March 18, 2005
Win some, lose some
A while back, over on the Head Heeb, I made a guess that turned out to be wrong.
I predicted that Ramush Haradinaj, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, would probably not be indicted for war crimes. As it turned out, he was indicted, and two weeks ago he travelled to the Hague and turned himself in.
On the other hand, right around that time I made another prediction, here on this blog. I predicted that Romania's obnoxious nationalist party, the Partidul Romania Mare (PRM), would consider dumping its even more obnoxious leader, Vadim Tudor.
And, hoo hah: three days ago, they did just that. Vadim Tudor has resigned from PRM. To make the break even cleaner, the party has renamed itself; it's now the Popular Party of Greater Romania, PPRM.
PPRM wants to rebrand itself as a "center-right, Christian, populist, democratic nationalist party" with strong links to "other Central European Christian Democratic and similar parties". Vadim Tudor said that he was "doing this for Europe". He then added that he will spend his time running his TV station, Cosmos TV, and also hosting a "unique" new talk show.
(Random thought: talk show hosts as populist political leaders.)
...it's unclear how serious this is. Tudor apparently still holds an "honorary" post as President of PPRM, and few are willing to believe that he'll really give up power.
On the other hand, the brighter lights in PRM must have figured out by now that they can still get 10%-12% of the vote without Tudor, and that if they can escape the stigma of being a bunch of anti-Semitic fascist wannabes, then maybe they could join a government one of these days. Like, after the next election, which might be held later this year.
...I suppose I should make some new predictions, to replace these two? Give me a few days.
Posted by douglas at March 18, 2005 10:01 AMWhy's the taint of fascism so closely linked only to Tudor that removing him can clean things up?
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at March 18, 2005 02:03 PMBernard, actually, PRM and Vadim are not fascist, although they do share some characteristics with them (anti-semitism and nationalism).
There are some genuine fascist parties such as Noua Dreaptă http://www.nouadreapta.org/ or Becali and Partidul Noua Generaţie both of which find their roots in the interbellum Legionnaires.
Posted by: Bogdan at March 18, 2005 02:19 PMBernard, actually, PRM and Vadim are not fascist, although they do share some characteristics with them (anti-semitism and nationalism).
There are some genuine fascist parties such as Noua Dreaptă http://www.nouadreapta.org/ or Becali and Partidul Noua Generaţie both of which find their roots in the interbellum Legionnaires.
Posted by: Bogdan at March 18, 2005 02:20 PMYour take on Romanian politics is schematic and superficial. To understand what PRM is and stands for, one would have do at least some study on the last decade of the Romanian communism and first post revolutionary years. It has to do with the most obscure core of the old regime. PRM people shares the same line of thinking with PSD people. There are already in the public domain documents that show that Vadim Tudor was given green light to start its smearing campaigns in Romania Mare Magazine just days after the Iliescu's victory in 20 May 1990 elections. His jobs was to do what for the new "legitimate" power would have been more difficult without loosing completely its last respectability traces. And it was keeping doing this since then. The occasionally Vadim Tudor's outbursts against Iliescu or Nastase are just to show "look I am independent", otherwise in all elections and other critical moments he played diligently its initially assigned role.
The recent story should be seen in the same line, just some jamming on the right side of the political spectrum, in the moment when some clarifications are just about to take place.
If Vadim Tudor is nationalist or antisemitic is rather secondary. He can be very well internationalist, europenist and philosemitic (as we just have seen). Its rhetoric has deep roots in Romanian version of communism of Ceausescu years. To understand it one either should have lived the '70 and '80 in Romania or has to do some intense reading on the subject.
Marian Soare
Posted by: Marian Soare at March 18, 2005 07:13 PMA bit ago you asked what you'd like people to see you post. Your take on Eastern Europe is always cool, but given his passing some comments on George F. Kennan might be neat. I tried to start a thread on him on SHWI but I think it got drowned in the Spammer.
Posted by: Mike Ralls at March 20, 2005 10:08 PMMike,
What, another one? You think they'd have something more productive to do, like phishing or e-mailing little old ladies from their bank offices in Nigeria or such.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at March 20, 2005 10:22 PMBernard,
Yea, another H-denying asshat is flooding SHWI, with tons of cross-posting. I use google, so it's gotten very hard to read the newsgroup.
Posted by: Mike Ralls at March 20, 2005 11:48 PMMarian, it's certainly possible that my understanding of Romanian politics is superficial. But I have discussed the possibility that Tudor is a tool or stalking horse for Mr. Iliescu and his allies. Certainly during the Presidential election it was pretty obvious that he was attacking Basescu almost exclusively.
That said, I think at least some of the PRM leadership would like to be respectable. If they could be part of government, then they could be kingmakers, holding the balance between PSD and the Alliance. But that can't happen until they rebrand themselves.
My (probably schematic and superficial) analysis is that this is their first attempt to do just that. And that Vadim is going along because he thinks he can rule from behind the scenes.
But it probably won't be enough. And when they realize that, things will get interesting.
Doug M.
Whoops, I almost forgot: Vadim as ideology-free opportunist?
Well, /yeah/. He used to be Ceausescu's court poet, for goodness' sake. He was a fervent Communist, an atheist materialist, and completely devoted to the Conducator. Then he was a fervently Orthodox, anti-Semitic, anti-Hungarian populist nationalist. Now he's a philosemite and all about Europe. If being a left-handed monarchist Muslim was the path to power, he'd be that tomorrow.
This isn't just a Romanian thing, BTW. The last generation of Communism produced a lot of those all over Eastern Europe. Milosevic, most obviously, but many others.
Doug M.