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    Other countries' elections

    One of the things that the mainstream media does is to simplify stuff, which you can understand since it makes complex issues easier to grasp, and for people not directly involved gives them little boxes in which to mentally file issues.

    This has been brought home to me repeatedly over the last couple of weeks as the western media have run various pieces on the Romanian presidential elections (first round was 2 weeks ago, run off tomorrow). The favourite to win this election is Victor Ponta of the PSD. Now every media source I have seen from the Guardian to the BBC to the NYT, to DW to Der Speigel to Reuters and beyond, refers to him as the "centre left candidate". It's quick and easy, you stick him in the box marked centre left and allow the rest of the world to also mentally file him. His opponent, Klaus Iohannis gets the centre right box, obviously.

    Now, as an outsider, I would look at those categories, and mentally cast my non-existent vote for Ponta, and then promptly forget about it. But as I'm not an outsider, I look at those categories and wonder where the hell they come from and whether there is anybody actually paying attention.

    Ponta is a corrupt kleptocrat (which in itself makes him neither left nor right) and a xenophobe (which is definitely of the right). There is nothing remotely left wing about any of his policies. He is not even centre right he's very definitely a right wing candidate (and one which in some areas drifts into the far right). So, when you read an article about the election this weekend and see "Victor Ponta, the centre left candidate", trust me, this has no basis whatsoever in reality.

    ( I presume it comes from lazy journalism which sees that the PSD - Ponta's party- sprang from the ashes of the communists in 1990 (although so did all the other parties). They inherited the party machine, and the first post revolutionary president - Iliescu - was Ceausescu's right hand man before engineering the coup which overthrew him. Ponta is very much Iliescu's heir, politically, so lazily saying "OK, left wing" is a way of avoiding doing any actual research into policies and goals)

    When he wins (as he will), Romania is fucked and we will go back to 1990. The 1990 of the mineriada and the nter ethnic violence. The 1990 of the consolidation of power and the locking down of dissent. Where Hungary has gone under Orban, Romania will follow under Ponta. For both of them their current political role model is Erdogan (and to a lesser extent Putin).

    (Calling Ponta left wing is rather like calling Putin left wing actually.)

    #2
    Other countries' elections

    A lot of countries' political divides don't really seem to neatly fit the "left wing, right wing" descriptions that we're used to in Britain, just because of the vastly different historical contexts of each country's allegiances. Our political divides grew broadly out of the tension between the landed gentry (including those who worked for them on the land and depended on them for wages and housing) and the workers in the new factories and towns of the industrial revolution; our concepts of right wing and left wing policies still broadly line up to that old battle between reducing taxes and regulation on the 'haves' and improving wages and living conditions for the 'have nots'. In other countries that went through the industrial revolution at the same time you'd expect broadly the same, and to a large extent it is there in all, but there are local overlaid differences - in America, for example, the huge influence of the debate, which became a war, about how or even if to end slavery and segregation - especially in the southern states - imposed a layer on the "left wing, right wing" distinction that remains to this day and isn't found in the UK.

    As Britain has no significant experience of fascism or of communist rule, we cannot also draw any comparisons with countries that went through either. Our governments of the 1930s to the 1950s, for example, were not rounding people up into gulags or "disappearing" them, and so we don't really have that simmering hatred and fear of either Tory or Labour that seems to polarise discussion in some countries where "left" or "right" are either reviled or looked back to with fondness (often with equal fervour), and tend to fuel the candidacies of populist rulers. Nationalism and anti-immigration is definitely a theme of the right in Britain (although don't say that in Scotland or Wales), but given that it is driven by the fear of "them taking our jobs" you would think it would actually belong more to the (labour protectionist) left than the free-trade right. I suspect some other countries would not recognise nationalism as a purely right-wing phenomenon as we do, especially as much of ours is driven by our own throwbacks to days of Empire, when it was very much the right who benefitted from ruling other people (and from supplying the arms trade, something still true today). That's probably a trait we share with the other Western European colonial powers, but wouldn't be so much a factor elsewhere. In countries that actually have - and have always had - a genuinely significant ethnic minority population living within or on their borders, (not just the fear of one), especially ones with an historical dread of fascism thrown in as well, I can see no reason why nationalism and xenophobia shouldn't belong as much to the left as to the right.

    Comment


      #3
      Other countries' elections

      The error lies in simplistically identifying the Right with "free market" (is there such a thing as a free market anyway) and protectionism with the Left. In reality the Right has been as often as not protectionist, and it still is in many instances.

      The bottom line is Left and Right are not monolithic concepts or metaphysical categories which flow through the ages like ether, they're simply rather reductionist historical and taxonomic labels to help identify a heterogeneous set of political phenomena.

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        #4
        Other countries' elections

        I think the terms left and right still have a meaning by the way, and not one confined to the UK. In modern Europe for example, a left wing position is to oppose austerity (and a right wing one is to support it). That puts the Labour Party on the right, but I think that's a fair characterisation.

        Anyway, my new expression of the day (election day, in fact) is "Electoral alms"

        Or to put it in slightly less euphemistic English - paying the electorate for their votes. Very popular here, especially through the PSD.

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          #5
          Other countries' elections

          A couple of the Romanians I follow on Twitter are retweeting photos of endless queues and associated nonsense plaguing the very large numbers of Romanians who are very patiently trying to vote abroad.

          Munich:



          Brussels:



          London:

          Comment


            #6
            Other countries' elections

            ad hoc wrote: I think the terms left and right still have a meaning by the way
            Absolutely. Neocon "end of history" claims hold no traction with me. They are not univocous terms though. There is not one unique pristine Left or one monolithic Right. That is especially true from a historical perspective.

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              #7
              Other countries' elections

              If all the diaspora actually show up to vote the few polling stations that exist will have to process close to 2000 people per hour, which is clearly impossible.

              Mind you that picture purporting to be London above is clearly not given the one way sign that says Einbahn.

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                #8
                Other countries' elections

                Good point well made.

                I think it may be Vienna.

                In any event,

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                  #9
                  Other countries' elections

                  wow. That's a lot of romanians that are desperate to vote. Imagine if we were to try and give the vote to immigrants?

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Other countries' elections

                    There's a system here called "supplemental vote" which is when you are not home and you vote elsewhere in the country while - say - on holiday.

                    By 10am today 10,000 people had cast a supplemental vote in Teleorman county. Teleorman county is about the most remote and backward and non-interesting place in Romania. I couldn't even name a single town in Teleorman County, and I've lived in this country 10 years. Nobody goes to Teleorman County, people just leave it. Now, it is possible that some people are there visiting their family this weekend. But 10,000? By 10am?

                    Oh, and Teleorman County just happens to be the heartland of the PSD and Victor Ponta.

                    (This is going to get ugly by the way - there'll be challenges in the constitutional court whoever wins, and there are loads of very suspicious and dodgy incidents like the one mentioned above)

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                      #11
                      Other countries' elections

                      Exit polls very close, all basically 51-49 or closer, with at least one having Ponta behind.

                      This is going to play for quite a while.

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                        #12
                        Other countries' elections

                        5 exit polls, 2 have Ponta winning by a point or 2, 2 have Iohannis winning by a similarly small margin. 1 has it 50-50.

                        Crucially those exit polls are just in the country though and in round 1 the diaspora went overwhelmingly for Iohannis. So things are looking promising

                        Tear gas right now being fired into the crowds of people still queuing past the close of polls in both Torino and Valencia. Large crowds of people out o the streets in Cluj and Bucharest. This will be a long night.

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                          #13
                          Other countries' elections

                          Ponta has conceded!

                          The real numbers must not have been close.

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                            #14
                            Other countries' elections

                            Real numbers are currently coming in at 54-46. With about 76% counted.

                            Very big day. When I saw the turnout figures I knew it could turn out OK. The PSD have a very well oiled (and dodgy) electoral machine which will get out the vote at all times (and get out votes that don't actually exist*). So anything around the low 50s percent in turnout would certainly have been a Ponta win, but the final turnout was something like 62% which meant that the anti Ponta vote was out well (and make no mistake this is much more of an anti Ponta vote than a pro-Iohannis one. Nobody outside Sibiu knows much about Iohannis at all. He's ethnically German (Transylvania having a long multicultural Romanian-Hungarian-German history), he speaks slowly - which is seen as a strength by some people in that he considers his words and doesn't just blurt stuff out, and as a weakness by the media, and if I had to give any ind of opinion it would be that at the core, he's honest. He hasn't seemed to make any promises that he might not keep. We'll see if that judgment is correct. He'll not be some progressive force for positivity, but he'll work to keep Romania moving along the right lines in terms of corruption)

                            * some stories from yesterday. Teleorman (see above) eventually registered over 25,000 supplemental votes. Buses of voters were witnessed travelling to a city in Eastern Romania (as well as electoral alms, we also have electoral tourism here (true - that's genuinely what it's called)). A woman in Brasov turned up to vote and found next to her name on the electoral register, that of her husband, who had apparently already voted. Her husband who died 4 years ago. The vote count in individual ares will be fascinating.

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                              #15
                              Other countries' elections

                              Those photos of people queueing up to vote are amazing. The London one with the kids oblivious, playing in their replica shirts, belongs in a Zeitgeist exhibition.

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                                #16
                                Other countries' elections

                                Great quote I just saw on twitter from someone who voted in London - "Better to spend 11 hours in the rain than another 5 years in the mud"

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Other countries' elections

                                  Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Our governments of the 1930s to the 1950s, for example, were not rounding people up into gulags or "disappearing" them
                                  Well, maybe not on these islands...

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                                    #18
                                    Do we have a more recent thread on Romanian politics? Looks like the PM will be forced to resign:

                                    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1445367900181782531

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                                      #19
                                      Yeah it's all part of a civil war within the PNL,who are the biggest party in the coalition

                                      (But as far as I can tell no party actually wants to be in government at the moment)

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                                        #20
                                        (I think there is a thread on Romanian politics somewhere)

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                                          #21
                                          I'm not sure

                                          Searches for Citu, PNL and Collectiv all come up empty (both here and on Google) and "Romanian" doesn't produce any useful results either. Perhaps on one of the previous iterations of the board.

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                                            #22
                                            Pretty sure Citu hasn't come up before. He's only been PM for a short time (we get through them faster than Watford managers over here), but yeah i tried PNL and PSD and got nowhere.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              https://www.onetouchfootball.com/for...-politics-news

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Ta. Bows down in veneration of WOM's search skills

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                                                  #25
                                                  Same

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