by Thomas Gallagher via Compactmag
Excerpts
On May 4, in the first round of voting, Simion got 41 percent, acquiring over 60 percent of the votes from the diaspora. Once again the ruling tandem were rejected and it was Nicusor Dan, the independent mayor of Bucharest, who won second place with 21 percent of the vote. To many it seemed a foregone conclusion that Simion would win.
But a strange thing happened. The anger of Romanians over having been cheated out of making their own choice in December began to abate. It was replaced by heart-searching about what would result from choosing a candidate angry with the West, from which overbearing supervision but also opportunities for prosperity had come. Despite the corruption, living standards had leapt ahead, at least in the cities, since the end of the 1990s.
Fears that Simion would lead the country over a cliff started to surface. He made it easy by promising to slash jobs in the urban bureaucracy. A decisive moment was the four-hour televised debate with Dan on May 8. Simion was short-tempered and arrogant and struggled to think on his feet in the face of clever jabs from an unflustered opponent. He abruptly canceled the remaining televised debates, with Dan turning up and answering questions next to an empty chair. The rest of his time was spent traversing Europe, speaking to émigrés while seeming blasé about the economic condition of the country.
At home, Simion’s strongholds are areas of the country with a high elderly population and few signs of foreign investment or EU funding. Urban dwellers appeared more concerned about economic issues including the slump in value of companies in which pension funds are heavily invested, and the sharp rise of interest rates on loans. Simion’s increasingly provocative attacks on the European Union and the promise to make Georgescu his prime minister also worried many in the diaspora who perhaps had not voted previously. They could be left in limbo if a confrontation ensued between the European Union and a weak but mutinous member like Romania over foreign policy and the rule of law.
By May 18, stinging memories of the December election cancellation were beginning to be superseded by worries about taking a bold leap into the political unknown. Turnout rose from 54 to 63 percent. Dan drew the bulk of votes from those who had previously backed other candidates, leaping from 21 to 54 percent while Simion managed a minor increase from 39 to 46 percent.
An underperforming establishment was lucky to face a low-grade opponent. As former President Basescu remarked on election night when fears arose that Simion wouldn’t recognize the result: “George Simion has remained at the level of a football gallery chieftain who swears, who is violent, who evades responsibility and who is always ready to fight with the gendarmes.”
It was naive of right-wing social-media influencers to bet so heavily on a Simion victory. They refused to factor in the fact that he was in the long line of Balkan outlaws, or haiduks, from whom the settled population normally sought protection. Similarly, the European Union foolishly assumed that as long as profits flowed from Bucharest and lip-service was paid to anti-Putin initiatives, then Romania’s slum-like political condition was of no consequence.
Thomas Gallagher is professor of politics emeritus at the University of Bradford and author of Romania After Ceausescu and Romania and the European Union.
