Cav's Place

After getting no new information whatsoever yesterday and considering that I’m now keeping an eye on the developments in Libya, I see that I should have written this last week as originally planned. But better late than never, so I’ll just get back to my original plan of following up the previous post with one that’ll offer more details about the interactions, similarities and differences between the Romanian Ecologist Party (PER), the Green Party (PV) and the new Greens’ Movement – Agrarian Democrats (MVDA), which I’ll still insist on calling only the Greens’ Movement (MV). I’ll also add my current understanding of how MV has chosen to get itself officially registered and my opinion of that.

There could be much to say about the mergers and alliances attempted or at least discussed by PER before the first one with PV, in 2008, but it’s very difficult to get to the bottom of it all and quite frankly pointless to even try, considering the complete mess inside that party. I’ll only say that there were talks of being absorbed by the New Generation Party – Christian Democratic (PNGCD) in 2007, in a deal that seems to have been negotiated almost secretly by PER’s president at the time. That sparked quite a storm inside the party and led to strong calls for reform, after which the party’s new direction seemed to be to support the Social Democratic Party (PSD) until yet another reform, started towards the end of 2010, resulted in yet another change of position, the party now clearly rejecting any sort of collaboration with any of the parties currently represented in the parliament in general and PSD in particular.
By contrast, with the exception of a misguided attempt of making use of inertia by enlisting the former mayor of one of Bucharest’s sectors in the 2008 local elections after he had been kicked out by his party due to very poor performance, you’d have difficulty finding any such events in PV’s admittedly short history that aren’t related to either PER or MV. This stance is one they maintain now as well, fully rejecting any collaboration with any major party in general and, alongside PER, releasing harsh replies to PSD’s attempts to once again attract the support of green or ecologist parties.

Which brings us to the first alliance between PV and PER, for the 2008 parliamentary elections. Such a development seemed highly unlikely even in 2007, when PV had a very hostile attitude towards PER, but it seemed as if both parties were about to try to sweep their differences aside in an attempt to finally bring green back into the parliament. The whole thing seemed rather rushed, the two parties stating that they intended to merge soon after the elections but didn’t before simply because there wasn’t enough time. Strangely enough, the name of the alliance was the same name they were planning to use for the future party, the Green Ecologist Party (PVE). Still wondering how that name was approved, since it wasn’t an actual party.
It didn’t count for much, however, as all they managed to gain was only 0.27% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies and 0.7% for the Senate, obviously not obtaining a single seat. As a result, the merger that was supposed to take place in early 2009 was forgotten, the two parties once again going their separate ways… Which led to an even worse defeat, neither party being able to even gather the required amount of signatures to field any candidates in the 2009 European Parliament elections!

For the 2009 presidential elections, both parties seemed to have recovered somewhat, at least to the point of being able to field candidates. PV in fact did much better than before, enlisting Remus Cernea specifically in order for him to be their presidential candidate and he in turn brought many other people to the party and started a process that would develop it far more than it had been before. They obviously had no chance to get anywhere near the major parties, but they at least gained some public attention once again, and in fact PV gained a whole lot more attention than it ever had before.
But the debates that took place before the elections once again revealed the differences between the two parties and made the previous attempted merger seem even stranger. PV seemed more than willing to try again, in fact Remus Cernea repeatedly stating that one of the key points on his agenda was to unite all the green and ecologist parties in Romania in a single one, but PER obviously wanted nothing more to do with such a plan. That was at least in part due to the fact that PV is a member of the European Greens while PER is not and quite obviously never had any intent of adhering to that doctrine. In fact the very dismissive replies given by PER’s presidential candidate when he happened to be asked about it seemed to quite clearly translate into something like “why would we want to have anything to do with those fools”.

Not long after the elections, the relationship between Remus Cernea and the more established part of PV’s leadership deteriorated, many being increasingly bothered by his open and enthusiastic support for issues such as the separation of church and state, LGBT rights and, perhaps most of all, a significant part of the Magyar minority’s demands. That culminated with him finally resigning from the party just as they were about to kick him out. Plenty of others, most of which had joined PV after him and specifically because they supported these other ideas as well, followed him and together they quickly started working on founding a new party. This is something that I have written about before, so I won’t go into any more detail here.
After the initial “Snow White” media stunt, the new party’s real name was revealed and the gathering of signatures was officially started right at the end of 2010, with them initially estimating that the party was going to be legally registered at some point between July and October, 2011. At the same time, they were busy developing the network of local branches that any serious party needs, aided by the fact that some of PV’s defected to them. Since then, one particular local branch seems to have risen above the rest, being particularly active and apparently even successful in its current projects.

The disarray PV was left in towards the end of 2010 was nothing compared to PER’s situation at the time, however. Both parties had to start a process of reform, forced by the defections, but PER almost disintegrated, with most of its local branches splitting away, many of them joining PV instead. Yet both parties elected new leaders and seem to have since recovered. Interestingly, PV’s new executive president is the former frontman of the humor group Vacanta Mare, who went into politics after the group finally disbanded and, after giving up on his aspirations of founding a new party once he realized how extremely difficult it is to do so in Romania, first joined PER. He left after a few months, along with the many others who defected at the time, very unhappy with how he had been treated and deeply dissatisfied with the kind of people he had found inside that party.
One result of these reforms was that talks of a merger between PV and PER started once again. In fact the first notions of it started appearing almost immediately after Remus Cernea left PV, though for the next few months PV returned to being critical towards PER. And they had every reason to be, with PER having stances completely unsuitable for a party with this doctrine, the most notable of which being their public support for the Rosia Montana mining project. After all, there is a reason PER has never been a member of the European Greens, and in fact the European Greens have in the past made it quite clear that it isn’t following the green doctrine.
Still, about one month ago PV announced that they have signed a protocol with the purpose of merging PV and PER into PVE, so maintaining the name used during their previous merger attempt, by the end of the year. However, they have clearly stated their conditions, which include the new leadership of PER publicly distancing itself from the party’s previous statements regarding the Rosia Montana mining project and officially opposing it from now on, as well as fully complying with the Charter of the European Greens, including on issues regarding the rights of minorities. As such, considering PER’s previous record and the socially conservative attitude it has always seemed to have, I still find the merger unlikely, and my opinion seems to be confirmed by PER’s recent statements, stressing that the merger hasn’t happened yet and there’s still a lot of work to do if it is to ever happen at all.

While this was going on, MV has continued its efforts to get itself legally registered, but seems to have come to the conclusion that it was impossible, or at least far more trouble than it was worth. As such, they have at some point somehow approached the People’s Agrarian Party (PPA), which is a very minor party that as far as I know never had any representatives anywhere, and started negotiations to essentially take over that party. The negotiations were successful and PPA voted last month to change its name into MVDA, preserving a honorary founding president title for its current president but otherwise appointing MV’s leaders as its own. The name change still needs to be approved in court, however.
Now you could say that it doesn’t matter too much how they start as long as they do it, and in fact that’s what they’re saying, but this is something that I’m deeply bothered by, partly because they have essentially started their journey with a defeat but mainly because everything happened in complete secrecy, nothing whatsoever being announced about this until the process was completed, apparently about a month after the end of the negotiations. Once something like this happens, you need to keep asking yourself from that moment forward what else is being hidden from you. And when this comes from a party that supposedly stresses the values of an open society, it’s all the more troubling.
Considering that the rural areas are of great importance, particularly for environmental reasons, it’s likely a good idea for MV, which is a party known almost exclusively in the urban areas and with little to no expertise in rural problems, to join forces with a party like PPA, which is known almost exclusively in rural areas and which seems to have some experience of dealing with problems specific to the individuals who live there. However, MV should have first at least attempted to get themselves registered and, if successful, subsequently absorb PPA. If their registration would have been rejected, as it was probably somewhat likely to happen, they could have picked this path, sure, but only if they would have made the negotiations public from the very first moment! As it is, this is inexcusable! Granted that it’s not quite as inexcusable as their openly stated desire to ally themselves with PSD for next year’s elections, which makes me say that unless they change their mind by then I won’t vote for them no matter what and will do my best to dissuade others from doing so as well, but it’s still a huge red flag.

In the end, this leaves us with these three parties, which may or may not become two by the end of the year. When it comes to environmental issues, I still can’t say that I know what exactly PER stands for, but PV and MV seem to have extremely similar ideologies and even projects. The differences become more significant when it comes to the other issues, however. PER and PV seem to agree on firmly opposing the Magyar minority’s demands for additional rights, not to mention the calls for autonomy, while MV’s stance is that it supports their “cultural autonomy” and “serious, rational debates” regarding any other demands. And when it comes to issues like the separation of church and state and the rights of any other minorities of any kind, the three parties seem to have completely different viewpoints, with MV fully and actively supporting and pressing for all of these issues, PER seeming socially conservative and likely to oppose such concepts when they happen to come up and PV seeming to have more of a “wait and see” approach.
Remus Cernea stated that PV’s leadership is actually very socially conservative and the party won’t support such issues at all if it comes right down to it, and in fact I heard that MV planned to send some sort of evidence of this to the European Greens, but nothing along those lines seems to have happened. After MV will get legally registered they are likely to try to join the European Greens as well, so something may happen then, but the truth is that I’m not so sure Remus is entirely right. Of course, he should know better, but my personal impression is that, while some of its leaders most likely actually are socially conservative, PV as a whole isn’t as much opposing the issues themselves as saying that the public outcry generated by openly supporting such concepts in Romania at this point in time would be so strong that it’d make it impossible for the party to do anything about the environment either, and that needs to be their top priority. Which is an assessment that I must unfortunately agree with, considering the huge approval rating still enjoyed by the Romanian Orthodox Church (BOR) and the fact that the tremendous majority of Romanians openly state that they discriminate against LGBT people, among other things… Incidentally, this is also one of the reasons why I say solutions to important problems can’t come from politics.

And there you have it. This ended up way longer than the last post, and obviously longer than planned, but I did go into far more detail and eventually managed to say pretty much everything I meant to say. Again, if you have verifiable corrections to make, do make them, because I have relied a lot on memory and there’s some guesswork added in as well.