Strada Verona, Bucharest (December 2008)

Walking through Strada Verona one more time, enjoying the graffities and stencils, as it's my habit, finding this time a poster on 30th November Parliamentary Elections.

So the country is a plunger-like piece of meat, so people didn't vote (30% participation in Bucharest, less that 40% in the whole country) but went out for the three-day weekend (Monday 1st December was a national holiday in Romania), as everyone knew would happen (was that dat selected on purpose or just without thinking?)

One weekend at the mountains = 3 days.

One expressed vote = 4 years.

Come to vote on 30th November!

(PD-L 2008 campaign poster)

Anyway, the participation wouldn't have been high in any case: no high-quality campaign (I would like to find a country with high-quality political campaign, though), no feeling of change, no confidence on the system...

And the results: the Parliament divided in thirds, and a government agreement between the conservatives (PD-L) and the socialdemocrats (PSD). Formally, an unnatural pact; and some people I know think likewise. Some others, however, think of it as a pact between two forms of past communist elites showing their real face...

Who was more communist, who stole the most last time in power., who made promises, who carried them out.. Dunno, myself, as I lack, in order to take sides, a serious knowledge of Romanian political trackrecord.

So I won't do light ideological comments on this elections. But, what about governability? From my point of view, Romania need a stable government with capacity to make decisions, important decisions to counteract economical crisis and to encourage absortion of European funds granted for 2007-2013 period through adequately planned and managed development programmes. With Presidential elections to be held in Autumn 2009, I don't think THIS government will be able to be THAT government; even in the event that its members and the parliamentary groups supporting them get on well enough and the opposition behaves in a constructive way, tha political show will surely be on again in six months...

However, I've been told that this is not the first time in post-1989 Romania that such a weak, unnatural pact has been in office, and it lasted... So, once again, I'm quite speechless with regards Romanian politics. Maybe I shouldn't be doing light comments of any type, after all.