From the United States of America, to Germany, Austria, Holland or France, radical right-wing populist parties share a similar ideology.
As the political scientist Cas Mudde explains, the common element of these populist parties is the ideology built on the dichotomy between the pure people fighting against the “corrupt political elite”.
The strategy is not difficult to put into practice by the leaders of these radical parties, because it capitalizes on the traditional disenchantment of the electorate with the vulnerabilities of the mainstream parties.
It is true that the old parties face systemic problems, from corruption, to nepotism or lack of doctrinal coherence, but the alternative offered by these radical parties is not based on democratic values.
The easiest form of populism, which has been tested by the electorate and is preparing for another electoral competition, is the tough anti-system political speech used by former US President Donald Trump.
Other common elements of these radical right-wing parties would be anti-globalization, anti-immigration, isolationist-economic views, historical revisionism, and nativism.
All these elements are also found in the ideology of the AUR party, which some opinion polls give as the future second party as electoral power in Romania.
In all the states facing this attack on democratic values, the political counter-reaction to these radical-populist parties should have been a process of reforming the traditional big parties precisely to diminish the feeling of the electorate’s disappointment towards them.
But this is not happening, and Romania can become the leader of this paradox. The crisis of global political leadership also affects Romania.
Instead of putting on the public agenda a project and a coherent strategy for Romania, to prove to the Romanians that they want a real reform, the two governing parties, PNL and PSD, compete daily to show us that everything that matters to them in this super election year is the petty interests of the party and the preservation of their power. Chaos and Machiavellian calculations could push Romanians out of desperation to try the non-democratic alternative in Romania, and a large part of the blame will be borne by the very parties that claim to defend Romanian democracy.
All the more so since the refrain of these parties for the future governing coalition, as they want it for the 2024-2028 time frame, does not have as its central message the reform of the state and the internal reform of the political parties, but the countering of the extremist danger represented Golden.
What they offer in exchange to Romanians to vote for them, and not AUR, these two parties do not explain very coherently.
First of all, it is the first time in the post-December history when the governing parties move the date of the presidential elections without giving us a rational explanation for why they made this decision. In the 30 years of democracy, it had become a tradition for Romanians to elect their president in November. Why they moved these elections to September no one understood exactly.
Is this decision to organize the presidential elections two months earlier in favor of the interests of the Romanians? None of the leaders of these parties offered reasonable explanations.
Secondly, the fact that they do not have a coherent strategy for local elections – they change candidates from one day to the next, in Bucharest, PSD and PNL are political allies, but in other cities in the country they will suddenly turn into rivals – all this facade friendship/rivalry on the same electoral currency will upset the electorate and diminish confidence that these parties really work in the interest of Romanians.
Moreover, in this period of the rise of populist radicalism, the fact that the biggest parties in Romania fail to produce their own candidates from within these parties represents another vulnerability that will feed the anti-system discourse even more.
Instead of proving that these parties have the ability to reproduce, to raise future political leaders, to offer new figures, they resort to the trick of the independent rabbit, pulled out of the job at the last moment to wash away their image sins.
This is the only explanation why PSD and PNL brought Dr. Cătălin Cîrstoiu before the electorate. The message is also a discouraging one for the young party members who understand that politics is just lottery and cynical calculations and it becomes useless to consume your life in a political party.
Why would you work for another 20 years in a party to make an election campaign, to bring votes, if in adulthood, when you hope that the party will bet on you, outsiders like the rabbit out of nowhere capture the most coveted political positions?
Last but not least, no one from these parties presents a country project for the next four years, no one presents a reform project, no one explains to us what exactly is wrong in Romania and deserves to be corrected. In the struggle to preserve their own power they have almost forgotten that there is an electorate. No one cares anymore to stimulate our hope, the spectrum of positive feelings.
There are still two months until the European parliamentary and local elections and another three months until the presidential ones, and PNL and PSD present themselves as political allies and future rivals.
Normally, the system’s favorite for Romania’s most important political post, that of president, should have already been publicly outlined. But the power struggle is too big in the parties for us to hope for a public debate that will awaken our hope for a better future.
Follow PressHUB on Google News too!
