This weekend, just like two weeks before, I waited patiently for hours to vote, a right our parents fought for 25 years ago. In London tens of thousands of people, most of them calm, smiling, queued with us in the hope of a better future back home, where they still have family members, friends, businesses. I didn’t get the chance to do it though, unfortunately, after waiting for 10 hours.
When is the last time you queued for 10 hours to exercise your right?
This sad, sad moment reminded me of a story about communism that my parents and grandparents used to tell me. I was born in 87, when times were very hard. They told me that they used to go and queue to get food – eggs, milk, meat (which was a rare treat). Electricity and hot water were scarce and we used the stove to keep warm when heating was cut too. That was painful communism.
Today we don’t have to queue for food anymore, but for something else. We have to queue for the power to change a system that has driven us out of our hometowns, out of our country in search of a better future. Why would a democratic system cause its citizens so much pain, so many hours wasted for tens of thousands of people.
We switched the painful communism with painful democracy – a pain to vote, a pain to travel, to do business and to be happy. I hope this weekend is a step to put an end to this. And i hope the next MCV report will reflect the poor state of the nation and its institutions. Events like this, voting queues, should not be possible in 2014, European Union.
Along side the poor deployment from the organizers(Government), there is one more notable mention. I am ashamed that some people who call themselves patriots and Romanians disrupted the peace and quiet of Kensington and resorted to shouting, verbal violence and raised the tension in the peaceful queue. There were agitators, people that were there just to anger the others, not to vote or anything else. They are the representation on the uncivilised side of Romania and none of us should ever encourage them.
I distance myself from these agitators and disrupters and I ask you, the non-Romanian reader, to see beyond this uncivilized representation of nationalism and take a good look at us, the silent, numerous and mannered group that are part of your communities in the EU and all over the world. We are the victims of the painful democracy back home.