@kek no, democracy is not when you ban your opponents. Democracy is when you sanction contenders if they don’t respect the rules of the game. When they declare 0 spending in online campaigns, when they don’t properly label their political propaganda material as such (even when the law requests it), when they do not disclose their spending but they spend huge amounts of cash coming from far-right affiliates and other sketchy sources, when they threaten with riots or outright coups involving mercenaries that fought in Congo alongside Wagner, this is when the rules of the game are not respected.
I would be more concerned for democracy if we would have only two political forces and barring one from running would make the other one the only choice, than barring a sketchy guy from entering the race.
Just fyi, we had 11 candidates this election and we had 3 debates last week, where all of them were invited.
Fair points. Not too familiar with the situation in Romania but it seems the people voted against “the establishment”, as we’ve seen in other European countries over the last number of years. Can’t be external interference in all of these cases although I’m not discounting that it might be in some.
My view is that in a healthy democracy any external influence wouldn’t achieve such results but maybe I’m too optimistic.
Democracy is when you ban your political opponents?
@kek no, democracy is not when you ban your opponents. Democracy is when you sanction contenders if they don’t respect the rules of the game. When they declare 0 spending in online campaigns, when they don’t properly label their political propaganda material as such (even when the law requests it), when they do not disclose their spending but they spend huge amounts of cash coming from far-right affiliates and other sketchy sources, when they threaten with riots or outright coups involving mercenaries that fought in Congo alongside Wagner, this is when the rules of the game are not respected.
I would be more concerned for democracy if we would have only two political forces and barring one from running would make the other one the only choice, than barring a sketchy guy from entering the race.
Just fyi, we had 11 candidates this election and we had 3 debates last week, where all of them were invited.
Fair points. Not too familiar with the situation in Romania but it seems the people voted against “the establishment”, as we’ve seen in other European countries over the last number of years. Can’t be external interference in all of these cases although I’m not discounting that it might be in some.
My view is that in a healthy democracy any external influence wouldn’t achieve such results but maybe I’m too optimistic.
I think you severely underestimate the incentives for foreign interference, and how easy that is in the days of social media and bots.