Vlad: Mr Petri, what type of curse is thrown on this nation to choose between two former communists?
Răzvan: Mr. Adamescu, do you believe in God?
R: You didn't like your meeting with Mr. Vîntu last night either?
V: I am just asking you, my wife being here in the studio, if you could apologize to her, because the poor woman is not to blame for all this messes.
R: Right after you apologize on behalf of your team for calling me a baby-seller.
V: Mr. Adamescu, let's do a job like men... here we are between us.
R: Tough luck!
R: The words above most likely changed the course of Romanian history. If not, they have at least given us a chance to learn something about those who wish to make decisions on our behalf and for our future.
V: Why don't we have something like that anymore? Not only presidential debates, but politics itself seems to be no longer of interest to a large part of Romania's population. Our politicians prefer to lock themselves in studios for carefully prepared one-to-ones, with questions served up and easy, far too easy.
Discussions about public policies, about programs, about their vision on Romania and Europe do not exist anymore. Why?
A: We are taught from a young age that politics is something dirty, taboo or "with an interest". If you're a politician in Romania you're definitely corrupt and, implicitly, the trust in democratic institutions is alarmingly low.
We can barely find 1 in 100 people who have total trust in the Government, Parliament or the President, the three fundamental institutions of our democracy. Teachers don't talk about politics at all because schools are "apolitical", while school and high school principals are politically appointed and mayors hand out calendars with their faces to students.
Students censor themselves because universities are "apolitical". We recently went to an event at a university where they wouldn't let politicians talk about their agendas at an election debate they organized themselves. Of course, most of the professors and management is, formally or informally, politically affiliated.
V: There is no civic education done, education for democracy, we don’t have instilled in us some essential values for democracy. At school they don’t talk about almost anything of what has happened in the last 35 years, as if the democracy in Romania was only a dream.
We live in a society where we lack critical culture. Discussions on TV and online are superficial. We directly borrow the conclusions of some political debates that have been taking place for years abroad. We can't have discussions about sensitive and important topics and when we do we don't know how to get past the surface, we are focusing on what some have said and done.
R: Why? Among other things, we have failed to make from our schools and universities spaces where we can tackle, without fear, taboo, difficult, sensitive, political or ideological subjects. We do not learn to argue, criticize freely or have the courage to sometimes take radical positions. We shy away from any sensitive subject and ignore the fact that graduates enter adult life without the preparation that a genuine democracy demands of its citizens.
In the absence of real and hard debates, politics in Romania has become highly personalized. It's about Geoană, Ciolacu, Lasconi, Ciucă, Simion or Iohannis, and their personal and selfish reasons for wanting positions, not about ideas.
V: 35 years have already passed since the revolution, many of us weren't even born then, the breath of freedom of that time is no longer enough, it's being lost. Our generation entered into school when Romania joined the EU. For us and for those who come after us, there is only a democratic and European Romania. These things seem to us so normal and deserved that we don't even think about them. But democracy and Europe cannot be taken for granted. They can disappear as suddenly as they appeared.
R: How can we change the way we relate to politics? Both of us studied and lived in the UK, but the following ideas apply in most old democracies:
There are political party clubs in universities that organize regular debates among themselves but also between students and politicians. It's a continuous back-and-forth between politicians and universities, where politicians are invited and criticized, scolded and made to explain their reasoning, their votes, their positions. Or they simply go out of interest to hear what professors and the academic environment in general have to say. We can no longer live with the illusion that we can separate politics from a little individual corner of our own.
V: We need to "politicize" some discussions. Ideological and policy debate has its point, while technocracy doesn't really have the answers to the hardest questions. We need expertise and political vision, but we cannot delegate responsibility for the future to experts.
Poverty, roads, the definition of marriage and of the family, university and high school admissions, drugs and sexual freedoms, all have a concept of life at their core, and every society chooses and modifies its way of lookinging at them. If we refuse to discuss them and, just as importantly, don't learn how to discuss them at the right time, we risk to remain permanently on the periphery of the discussion, on the surface and on the spot.
R: We also need to get angry. To dare talk about politics, to be cheeky with our questions. To learn to live with politics, to hold politicians accountable while in school still, no matter if your teachers scold you for being "impertinent". We all have an opinion about where we should head to. We need to see politics as a vehicle for ideas, as a process that we participate in to have it better ourselves.
V: We need to get used to the idea that politics is not just party politics. Politics is also when you volunteer, when you sign a petition, go to a protest or go to a local council meeting. Politics is not happening only when you vote, but also when you talk to a friend about a candidate, an idea, or when you think about how you would change things.
There is a misconception about politics in Romania, which leads to a low understanding and trust in democracy. It is up to us to do politics differently.
R: You don't have to vote for us, Razvan or Vlad. You don't even have to take our word for it. We actually invite you to contradict us. What we think you should be doing, though, is to follow Politica la Minut where we try to talk differently about politics, in the way we think we should all talk in society. In short, we make politics our own.
