Vladimir Mitev
Maria-Luisa Guevara is a nom de guerre of a Romanian activist for the right to housing, workers’ rights of non-European workers and progressive issues in general. She is part of the Socialist Action Group (GAS), which is a Marxist-oriented grassroots organisation in Romania and does field work for the Common Front for the Right to Housing, one of the grassroots organisations on housing in Romania. Maria-Luisa Guevara talks to The Bridge of Friendship in the context of her project to get to know the different faces of Romania in the 2024 supra-election year and how they see the evolution of Romanian society.
We move on to the third part of our discussion, which we have set out to relate to the social and political situation in Romania. I will link the topic with what you do as an activist or researcher. I know that you deal with the rights of Asian workers, that is people from third countries outside the European Union, who have become very numerous in Romania lately. They work a lot in hotels, restaurants, or delivering for platforms like Glovo. We have noticed that the Romanian left is perhaps the best equipped with contacts, with knowledge to provide understanding in the media, let’s say citizen understanding, if I may say so, or for citizens on this phenomenon which is relatively new for Romania.
What observations do you have from your research work, from your documentation, when it comes to this problem or situation related to the large increase in the number of workers from Nepal, Sri Lanka and so on. What problems are these people facing in Romania? How is Romanian society setting or redefining itself to accommodate them, to make a society with them?
My research on this topic originally started by addressing the problems of Uber and Bolt drivers and delivery workers two years ago. In general, the people working on these platforms were Romanians, and a year and a half ago the demographics of the workers changed a lot and more and more migrant workers came from Southeast Asia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, and also from sub-Saharan Africa. And we’ve continued our research over the past year.
And when I mean research, I actually mean field work, talking to people, chatting with them, contacting them on Facebook, searching all the Facebook groups dedicated to foreign workers in Romania, reading a little bit of legislation. The problems they face when they come to Romania are primarily of a legal nature, in the sense that most of them do not know their rights, nor their obligations, so to speak, towards the Romanian state, in the sense that they often risk losing their right to work and their right of residence, and many lose these rights without knowing, without realising, because nobody informs them of the steps they have to take.
They are first and foremost the victims of exploiters, i.e. the recruitment companies of intermediaries. For the time being, the racism of society or of Romanians is quite low compared to, let’s say, the West, because, for the moment, the far-right party AUR has not yet taken up the issue of migration. And my suspicion is that it is in the interest of the Romanian capital, or local capital, to bring in foreign workers. And AUR represents primarily the interests of Romanian capital, the interests of small and large Romanian entrepreneurs. And as long as they need this foreign labour force, AUR will not start making too much fuss. But the moment they find the opportunity, I am sure they will attack the issue and will be on the same level as Marine Le Pen in France, as AfD in Germany, as the far right in the Netherlands etc etc.
The cases I have come across during my research are as follows. There are these intermediary recruiting firms in Romania. Some of them are serious. I talked to companies, which are in charge of getting visas for these workers and which are correct in what they do. It’s just that Romania gives a fixed number of visas per year. This year the quota has increased to somewhere between 130,000 and 160,000 per year and it takes a few months to issue a visa. Then there are the companies from those countries, the intermediary companies that take a lot of money from these workers, about 5 000 euros on average, to get them to Romania. And only a small part of this money goes on the cost of the visa, which is 100-200 euros, and possibly the cost of the plane ticket. The rest goes only on bribes to the consulate in their country, bribes to various institutions in Romania.
But it is very difficult to prove this. The journalist colleagues I spoke to and who have also made investigations have found it very difficult to trace this money. So it’s very well covered up. But when you contact these intermediary companies in Romania, the serious ones tell you “look, it costs you 1,500 euros to bring a worker from abroad here and that includes the cost of the visa, the airfare and the recruitment company to pay the employees”. Good. The problem arises with companies that say they bring in migrant workers for free, because the worker pays all their dues.
And there are also those who promise these workers that they will bring them to Romania and take a lot of money, thousands of euros, hundreds of euros and give them nothing. They don’t bother to get them a visa or anything. So these people are really crooks. And their numbers have multiplied a lot. You can find them on Facebook. There are groups where you find people from Africa, from Nigeria, from Cameroon, from Congo, who say they have been swindled by Romanians and also workers from South-East Asia, who say they have been swindled, and the Romanian police do very little about it.
Some of them have contacted the Romanian Police, but they have not helped them. And then these people find themselves in situations where they don’t know what to do. On top of that, a lot of workers end up here with proper papers. They start working for the company they’ve been assigned to, only sometimes they find out that they were hired to be cooks and are actually sent to the construction site or vice versa. Or they find out that the money they were promised, the salary of 3500 lei (700 euro) that they were promised, is actually 2,000 lei (400 euro) or 2,500 lei (450 euro) in reality, because the company that hires them finds all sorts of reasons not to give them all the money and after a month or two, naturally, people revolt and leave the company. By leaving the company that brought them in, they actually lose their right of residence.
Romanian law is made in such a way that people stay. It seems to me that there is now a law that they have to stay at least one year with the employer who brought them. Or if they don’t get along, if they are not paid well, if they are exploited, the workers have no recourse. Some of the migrants are actually undocumented. They are left without papers in Romania, they have no solution to recover their papers, because as far as I understand, under Romanian law you can’t really get a residence permit once you are already in Romania. It would mean going back to their country and applying again. So that’s another thousands of euros in the hope that they will come back. And then what happens is they are left without papers here.
Some of them stay in Romania and work illegally or some of them try and emigrate to the West illegally, where they pay more money again. From what I have researched it costs about 2500 euros to cross the border to Germany in a truck. There are different methods. It’s a tragedy when you don’t have papers because you have no one to turn to if you’re exploited, if you’re working for free, if you’re a slave driver.
We will soon start a project on this, but it has required a lot of research, because there is very little information and until you go and talk directly to the people, ask them what their problems are, you have no way of knowing what these people are facing.
As for how Romanian society receives migrant workers… There are two camps. You have Romanians who understand why these people from Asia and Africa come to us. In turn, we Romanians have been going abroad for a better life. And then obviously we understand that other people do the same. And the Romanians who are in this position come from all walks of life, i.e. they are not just intellectuals or just workers or just middle class, but we have simply seen that there are people from all walks of life who think this way and that is a very good thing. And on the other hand, there is racism towards people of a dark skin colour. It already existed in Romania against the Roma, but it didn’t necessarily manifest itself against people from Africa or South-East Asia until messages filtered down to us from the Western media.
Here too, the Romanian diaspora, who are much more racist because they have been exposed to racist messages in the Western media, play a nefarious role, because they come up with comments on Facebook or in discussions with people back home. They tell them “look that blacks are I don’t know how, that Arabs are I don’t know how, that look, here in France, there are too many blacks or in Germany, too many Arabs” and so on. This racist discourse has penetrated Romania. It’s still not the majority, which is a good thing. But there are still stupid comments like that on Facebook groups or that you can hear among neighbours, work colleagues, family, relatives. You hear comments like that. For now they are in the minority, but over the next few months they are likely to increase.
I can see that you are very familiar with the subject and I can also say that there have been several articles in Libertatea on the subject. But how does the state react when journalists have documented so many abuses? Should state institutions dealing with workers’ rights, discrimination or cheating have acted? To what extent do they do this and how do they do it?
So far they are doing nothing effective. I mean there is no reaction from the state. As far as I know, as far as I have seen, first of all, there is no association that defends the rights of migrant workers in Romania. This could be something we could start on the left and that’s what I hope we end up doing at some point. But there is no association or foundation or NGO at the moment that is vocal on this issue, because there hasn’t been until recently, in fact. The share of migrant workers has been very low in Romania, and the state itself is not reacting. I mean, if you look at what the state institutions are doing, you’ll see that only the DIICOT, that is, those who deal with organised crime and trafficking, are the only ones who have anything to do with this issue, and they only have something to do from the perspective of migrants who cross the border illegally, clandestinely, to Hungary and to the West, and from time to time, they discover I don’t know how many dozens of migrants put in a van or something, in a lorry or, God forbid, that they have already suffocated to death. And that’s all the Romanian state does now, because the Romanian state only deals with migrant workers through the IGI (General Inspectorate for Immigration), the ones who issue visas. After these articles were published, there was no reaction from the state authorities. I mean it seems to be a non-issue for them.
We can come back to the topic when we have more assumptions, but I also want to ask you that in January 2024 in Romania there were protests by farmers and transporters. These protests, seen from the outside, are similar to those in Germany, in France, on the one hand, with the fact that workers and small employers, so people from small businesses, participate in them, as far as I understand. On the other hand, it resembles the protests in the EU in that the far right is trying to enter the protests, to take them over, to redirect them in certain directions. How do you refer to these protests, to the reasons for them, to their demands?
I have noticed that there are economic demands or demands related including to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). But there are also such demands that sound somewhat populist, in the sense of reducing the number of MPs to 300? So this is old hat. There was a referendum 10 years ago I think that called for this, but its demands were not met. It seems to me that several agendas are coming together in these protests. How do you perceive them? To what extent are these protests progressive? To what extent are they not?
Yes, it’s very interesting that these protests are taking place in several countries in Europe and I don’t know to what extent they are coordinated. I don’t know if there is any coordination between these groups of farmers and hauliers in Romania, Belgium, Germany and I think also in Ireland and I don’t know where they have come out because, as far as I know, they are not really trade unionists in the classical sense, in the sense of a European farmers’ union or whatever.
I mean this is quite strange. It seems to me that it’s a form of protest, it’s a kind of protest that I can’t classify. I mean, when you have workers and employers in the same protest, you can’t make a classical analysis. Is it a workers’ movement or an employers’ movement? No, it’s a complex movement and I don’t think I can classify it in a certain way.
The fact that, in Romania, hauliers are criticising that taxes on diesel, petrol, energy and insurance have gone up, you could say “this is a small employer’s problem, so we don’t care about the left”. Yes, it’s just that the rise in these two items, petrol and insurance, are part of the whole inflation that we are all experiencing, that we are all hit by.
Then the fact that farmers are small business owners themselves. Yes, except not all of them are small business owners. There are some who are actually self-employed. Then there’s the fact that farmers don’t take into account environmental issues and sustainability and pollution and they actually put in all kinds of chemicals. At the same time, many have no choice. I spoke to farmers in Ialomita who confirmed that they cannot sow whatever seed they want on their land. They are forced to buy only from the big seed companies, which then require them to use certain herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilisers and then often their hands are even tied.
Among the leftists in Romania we have seen that there is a scepticism and the idea that we should not be in solidarity or have anything to do with these people. At the same time, the far right is trying to take over the movement, although we can see very well that sovereignist politicians such as George Simion and Șoșoacă have been rejected by the demonstrators, which is a very good thing. I mean we should in the next few days, weeks while this movement is going on, as leftists, the left, actually go out and ask what these people want and understand how much of what they want is part of a larger demand of all of us who are affected by rising prices, over-exploitation, all the neoliberal policies that are shoved down our throats. And how many of these demands are not progressive?
At the moment it’s quite unclear and often as a leftist it’s very easy to say “well theoretically, knucklehead X is a worker, so I’m in solidarity with him, but knucklehead Y is not a worker, so I’m not in solidarity with him”. That is not the solution. That’s not the way to look at it.
I haven’t made up my mind yet. I feel that I still need to read and inform myself, and above all I feel the need to go and talk directly to these people, to understand what their demands are, from what perspective they are coming from, because what I have seen so far is that the authorities have often not allowed them to carry out their protests after they have been given authorisation. In fact, only a few have come to Victory Square. I mean it’s chaos and misinformation and until you go on the ground and until you talk to people, you don’t know these things.
The sign of hope that I see is that they have rejected Simion and Șoșoacă. That’s a great thing, because if you look at the trucker protests in Canada, which happened a few months ago or a year ago, there the carriers themselves had far-right values, conservative values. It seems that this is not really the case in Romania. And that’s why we have to talk to people, understand them, form an opinion and only then put a label on whether they are working class or not.
Something I have already said at meetings with the left is that today we have to redefine what working class means. It is no longer the same working class that it was 150 years ago when Marx wrote Capital or 100 years ago when the revolution in Russia took place. Today we have totally different categories, totally different jobs, totally different situations. We cannot put such a simple label on people. So, in conclusion, I don’t know. I don’t have a definite opinion about what’s going on with these protests, because I feel I don’t have the information yet, and I hope to be able to research the subject a little bit on the ground and then come back with an opinion and I hope to be able to make it public at some point on Facebook or by other means.
I’m really glad you’re not in a rush to have an opinion and want to study and think complexly. You don’t want to simply put labels and pick sides so simply. There seems to be more hope in your approach than in the more lazy, let’s say, simple who’s right, who’s wrong approach. And taking the “good” side seems very simplistic to me.
Now for a similar type challenge. Lately there have been several articles saying that Romania is currently experiencing the best moment in its history. Perhaps you know the arguments. GDP has grown very significantly. Romania is part of the West. There are many opportunities. I can also confirm that at least in the big cities where they penetrate people feel very safe in Romania. And can be given more arguments that Romania really kind of growth. But on the other hand there are also many stories of strong failure.
I can give the example of these PISA tests, I can give the example of plagiarism. Several ministers and big politicians have been caught plagiarizing their doctoral theses. They can be found, if you look for arguments it’s a failure at different levels in society, if you look for that. And here I want to ask you about the inequality between big city worlds and small town worlds. Because it seems to me that in Romania this difference is very big. So even Mircea Geoană, who is a candidate for the presidential elections, says that 12 cities in Romania produce 80% of the GDP. So basically the economic life in Romania is concentrated in 12 areas. What is not in these areas does not exist. I want to ask you something very broad about that. You can go in any direction.
How do you see this contradiction between the big cities and the so-called deep Romania evolving? And I’m asking this in the context of this year’s elections and the rise of sovereignty. Who proposes solutions for people who were not privileged to be born and live in big cities? And, on the other hand, to what extent can a grievance, if any on their side, be used in elections and by whom?
Yes, it’s a complex question. I’ll open up several brackets or several lines of response.
First of all, to confirm that yes, there is clearly a big difference between the big cities in Romania and the smaller cities, which is very striking in the last 30 years, because of the way investment policies were developed, to attract foreign or local investors, whereas under the communist regime, from what I have read and understood and observed, there was a certain decentralisation. Here I would like to give a concrete example of the town of Lehliu in the southern Bărăgan. It is a very small town, I don’t know how many inhabitants, it has eight thousand or six thousand inhabitants. There are actually two big streets and a few small streets around. During the communist regime, several local industries developed there. There was a textile factory that exported to the West and had contracts with Nike, Adidas and other sports companies. It was a container manufacturing company or something like that. They also had some small mechanical cooperatives. Rail transport was doing very well on the freight side, but also on the personnel side and primarily the agricultural industry was very developed. There was an IAS (State Agricultural Enterprise) there, but there was also a vegetable production enterprise (IPL) that exported to eastern countries, but it seems to me that they also exported to the west, and above all it was very well connected with the canning factories and the various retail outlets. So, there those who lived in the surrounding villages had work in various places, there were restaurants, there was accommodation, all sorts of small peripheral activities around these local industries.
After the revolution, shortly afterwards, the vegetable production company was closed down in 1992-93. A lot was privatised. The textile factory closed by 94-96, the rest of the cooperatives closed down completely and the inhabitants found themselves in the position of having almost no work. And now, if you go, there are a lot of small shops and so on. And there’s an oil factory that used to be. I don’t know if it still exists. It’s been bought by various foreign investors over the years.
What happens to small towns. Lehliu is one of many examples. Another example is Targu Jiu, which is much bigger, but where there was the problem with the mines that closed. Buzău the same. I mean we can give endless examples in Romania. When you talk to people there, you realise that most of them see their future in Bucharest, if they have the chance to get a higher education and then, if they go to university, they can get a job in Bucharest for a better salary. And the chance for those who don’t have any opportunity to do higher education – is to emigrate, to work either temporarily in strawberries or raspberries, in England, in France, in Germany or simply to emigrate altogether and leave for years and eventually make a small house to come back to once a year. But the point is that when you talk to people in these places, there’s not so much a particular rebellion, but simply a desire to get away from that place. And then, in the long run, in order to politicise these issues, you have to instrumentalize this. Although the fact that Romanians have this instinct to emigrate either to cities or abroad makes it quite difficult to instrumentalize. Do you see any complaints? People are not necessarily angry. They’re simply thinking of leaving.
And then, to answer the question who could instrumentalize this politically and how would they do it? Sure, any time that could be done. But considering that people are usually not necessarily angry, they’re just trying to get out of there, it’s much easier for them and then you don’t have much to instrumentalize.
In Lehliu, there’s always a guy from AUR handing out flyers. You see him talking to people, but people have lost political hope. I mean they have been so deceived by politics that they don’t really believe in the stuff anymore. And when I ask people if they would vote for them with AUR, they usually say “Well no, they’re still the same thieves or liars as the other parties”.
Instead, what matters a lot there is the local elections. Why? Well, because it’s important who is mayor in your town or village. And it is these local elections that are at stake, not the parliamentary or national or European or presidential elections. That’s not really a problem, because people say that they will be the victims of politics anyway and that they can go away anyway. So that’s what I’m saying. I think instrumentalising people’s anger is quite difficult, because there’s this “advantage” that people are thinking of leaving.
For example, France has the same problems at this level because of policies over the years – of investing only in big cities and leaving small towns, rural areas, forgotten areas, so to speak, completely abandoned. As you said, deep Romania, so is deep France. But there people don’t have the instinct to move to a bigger city or emigrate to another country. And then there it is very easy for Marine Le Pen and her party to instrumentalize anger and discontent.
The same in England. Here we are talking about Brexit. When I lived there I also spoke to people in smaller towns. And clearly that’s what Brexit was, it was instrumentalising the legitimate discontent of people living in small towns who saw Romanians coming and working there temporarily or permanently. And the Brexit supporters were putting into people’s heads the idea that ‘look, if you vote Brexit, you won’t have Romanian neighbours stealing your job, or Poles coming to open Polish food shops in your town.’ It’ll just be you and your family and your English friends.” And there it was very easy to be instrumentalised. In Romania there’s still this instinct to emigrate or move to a bigger city, which, yes, sucks for us on the left, because that means we can’t really work with people either, we can’t unionize them or group them. That comes from a somewhat individualistic instinct, but not individualistic necessarily in a one-person way, but rather me and my family doing well for me and my family. And for us leftists, it’s very hard to get these people together, to convince them, to unionize them, to organize them. But the advantage is that the far right won’t be able to coagulate them either and won’t be able to instrumentalize this discontent very quickly. Of course, if years go by and AUR, with the finances it has, will be able to do something in time, but in the near future I don’t think it will be able to have that power. Or I don’t think that’s what they’ll be banking on very much.
Yes, I may come back to the comparisons with France and the UK. What are your expectations for the national elections regarding Parliament and the President? And I would ask like this – to what extent do you think anything will really change? To what extent can some parties change or some people at the top change, but essentially stay pretty much the same. The policies to stay pretty much the same. Is it really about sovereignty or other issues? Is it really something possible to go in a new direction or is there not much at stake?
To be honest, I don’t have very high hopes from this year’s elections, in spite of the fact that there are four elections in one year and from what I’ve read, 2024 is one of the biggest election years globally, because so many countries will have elections this year. But the problem is that we don’t have a concrete left-wing alternative in Romania, but also at European level. So for me the hopes are very low.
Instead, what is worrying is the rise of the far right across Europe and, obviously, in America and in Romania. That’s what worries me – why? I read their tracts, I get their tracts in my mailbox, I see their huge kiosks that open only in the working class neighborhoods of Bucharest. So you never see the gold tent with George Simion on it in Floreasca or Dorobanți. Instead, you see it in Rahova, you see it în Sălăjan, you see it in Drumul Taberei, in the working class areas, even if, let’s say, racism or the issue of migrants is not necessarily the number one concern of the Romanians compared to the French or the English. However, the AUR’s messages are very well pointed and they know who they are talking to. They know their audience very well and they know their audience very well. Look, for example, on one of the AUR tracts I received in my mailbox there are some almost left-wing messages. For example, “more money for employees”, “We will reduce payroll taxes,” AUR tells us. “We will eliminate tax inequalities, we will link pensions to the minimum wage. We will reduce payroll taxes. It’s also a left-wing issue. Why tax labour and not tax capital?
I mean they’ve taken a lot of the left-wing arguments and put them forward in a populist manner. I mean they’re very unlikely to actually do good things for working people, but having these deceptive messages, they’re very likely to attract a lot of people. And instead of hope, I see more of a risk this year with the elections, because without a left alternative, without a real left political party (we’re not talking about the PSD, we’re talking about a political party that’s out there and talking to people and being visible), the only pro-worker messages are putting GOLD on the bottle and on our screens. And then, yes, that’s a huge risk. You said earlier that no matter who’s in power, in the end it’s still the same policies they make. Yes, obviously. I mean no matter Geoană or whoever else comes, they’re not going to implement different policies than those of Iohannis or those who came before.
So you don’t think anything will change as a result of this election?
I don’t think anything in particular will change, I told you, because there is no alternative, no one is coming with counter-proposals. Talking also to people who are middle class, well-to-do, let’s say, they, for example, are afraid of AUR and then they will go massively to vote and they don’t want AUR to come out. But this disillusionment with the political class and this disillusionment of the common man, who lives on a minimum wage or a pittance of a pension is very bad. And so, frankly, I don’t see much change. Plus we have to bear in mind the next thing – this is where the idea of sovereignty comes in.
We know very well that a lot of policies are decided not only at the level of a country’s government, but also at the level of international forums such as the EU, the World Bank, which give money to certain neoliberal projects, etc. So what? In national elections, from what I can see, they don’t seem to have that impact on people’s lives, other than not having the far right in power. I mean that’s pretty much what’s at stake. That’s pretty much what’s at stake in France, in England, in European countries, in America as well. I mean, instead of the stakes being, “I’m going to vote for this guy because he promised us I don’t know what”, or look, “we want this government, we want this party to win”, what I hear is “we don’t want the far right to come out”. And then it’s a very depressing stake. At the end of the day, if that’s the only reason you can still go to the polls today just so the cunt doesn’t come out, I’m not very optimistic.
To what extent are elections in Romania basically reduced to a competition between different types of capital? So generally we can talk about international capital or Western European capital, sovereign capital or national capital. Doesn’t big money determine who is a candidate? I heard a theory that in Romania the so-called secret services are very powerful, so maybe the combination of the influence of these services and big capital matters when it comes to elections?
Yes. When I was a child, in the 1990s and 2000s, I used to hear adults around me saying that the secret services are up, the secret services are down, they control things.. I was a child and I didn’t pay much attention to this discourse. After that, growing up in other countries and living in other countries, I was totally disconnected from the whole thing. And now that I’m running in more circles and left-wing and some not politically related I still hear a lot of people saying this and at first I didn’t really believe it. It seemed to me like some sort of conspiracy theory with a local flavor, so to speak. With Americans it’s the deep state conspiracy theory that, funnily enough, Trump kept promoting. But talking to more people and trying to inform myself left and right, yes, you understand that in fact the secret services have a lot of power in the Romanian state.
Let’s not forget that services and capital are linked though. I mean, when we say that a certain candidate comes from the capital, automatically he must also have the support of the services in Romania. And as proof that business and capital are very closely linked to security, I have heard opinions that large Romanian firms, for example the construction giant One Properties, have very close links with the security services. To what extent can this be proven? To what extent is it all just a conspiracy theory or an impression? It is very difficult to prove.
At least that’s what I’ve found from what I’ve looked for and what I’ve researched and what I’ve tried to read that it’s very hard to prove these links. And the problem is precisely this conditioning of the candidacy: if you have the acceptance or the support of the services that many people know and many people understand, that also makes the interest in the elections very low among Romanians. I mean, you think, “What’s the point of me going to vote if that candidate is put in front of me by the services anyway?” And this is a great democratic deficit in Romanian politics and that’s why it’s also very dangerous to see the rise of AUR, because it may not be an organic growth, so to speak. That is to say, it may not be a demand of the people, or of the common man, but simply be pushed by the support of certain parts of the secret services.
Similarly, I understand that the so-called secret services are not a concrete, single, united thing, but there are several branches, several tendencies, several orientations, policies. And then, it’s a very complex tangle and for the ordinary citizen who goes to vote, it’s very hard to have the motivation to go to vote.
I told you about the local elections, but there it seems to me that there is a bit of a different stake and a bit of a different perspective at the local level, provincial and small towns and villages. It’s precisely there that people are very interested in voting, because their daily existence depends on who is mayor in their village. And look, you hear criticism like “how stupid Romanian peasants are to go and vote for that one because he gave them a bottle of oil and a sack of wheat” or whatever. Well, yes, but it means that the situation of that man is so bad that a bottle of oil makes a difference to him. Or if he’s on welfare, so he goes and votes for that mayor. Well, let’s see why people have to go on welfare. Because there’s no job around the village, because he can’t get a job etc etc. And then at the local level you have these local barons, this little mafia. And people can see much better the reason to go and vote, which is that it affects their daily lives.
Whereas at the national level it’s more that only a part of Romanians see the interest in going to vote, because they understand that these elections can influence their lives in a certain way. But here this disillusionment, this disinterest, because people don’t see why they would go to vote, since they have no control, there is no transparency around the candidates’ candidates. And look, to come back a little bit to the Demos experience, from what I understood, one of the problems was the fact that the signature thresholds (you have to collect a certain number of signatures in Romania in order to be a candidate for the European Parliament and the presidential elections) are enormous, they are unreachable for a small party and obviously this contributes to this democracy deficit a lot.
I close this part of the discussion with such a question about the left, not in the strict sense of the phenomenon. What can the left do in elections? Because you’ve explained very well that you can’t really change something so easily by voting. But in these conditions, which we’ve been describing for some time and you describe very well the conditions in which potentially progressive, pro-change people are somehow apathetic, not dominated by a hegemony of either capital, or services as you talked about, or local barons and so on. So there’s always some kind of concentration of power which in turn limits or diminishes the power of those who remain outside that concentration. Under these circumstances, I suspect the left is always at least rhetorically oriented towards positive change, transformation and other motivational phrases. What strategy can the left have? Even if we know that the left is not also a unitary thing? We think of it as a political trend towards more rights, more respect for the common man, towards the affirmation of progressive values and so on. But what can this trend in all its dimensions do?
Yes. This is effectively a question about the strategy of the left and what we as leftists can do. And this is a discussion that I have had over time and here in Romania, but also with other comrades in other countries, but especially here in Romania. I will tell my personal opinion, as I see what the left should do.
First of all, to raise people’s awareness about their rights at work, in society, in the family. Here we are talking about progressive values at the social and societal level. Look at violence against women, violence against children etc etc. In English it would be “to raise awareness”. I mean, at least this work of persuasion, of informing is essential and this is what we can do as leftists.
It’s true that we don’t have a lot of media outlets, we still don’t have a lot of media channels through which to express ourselves, but I’ve already listed the few we have. We have enthusiasm, we have energy. There are still a few thousand of us in Romania who are leftists and who can do this and we are already doing it. That is to say, through these small associations, which are these small groups, we are already working to inform, to help people understand.
Look, for example, Politeia is doing extraordinary work on workers’ rights. I mean, it’s a very special project and it’s very practical, very pragmatic, and it may not necessarily claim to be left-wing or socialist. As far as I understand it, even though the people involved in it obviously have left-wing values, the fact that they are doing this work is an extraordinary thing and there should be more initiatives like this.
Then, work with trade unions. OK, unions are not perfect. There are yellow unions, i.e. owned by employers. There are all sorts of internal union problems, but there are still good people in unions to talk to. And the fact that we still have trade unions in Romania is an extraordinary thing, and we can inform workers, show solidarity with them when necessary, and at least make people aware of the class they belong to.
I mean, if they are working class, they should know that they are workers, whatever kind of job they have, and they should know that they can count on each other if they are exploited, oppressed, etc. for social or socialist action, so to speak. I also see this as necessary, i.e. beyond information, beyond trying to promote left-wing values in all possible channels, in all possible media, we also have to go out into the streets. And I don’t just mean protests, I mean actually reaching out to people who have otherwise not been politicised, reaching out to them, reaching out to our relatives and the contacts they have. I mean that’s something we can do as well.
A grassroots movement has to be coordinated, of course. But I said, there are already some small organizations, some small groups that are already starting to do that, and ideally in 2024, we would just like to expand, grow, collaborate between groups and unite the left. That was my hope. Last year and I was thinking, look, we should be able to do something on this. With time I understood that it’s very complex and it’s very hard to unite the left no matter what country you’re in. But at least if we have a common goal – informing and expanding the left network, so to speak, little by little things can move in the right direction.
I don’t have very high hopes on the electoral side, but on the side of direct action, social action and grassroots movements, Romania really has a lot of potential and things are already moving. Already, as you said, there is a huge enthusiasm on this side and I remain optimistic on this side, but there is a lot of work to do. That’s the only thing. A lot, a lot of work. Because yet we come after thirty years of anti-communist, pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist propaganda at the EU level and the United States is the hegemon and we’re taking after them.
But look, for example, one more thing: The United States is not just big capital, Milton Friedman and capitalism. The United States also has a very important movement to unionize workers at Starbucks, at Amazon. These are people who are sensitive to the idea of the United States, we can sit down with them and say “look, it’s much more complex than you think. The United States is not just Hollywood. Look here and movements like this – look how cool it is, look how cool the young people at Starbucks are getting on Instagram and standing in solidarity”. I mean we can find ways and ways to spread leftist ideals, because that’s what needs to be done.
For now, Romanians have been brainwashed for 34 years that communism is bad. Yes, the regime that passed must be criticized. There were some very bad things and we have to acknowledge them and say them. But that doesn’t mean, as they say in French, “you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the water you washed it in” or anything like that. Or in English they say the same thing. I mean no, you can’t throw communism away just because a regime that went under the communist umbrella did certain bad things. We have to be much more realistic, much more sober in the way we look at things. And yes, there’s a lot of mystification and misinformation and propaganda that has taken place over the last 34 years. It’s going to take quite a long time to unravel it. But it can be done. I mean we have the tools and the platforms to do it and we have the energy and the enthusiasm to do it.
Photo by Anete Lusina from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-showing-paper-with-prohibition-sign-5723268/
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