Caragiale's victory

The fact that Caragiale is still right within the Romanian political space is both our curse and our national obsession. An uncomfortable one for politicians - in both his and our time - but also uncomfortable for those who, attempting to comment and understand events, also claim their heritage from the Master.

It is an ever-sad victory, showing the failure of the Romanian political class in endorsing democratic principles. Obviously, even in the authentic democracies of the world, there are differences between principles and the real world, but such differences are not able to abolish the fundamentalss, emptying the democracy of all its content and leaving nothing but a mask - as happens here.

After everlasting fights - that took us almost 15 years - political freedom in Romania was unable to create anything other than weak institutions, less and less capable of stopping the totalitarian appetite for Power. And we do not speak here only of those at the top, but also of the many holding the smallest bit of power and authority, and who do not hesitate to use it in order to increase their benefits in spite of the law, democracy and common sense. Slowly but surely, a huge gap has arisen between the logic of democratic institutions and the behavior of those who populate them here. Members of the parliament, hardly able to speak in articulate phrases, who never had any contribution to the political debate, who never solved any problem, are now in a rush of legal initiatives aiming to create - for themselves - pensions and other financial advantages for the time they'll be no longer be MPs. Moreover, one of them is extremely serious in submitting a law proposal aiming to transform any criminal activity of the MPs into a taboo for justice. It doesn't matter that he himself was proven to be a criminal, if he's an MP, one of our guys, then Justice should wait for a while - she's blindfolded anyway!

The Government is barely working, regardless of the difference between saying and doing! There is scarce connection between what happens within the Romanian economic and social space and what happens in the EU - so what? We are still negotiating our inclusion within the EU and we make aberrations legal - so what? Catavencu is still right: "I don't want to know, Honorable Sir, of your Europe, all I want to know of is my Romania and only Romania..."

But the most tragic of all things Caragiale saw and said is not the weakness of politicians, or their narrow minds, or their gossip - not even their endless wish to become rich through the work of taxpayers, but the mist and brick laying slowly within the souls and minds of those who support the whole democratic buildup: the citizens, the voters. They pay for everything and benefit of nothing of true democracy. Our Tipsy Citizen is not drunk of wine - as teachers still misinterpret Caragiale. In his pages, as in today's reality, the drunkenness of John Doe is "scientifically" created by the wave of words and images bombing him from the media and by obscure maneuvers of those in power. After 15 year, Romanians truly believe - even those who graduated from universities - that an "electoral year" means a time of official lies. They firmly believe that "electoral campaign" is equal to distorted truth, unkept promises, accusations and counter-accusations with no evidence whatsoever, hard words amongst people who otherwise claim their intention to bring Romania into Europe - the place of their holidays and their accounts. In Romania in the year 2004, most of the voters equate politics with some broken device making lots of noise and lies, some kind of a circus where everyone goes to the Mary-go-round without paying for the ticket.

Is there a limit to such degradation? We received an answer from the European Parliament. If Romania still wants to be part of the grand project of integration in 2007, then not only a semblance of democracy must be saved - such as the Government is desperately attempting - but democracy itself.

But such an attempt is too important to be fulfilled by the Government! Someday, Romanians must rise against their own weaknesses and win against Caragiale. Because his social and moral project is not inspired by the well-known adage: Castigat ridendo mores, but rather by Swift's philosophy, who expected his writings to be uncomfortable for the reader!