Weekend clarifications
Weekend clarifications - the Romanian presidential elections just took place. In a blatant and shameful disrespect for their citizens living abroad, the government and the ministry of foreign affairs made a mockery out of voting stations at embassies and consulates. Thousands of people waited in line in the cold for hours in order to exert their constitutional right to vote. My friends and I were lucky and after "only" three hours of waiting and we got to vote. Yet friends of ours from London, Paris, Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt or Rome have waited up to ten hours in the cold and rain - some got to vote, some didn't. Some Romanian citizens were dispersed with tear gas after police was called because they would not go home without voting in Paris and Turin.
Now why did this happen, you wonder? Just because the PM was one of the candidates, representing an archaic, corrupt and tarred system that seems to be unshakable. Yet the people, mainly the young educated public, would not vote for him. The Romanians working and studying abroad would not vote for him. Because of that, they tried to shut them out. To block them from exerting their constitutional right, to humiliate them. Yet the people did not stand for that. Back in Romania people came out to the streets urging the governments to allow citizens from abroad to vote. No one spoke of the horrendous illegalities that occurred in the process at home - people just wanted their constitutional right.
This scenario, repeated in both rounds, led to an amazing wave of mobilisation and solidarity - people waited in line, even though there was no hope to vote, just to prove a point - they were not going to be humiliated, trampled upon by "the system". We, the young people of Romania, either home or abroad, would not stand for this. We, who created another image of the Romanian immigrant or the Romanian youngster abroad - the young student or the young professional - driven by ambition, hard work, intelligence and professionalism. An image that we could not stand to be tarred by allowing an abject product of the system, an arrogant imbecile, to become president - a guy who shamelessly plagiarised in his PhD thesis, who flat out lied for two years, who has proven his incompetence and, more than anything, who has called us, living abroad, traitors and "enemies of the country". A guy with no honour, common sense or decency. A guy who said that WE were the ones tainting the image of our country. Us, who work hard, study hard, live lives led by common sense and respect. Us who raised so many eyebrows when, after long conversations, people found out we're from Romania. We, who changed minds and perspectives. We, who made our friends eager to visit Romania. We, who heard our friends saying, after travelling to Romania - "You have such an amazing country, it's incredible!".
We did not stand for that. Our friends and families at home did not stand for that. We wanted normality. We wanted, if not the best of all, at least a person with common sense, decency and a calm, rational, discourse. And we won.