that kind of propaganda circulating through your skull it makes sense why you’d try to ham up some pro-independence civil actions but in the long run it’s going to make it a harder goal to achieve.
Romania is definitely falling apart, of that it seems there is little doubt and eventually the various regions are going to shrug off the corrupt and idiotic Bucharest government which is becoming increasingly out of touch with reality on a daily basis.
They’re debating this year’s budget at the moment and I personally saw Prime Minister Victor Ponta admonish members of his political alliance to not tack on a lot of superfluous budget items. By the time the first version passed through the Parliament it had over thirteen thousand additional budget amendments! LOL you can’t even make that up if you try.
Cluj-Napoca has its own fair share of idiots (including the increasingly dotty Andrei Marga) but there are far more achievable results possible if they were organized and overseen on a local level. Clearly other regions like the area around Oradea and Sibiu would prosper immensely as well as some smaller cities like Alba-Iulia and Turda.
As it stands though, the sociopathic Ponta and his merry band of rotating ministers are sitting on top of a powder keg of crippling debt repayments to the IMF, World Bank and others combined with increasingly suffocating pressure from the EU to implement judicial and other civil reforms. No money and too much paperwork to fill out equals impending doom for these monolingual clowns and a probable return of the slightly craftier but far greedier “rightist” parties and the indomitable Elena Udrea in the next year.
Make a note of the players sitting in positions of power in the government today and then wait five years and see just how few of them have survived. Even the “vaunted” PNTCD, a reincarnation of a Peasants Party from before World War 2, has changed and merged and allied with a revolving door of partners and has little to offer except its own so-called exceptional history.
The other parties are even more fractious and fungible, much like many sports teams in America where the players, managers and coaches constantly change so that the only thing linking one team to another is that they bear the same name. Now that the PCM has come out to pull their little stunt, all that’s happened is the stiffening of most Romanians’ resolve to make sure that autonomy for Szekely Land never happens.
It was a “smooth move” for sure and proof positive that even the little regional parties are utterly incapable of planning long-term strategies to achieve political goals.
I’m now understanding why the Romanian government has been borrowing so much money over the last five years – it’s because they truly never thought they’d have to pay it back because the future is always too long off to have to ever worry about it.
Carpe diem!
All Things Romania 
Hi Earl, I found your blog through a top 10 or sotehming travel blog list, and I really enjoy your posts. You definitely have a good online voice and you have some pretty awesome tales to share (this one included AMAZING.. residency! Whut!)! I will soon be quitting my job (4 more weeks) and then beginning my own nomadic journey (for as long as my heart desires fingers crossed). Anyways, I’m sure you’re not short of compliments on your stories, but it never hurts to get some more does it!? Great read!!! I agree you are amongst the top 10 of which I’ve been reading. Glad I found your blog. Megan
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Dear Mr. Niels Petersen. Cercle-V isn’t a ‘Spanish vampire web site’, but Catalan web site with peolpe from Catalonia, Andorra, Roussillon, Valencian Country and another places. Our common language is Catalan.
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Interesting that you thought to show here Vadim Tudor foaming at the mouth and not the Hungarian Ambassador telling the Romanian Government how should be amended the Romanian Constitution. Oh well, your choice. And “Romania is definitely falling apart”? Who knows what would be tomorrow, Sam? Maybe it would be the United States to fall apart before Romania does as I hear Texas is still thinking about secession and other states are giving hot pursuit. What do you think, Sam, is Fort Sumter going to fall all over again?
As far as I know, the regionalization is EU’s pet project,implemented in various countries, with various degrees of success. In my opinion, that’s the first and most important step for achieving the EU’s dearest goal: the United States of Europe. An idiotic goal, if someone asks me, because to buy Louisiana and occupy New Mexico are not quite the same things as to make the Turks and Greeks to exchange the kiss of peace and live together in harmony. Or, as I think, to make Germany forgive and forget all about Elsass and Lothringen. But the clever EU officials seem to forget something when it comes about Romania. We were never good at following directions. More than once, carefully made plans concerning Romania have backfired in the faces of those who made them. I look forward to the day when the EU officials shall learn this little fact from experience.
What did I miss? Ah, yes, historically, Szekely people are NOT Hungarians. Remember Unio trium nationum, that fascinating treaty according to which Romanians were living on sufferance in their own country? Concluded between Hungarians, Szekely and Saxons; has occurred since then some genetic mutations and the Szekely became Hungarians?
I’m glad you understand now why Romania borrowed so much money in the last years from IMF, EC and WB. Personally, I shall never understand why would someone hand Romania, bound hand and foot, over to be treated like a slave and I’m afraid that I speak from more than hearsay. Whoever did this, deserves to get not Ceauşescu’s treatment but Ravaillac’s. And lastly “….a probable return of the slightly craftier but far greedier “rightist” parties and the indomitable Elena Udrea in the next year.” Are you living on Mars, Sam? Is there some territory called Romania too?
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The problem is again that Sam is actually NOT Romanian. He may be well intended and some of his points may be valid but he cannot help seeing the world through his eyes.
This is why Westerners (especially Americans) fail time and again to understand what is going on in other parts of the world: they base their logic on the assumption that all people think like them therefore would act in a manner they can predict. The reality however is totally different!
Sam, my advice is not get so much involved in Romanian politics. You will not be able to predict it and that will make you confused and ultimately depressed.
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You’re right. Sam is so much more Romanian than us that he wound up being something else altogether.:)) But what made me really angry about this post is that Sam didn’t miss the opportunity to present again the one and only extremist politician that Romania has, whose voice means fairly nothing today, while completely “forgetting” to mention the shameful behavior of the Hungarian Ambassador who officially speaks in the name of Hungarian Government. This remembered me some things I heard said with so much bitterness after the last US elections: that now the Russian Ambassador should step in and state that Russia has solid information about a massive electoral fraud occurred in Florida, for instance. Give ’em a taste of their own medicine to see how they like it!
But I’ve to say that I don’t think the Westerners inability to predict the developments in foreign politics is likely to make them depressed. It’s more likely to make them patronizing, in my opinion.
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You are right, of course, that Westerners in general will not get depressed but patronizing. I was just referring to Sam – assuming that he is well-intended.
I think he means well but he makes two basic mistakes in my opinion: first, because Americans or Englishmen or whoever will do a certain thing in a certain situation and we do not he assumes that he can predict what we will do or not do next. Which is wrong because we act differently and quite unpredictibly even to us. (A little off topic, I am not suprised that the US ambassador who understood us best was James Rosapepe because since he had Italian roots).
The second mistake is that he assumes that we do not appreciate the small but important things in our lives such as closeness to family, friends etc. We complain a lot about everything and we may not say it because we think it goes without saying, but…. WE DO, Sam! That is why most of us are still here.
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Oh, and being from Transylvania myself I can guarantee, Sam, that we (the Romanians there) have no intention to break apart from Bucharest. We complain about central government? Of course we do! But you should know by now at least this: no matter how hard we argue with other members of our family we will always stick together.
We’ve tried to unite for almost two thousands years, do you really think that we will go in separate ways because some guy or another in Bucharest does not do a good job?! You still have much to learn about us…
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I’m Wallachian from Muntenia and I cannot tell how much we admire you the Transylvanians for the courage and endurance displayed throughout all your history. To give just an example, the historical province of Alsace remained Germanic par excellence until the seventeenth century, when it was occupied and incorporated into the kingdom of France. Few hundreds of years later, the French language and culture had managed to prevail in despite of the Alsatians’ quintesentially Germanic heritage. You, the Romanians from Transylvania managed to keep your culture, religion and language during a thousand years of Hungarian rule. I daresay the Hungarian rule couldn’t have been compared to the French rule; Unio trium nationum shall remain forever testimony thereto. That’s not a small accomplishment; only a steel cored people could do this, in my opinion. We, the Wallachians, had it pretty rough, as did the Moldavians, but, as I think, the Transylvanians had it the hardest. That we may grumble sometimes and crack jokes about Transylvanians? As you said, that’s what happens between family members. But, secretly (because we’re not so good at expressing our feelings), we admire you and we’re damn proud of you. I haven’t met so far a Romanian, be him from Oltenia or Moldova, to not feel proud of the Transylvanian regiments that successfully opposed Napoleon’s Grande Armée.
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