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Inequalities should set the tone of the public agenda in Romania, the former president of Romania Ion Iliescu said in a podcast of the former minister of Culture, Ionut Vulpescu on Sunday evening, pointing out that, although at first glance only economic inequalities matter, social, economic and moral ones derive from them.
"At first glance, only economic ones matter, but social, cultural or moral ones derive from them: this is where the complex of 'Romania is less European' than it should or 'less democratic.' Even the EU project was thought excessively, from one point on as a market project, when, in fact, it must also be a social project. However, by not prioritizing inequalities on the public agenda, the Left had difficulties in implementing the value of solidarity in the construction of our society, and the Right fell into the trap of the excesses of wild liberalism. Now, any political alphabet teaches you a lesson for a novice: you cannot generate equal opportunity until you have regulated the social inequalities that give individuals a fair start in life," declared Iliescu, who turned 94 on 3 March.
"The Romanian school, for example, is one that, after the pandemic, has increased in the statistics of illiteracy and reluctance to read books. They are related phenomena. But you cannot hope that young people will choose what suits them as long as they are not equipped with a solid faculty of knowledge, a coherent and functional Romanian language, a cultural mentality of a certain kind. The offended were left too far behind, those whose fate smiled on them got further than they thought. The chasm between them is too great as the middle - which is an overwhelming majority - to still count," Ion Iliescu elaborated.
He also identified a "dysfunctionality" at the level of European democracies, namely the fact that success in politics has become the result of the "pessimism" and "skepticism" of voters who "no longer give favorable votes, but only negative votes".
"Politics, when I embraced this path, was not a field of consolation by validating the smallest evil for a society once every four or five years. And if there is something dysfunctional at the level of contemporary democracies - where the distinction between the West and the East has eroded - it is the fact that success in politics is the result of these forms of pessimism and skepticism by which no one gives favourable votes, but only negative votes. It is important to know that you did not win the matches lost by others, that you were elected because others were rejected. (...) Politics means the art of convincing majorities, putting the national interest and the state before the well-being of one's own party or one's own team. (...) Politics is the domain of realism. The fact that it has become for some politicians the source of a personal hedonism has nothing to do with the school definition, by the book, of politics, but with the error of some political actors to excessively personalize the political environment, which must be treated in order to function normally, impersonally," Ion Iliescu stressed.
In his opinion, politics also means knowing when to give up, and "the stubbornness to stay in power when nobody wants you anymore" is "ridiculous".
"Politics also means soul power: to be in charge or in the opposition, to accept losses with dignity and, with decency, wins, to know when to give up. Nothing seemed more ridiculous to me than the stubbornness to stay at power when no one wants you anymore. As anything seemed more decadent than the moment when politics began to cease to be a territory where moral authorities can pronounce themselves," Iliescu concluded.
