Some thoughts concerning the Romanian elections of December 2008

My essay was born out of reading my friend and former colleague, H. Nasra’s article on the same subject. This essay will concentrate on proving that both the election and its results can be viewed as more than controversial and by no means, beneficial, on a macro scale.

The Romanian elections held just a fewdays ago were supposed to usher in a new era in Romanian political life: finally, the people could vote for a representative directly, which would carry their interest into the higher echelons of power. All such small areas could now have a voice in the hallowed corridors of the Romanian parliament and on its floor. The parties would no longer influence the decision directly, since we could now vote for the person, rather than the list. As all optimistic and “illuminating” political projects of recent years, the electoral law fails to deliver, on a number of points, and as I shall argue, actually makes things worse in the long run.

Let us focus closely on the law itself. Firstly, its full details and logic of functioning were and are incomprehensible to the gross majority of the electoral body, and, I suspect to many of the politicians. It is, from this perspective, an “arcana imperii” project, understood by few and contrary to the principles of representative democracy. I confess that I myself still have a great amount of difficulty comprehending the inner logic of the law; what can be expected from a peasant or factory worker without superior education? The transparency and civic aspects of democracy in Romania still have a long way to go. I contend that even the glasnost-perestroika binome was more comprehensible to the average citizen than this legislative labyrinth. Its authors, the Pro Democratia Foundation, have proven once again that they are a group of well-intentioned dilettantes. Personally, I prefer a thief with brains and a plan, than a good intentions and no expertise.

Another conspicuous aspect of the new law is its wonderful ability to laugh in the face of common-sense and simple logic. The so-called “electoral bonus” assures that any party that wins over 51% per cent in a constituency, takes the rest of the votes too, and goes to parliament as that area’s sole representative. This, combined with regular electoral gerrymandering, makes for disputable results. For example, a party can loose by 49% in, say, 5 districts to various other opponents. This could mean that they actually gathered more support overall than any of the rest of their political rivals, but still fail to send even one representative to the legislative body. For example, the Social-Democratic Party got a higher number of votes this year, but gained less seats. This flies in the face of logic, as far as I am concerned. Funnily enough, as for anything, there are historical analogies for the electoral framework utilized in contemporary Romania.The most important parallel that can be drawn is constituted by a piece of legislation passed in 1923’s Italy, called the Acerbo Law. Why is this important, you say? Only because of the small detail that it was the key to the success of Mussolini in forming a parliamentary majority and seizing power in interwar Italy. It was just on in the long line of the laws dubbed “fascistissimo” by historiography. Interwar Romania used a similar system, and it comes as little surprise that electoral results and governments only occasionally favored other political formations than the then-all-powerful Liberals ( except in crisis moments). I conclude that the system is not “in need of improvement”, as my friend H.N. calls it but outright flawed in its very basics.

The most important part of a the so-called “uni-nominal” framework is that it excludes smaller political formations. It is a tool to be used by the powerful to silence those with small constituencies. The re-distribution, so vilified by the media in recent months, is the only loophole. But it once again contradicts the very principle of the law itself. In any case, and ideal system would not possess a mechanism of redistribution of votes. This would then result in a number of smaller political formations that could not promote candidates in the same fashion as the rest, losing in constituencies and not being able to make use of their votes. Again, any formation that looses by 49 votes to 51 looses those 49 forever. They do not add up. It should come as little surprise that formations already on the limit, such as the Greater Romania Party, could not gain access to Parliament. This electoral structure is forged to push small parties to the fringes of the political scene, and combined with the electoral limit ( “pragul”) to eliminate them altogether. Perverse logic, is it not? If this is the scope of democracy, I want nothing of it. Some might rejoice that arcane and negative political elements such as the PRM and PNG have gone, but there is also the danger that through this uniforming apparatus, all others might go as well. The RMDSZ (UDMR) is a force that has been on the brink for the last two electoral turns. Many, as my friend H.N., consider them an obsolete, anachronic formation, that dumbs down interests of the Hungarian-speaking citizenry with ideas of ethnic nationalism. I do not argue that the RMDSZ is completely up-to-date, and agree that it could do with an overhaul of its inner mechanisms. Nevertheless, to argue that nationalism is gone from the midst of Romanian society, and Hungarian-speaking citizen should vote for Romanian parties instead, is an overstatement. It was only 4 years ago that the PRM commanded an impressive number of seats in the Upper and Lower Houses of the legislative. The verbose energies of Romanian nationalism have remained as strong as in the past, and Hungarians could not become Romanians by citizenry, and Hungarians only by birth even if they chose to do so. They are Hungarians and will remain so, precisely because the environment around them perceives them as being different. I still smile at the uproar that Marko Bela’s recent speech in Marosvasarhely/ Tg. Mures caused in the press. There are some that in the beginning of the 19^th century, as Auguste Comte did, fortold the demise of religion. Still it us with us today, as integral to our identities as gender or social position.Nationalism will also not go away so easily, and as long as there exists no Minority Law, no minority higher education, no provisions for Minority languages in justice and culture, so will the RMDSZ be necessary. To deny the right existenceto Hungarian political formations displays the strategy of a double discourse, that would rob people of their identity, in the name of the principle of equality. I want is not equality, for we are inherently not equal. What I would like is equal opportunity. This is an aspect that still escapes politicians and public commentators in contemporary Romania, who format laws such as the present electoral one.