I’ve been a subscriber to The Economist “newspaper” for much of the last few decades. It has thorough international coverage, and I appreciate its editorial perspective, which favours free enterprise and an open democracy. It’s written with a dry wit throughout.
Its sense of humour might be the reason why The Economist is one of the few publications to give regular coverage of the political goings-on in Romania. How better to have a funnies section alongside those interminable stories about coalition-building in the EU?
And sure, we all get it. Dracula, werewolves, and until 1989 communist cult-worship almost as crazy as the North Koreans. But, in Romania, all delightfully harmless.
But is it possible that the rigid style guide of The Economist might cause it to miss some real news? Take the article, pictured from their recent June 24, 2017 number — covering the defeat and removal of the Social-Democrat PM by members of his own party. Starts The Economist: “In ordinary politics, it is opposition parties who attempt to bring governments down. But politics in Romania is rarely ordinary.”
Really? This commentary coming from the United Kingdom, where Mrs Thatcher was ambushed by her own caucus, or where the current Prime Minister is more concerned by a rebellion of her own troops than being toppled by the rabble opposite?
More than a curiosity, last month’s tremors in Bucharest could be signs of growing weakness in the governing Social-Democrats, a party that maintains considerable continuity with the pre-1989 Communist regime. The ouster of Prime Minister of Prime Minister Grindeanu, less than six months after his appointment by party president Liviu Dragnea, comes at a high cost. This week, a popular former Prime Minister Victor Ponta, also complaining about the authoritarian style of the party president, announced that he will leave the Social-Democrats to form a new political party.
(And in the reasonably pure Proportional Representation system under which Romania operates, Mr Ponta is known well-enough to quite likely poll more than the 5 per cent minimum threshold that would give his new party seats in the next Parliament. You could read my analysis of Proportional Representation in earlier posts.)
So, it’s not for the comedy section, but it’s been a bad few weeks for Romania’s governing Social-Democrats. And if the opposition parties can manage to capitalize, Romania might just manage to complete the anti-Communist revolution that it started, but never quite finished, in 1989.
romanianobserver 