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00:01:04Hello, welcome back to 100% guaranteed. Our guests
00:01:08tonight are experienced sociologists with
00:01:11doctorates from Rome and Toronto,
00:01:14respectively, specialists who have published books and articles here and
00:01:17abroad, both researchers at the Institute for Research on
00:01:21Quality of Life of the Romanian
00:01:23Academy. Good evening, thank you very much for coming.
00:01:26You are the authors of a
00:01:30fascinating research, for
00:01:32which
00:01:34I find it hard to restrain my desire to
00:01:38praise, because the subject
00:01:40is of great interest to any citizen
00:01:44of this country. You are the authors of this
00:01:48research together with Ionuț Marian Anghel,
00:01:52why couldn't he be present here? He's out of
00:01:55town today, we represent him, but I want to
00:01:58insist that he has an equal contribution to ours.
00:02:02Well, then let's greet him from here in the public television studio, let's say we
00:02:06thank him too for this extremely
00:02:09important work. The research is called "Sovereignism in
00:02:12Romania, why do people vote for extremist
00:02:15politicians?"
00:02:19It's a fascinating read, from beginning
00:02:22to end. Some of us might not
00:02:26necessarily find ourselves in this research because they already have some
00:02:30formed opinions, I think it would do them a lot of good to
00:02:33read this research, because
00:02:37it's good to sometimes
00:02:40ask ourselves a few things about our
00:02:44convictions, you do this splendidly here,
00:02:47with the balance of the researcher and trying to
00:02:51approach the topic as little emotionally as possible, thank you very much, you
00:02:54promised, you promised not to praise us and I already feel
00:02:58that I can't hold back. because it's such an important topic
00:03:02and you say something, you say something essential at the beginning
00:03:06of the study, you say we are convinced that beyond the failure
00:03:09of opinion polls to prefigure a predictable hierarchy
00:03:12of presidential candidates, such a revanchist,
00:03:16anti-system vote could have been partially anticipated
00:03:19if public institutions with a role in funding
00:03:23research in Romania had consistently allocated resources
00:03:26for Romania's participation in sociological research of
00:03:30prestige and you give some examples, there was a lot of talk
00:03:33about the immense surprise, the
00:03:36sovereignist shock, the coming in under
00:03:39the radar, but if some research had been done and if the
00:03:43study had been paid for, would this
00:03:46coming in under the radar have existed, right? Yes, and we are
00:03:49convinced of that, the results of the elections on November 24,
00:03:532024 surprised us too, we were
00:03:56also in shock, at least for a period, I think shorter than
00:04:00in other cases and we wanted, that was our goal,
00:04:03to see what was there, why people voted the way they
00:04:07did and how accidental that vote was
00:04:10on November 24, 2024,
00:04:14after about three weeks, as
00:04:17we ourselves found out that more and more people seemed captivated
00:04:21by this sovereignist discourse, then
00:04:24Călin Georgescu, AUR to some extent,
00:04:28the other parties that entered parliament, we started to wonder if
00:04:32maybe it wasn't an accident after all and that support
00:04:35for such parties and politicians is likely
00:04:38to grow, that they are
00:04:41the authorities at on a wave and then we went and looked at the causes or rather we tried
00:04:44to identify some causes that research is not being done,
00:04:46for example, our institute, I was talking
00:04:50to Filip a few days ago, in the past
00:04:53when it was founded, it benefited from constant public funding, every two
00:04:57years, they were done, they were done.
00:05:08Now no one commissions them anymore, the government no longer pays, it pays the salaries of the
00:05:12researchers, quite little, and we
00:05:16are in a continuous race to obtain funding from
00:05:19internal and European
00:05:23projects, let's say some private funding,
00:05:27but you're constantly in a race to to do a project and
00:05:31finish it, without there being continuity in
00:05:34this direction of long-term sociological
00:05:38research, Filip, didn't you feel a sense of
00:05:41frustration? But a question addressed to both of you, how did you
00:05:45encounter the results of these elections? From this point of view
00:05:48it was indeed a shock, although we should have been prepared, I work quite a lot with researchers from other
00:05:52countries, from Hungary, from Czech Republic, from Slovakia and
00:05:56there these populist currents and
00:05:59populist leaders are much more visible, some have also held public office, somehow
00:06:03I was expecting it and I was saying look, it hasn't happened yet here, but it was a "not yet happened"
00:06:07with the implication that it could erupt
00:06:10at any moment. But still when it
00:06:13happened so seriously, such a
00:06:16fabulous rise of Călin Georgescu, yes, it still left us,
00:06:20it left us surprised and
00:06:23well, somehow we tried to convert this tension
00:06:26into something constructive, let's understand, let's understand what happened, because we had
00:06:30some, some, how to say, intuitions, well, even, so there were
00:06:34on the one hand research from other countries that showed us that this wave is growing and Romania
00:06:37was in a strange case not to grow, after all there are the same social structures in
00:06:41all European societies. You expect that what happens in one will happen in
00:06:45some form and to some extent or at some point in another. You
00:06:48say, you refer to a moment, often, not just a given moment, to
00:06:52the roots that lead to this whole very
00:06:56complicated story, in which many of us have become deeply
00:06:59emotionally involved, friendships of decades have broken,
00:07:03families have split, there are people who no longer speak to each other. There is a terrible
00:07:07polarization from this point of view and more than that,
00:07:11a special nervousness
00:07:13related to this topic reigns
00:07:17in our society, and a I will use a very
00:07:20common word in Romanian, a grudge,
00:07:23about which we talk little, in general there is a bombardment
00:07:26between several camps, very few
00:07:30attempts at dialogue and few explanations and you say
00:07:33this: we look at the influence of roots on voting in this
00:07:37sense, when earning a living cannot
00:07:40be achieved in what are considered normal terms in a
00:07:44society, through work, through access to education and healthcare,
00:07:47through credible development prospects, a feeling of injustice
00:07:51appears, then manifested through the revanchist,
00:07:54anti-system vote. In our public
00:07:56space, to use an impersonal
00:07:59reply, a discourse referring to
00:08:03conspiracy theories,
00:08:06foreign interventions, manipulation
00:08:09through social networks and so on, was preferred. You
00:08:12come with another point of view, you don't say those things don't
00:08:15exist, but you talk about some roots, what are
00:08:19these roots, Alina? Uh, first of all I want to say that
00:08:22roots are, can be a saving concept precisely to give up the
00:08:26polarization that exists, because explanations like
00:08:30manipulation, foreign influence only amplify the polarization even
00:08:33more, some deny it, some accept it
00:08:36uncritically, not that they wouldn't have existed, probably not that they wouldn't have
00:08:40existed, but looking at the roots. at those
00:08:43socio-economic conditions that produced a certain
00:08:47dissatisfaction among a
00:08:50quite large percentage of the
00:08:53population, after all, we want to
00:08:57understand the causes that produced this phenomenon and I think it can be
00:09:00unifying in the sense that if we all look carefully
00:09:03at what are the causes of this socioeconomic phenomenon, then
00:09:07maybe we won't argue anymore, then maybe the polarization in society
00:09:11will decrease. maybe we will find a, a, somehow
00:09:15somehow a common element, for us these are
00:09:17the roots, those conditions that we must
00:09:21look at very carefully, but also critically and
00:09:24recognize them, because roots are something that
00:09:27escapes immediate view, they
00:09:30are, in fact, based on them the
00:09:33social structure was formed, it's very interesting that you come with
00:09:37some possible solutions, possible answers with
00:09:40the results of a research.
00:09:43meanwhile so much time has passed, and
00:09:46the public space in Romania is almost completely
00:09:50devoid of a response from
00:09:54the highest level, who have been promising
00:09:57us for a very long time the results of some
00:10:00investigations, these results have not appeared even at
00:10:03this hour, it's deeply frustrating for
00:10:06any taxpayer in this country,
00:10:10regardless of which side of the barricade.
00:10:20and a form of disregard, it seems at some point a form of contempt, if not indifference.
00:10:23I'd prefer it to be indifference. You know what,
00:10:27you know what's even more frustrating for us, that we proposed an
00:10:30explanation that has nothing to do with, I don't know,
00:10:33external influences, manipulation, because it wasn't our field, and
00:10:37yet, our expertise doesn't seem, I don't know,
00:10:41taken into account by political decision-makers. Now, it's true that we didn't
00:10:45go to their anterooms to
00:10:48present the book, well it's not convenient at all from their point of view, we've talked quite a
00:10:52lot publicly about it until now. And
00:10:55yet I feel that many tend to say, not
00:10:59what you say, you have a professional
00:11:02bias, to see, for example, in unequal development
00:11:06the cause of all evils, which we show that that's
00:11:09what happens, well, for one thing explanations of the type
00:11:12foreign intervention, manipulation, mass media,
00:11:16social network are profoundly delayed with
00:11:19explanations, you come with an explanation, with concrete
00:11:23explanations, they can be read in the book. What are these roots,
00:11:27Filip? The essence of this, of these roots is a
00:11:31bifurcation of development opportunities. Practically,
00:11:34Romania, some accept to a greater or lesser degree
00:11:38that it has developed socially and economically, practically there is a
00:11:41very simple indicator that we also discuss in the book, convergence with the European average,
00:11:45that is, GDP per capita, gross domestic product per capita,
00:11:48the wealth produced by a country was
00:11:5244% at the time. approximately at
00:11:56the time of entry into the European Union, now it is 80% of the European average,
00:11:59meaning there was a convergence, we got very close to the European
00:12:02average, something that we have, this growth not felt, this
00:12:06very reasonable income not equally distributed among the citizens of this country, yes, so they were
00:12:10distributed very differently,
00:12:13not only, how can I say, we don't ask that everyone should be paid
00:12:17equally or be rewarded equally, but opportunities are
00:12:20very different, meaning big cities, especially those where
00:12:24the vote, well, this sovereignist vote was also the lowest,
00:12:28have concentrated a lot of
00:12:31resources, cultural, economic, educational,
00:12:34political, to be born in Bucharest and for your parents to be able to give you an
00:12:38apartment is already a very big
00:12:40advantage, immense compared to, and if your parents were also intellectuals and you go to
00:12:44university, how can I say, automatically it's not even a question, they also
00:12:48have the resources, they also have the knowledge, yes, what is
00:12:51called cultural capital in sociology,
00:12:53necessary to ensure that those,
00:12:57that their descendants will continue on an upward
00:13:00trajectory. On the other hand, you also have this
00:13:04fact that in less developed areas,
00:13:08well, resources are fewer, opportunities are
00:13:11fewer, distances to an educational
00:13:14or medical center are much
00:13:17greater, if you're in a commune in let's say
00:13:20in southern Muntenia, at the same time,
00:13:24however, the success of those in the city is also very visible,
00:13:28yes, there are also social networks of socialization, they also had this
00:13:31effect, the fact that, no, my child is in
00:13:33London, yes, well, okay, yes, and mine might have been, maybe it wouldn't have been
00:13:37bad, but no, I had many obstacles and couldn't
00:13:41make it, that's how two people with different social conditions could
00:13:45judge,
00:13:48unfortunately these development policies have gone on accelerating urban
00:13:51engines and less on redistribution, now it's not by chance.
00:13:55That is, cities have been profoundly favored, at the
00:13:59expense, no, to the detriment
00:14:02of immense areas, with a very, very large
00:14:05population, yes, now and certain cities and certain regions of the country, that is,
00:14:09there are very large development differences that have deepened
00:14:12with increased development, this is a paradox, economic development
00:14:16has produced, no one denies it, but it has deepened
00:14:20the development differences between the regions,
00:14:22the development regions of Romania. Can
00:14:25political power, can administrative
00:14:28power regulate social inequality
00:14:31in any way, because someone will say: well,
00:14:35do you want communism, dear compatriots, then
00:14:39everyone received, in quotation marks,
00:14:42equality, which is no longer the case now, how can the mechanism
00:14:46be regulated, it's not healthy, first of all we were just talking about
00:14:50the need to get over polarization, it's not healthy to
00:14:53talk only in black and white. Uh, and about radical solutions,
00:14:57yes, it means that of course it can and must, after all,
00:15:00political power and the administration of a country, that's their role, who else
00:15:04are you going to expect to regulate things that have gotten
00:15:07out of balance, including with
00:15:10the approval of political decision-makers, we are
00:15:14indeed facing phenomena related to
00:15:16the globalized economy, to things that happen
00:15:19perhaps independently of the will or influence of a single
00:15:23factor, but political decision-makers in Romania have endorsed the way
00:15:27resources have been distributed and including this discourse that
00:15:31likens any measure,
00:15:34any measure even of
00:15:37regulation and reduction of disparities, if it is
00:15:41labeled even by politicians, I'm sorry to say it bluntly, as a return
00:15:45to communism, that's already a
00:15:47failure, meaning you put a label on it and
00:15:51somehow, somehow you cast a stigma on social
00:15:55measures, what is the role of politicians after all? Well, some will say:
00:15:58"You wanted capitalism, you were unleashed,
00:16:02express yourselves." Here I'll let Filip speak, because someone else will say: "We
00:16:06are expressing ourselves, but we don't start from equal chances in this
00:16:09expression." Yes. European funds are also cohesion funds. So
00:16:13the European Union, European decision-makers, and if we always
00:16:16refer to European values and to, well, a kind of European development
00:16:19model, a European-type state and
00:16:23economy, capitalist European-type, still.
00:16:27Then we see that this problem was, must be explicitly
00:16:30stated. What is cohesion? To redistribute
00:16:33wealth created in common, social wealth is always created in
00:16:37common. common, yes, there are always some, even in
00:16:40a factory, sure, directors can say or engineers or
00:16:44the creators of a company can say that they had the idea and the others implement it, but this
00:16:48is often, how to say, a partial
00:16:50truth,
00:16:52we also noticed this, now coming back a bit to the topic of our research,
00:16:56that many are frustrated that they work in cities, they leave
00:17:00their workforce there and those companies benefit from them, because they don't fire
00:17:03them and they often pay them, how to...
00:17:07little and economic theory shows us that in this way companies benefit and grow
00:17:11their profit and report substantial profits and income from
00:17:15salaries, income tax from salaries remains in the administrative-territorial unit
00:17:19in which the company operates, when they return
00:17:22to their hometown, to a village or commune 50,
00:17:2560, 70 km away, they see that the road is only partially
00:17:29paved, that there is no money for the local park which is overgrown,
00:17:33full of weeds, and they say, well, why
00:17:36is it like that? and no, no, it's normal and
00:17:39then a candidate who comes and says: "Yes, we will do justice, we will
00:17:42fix these things." Well, it draws attention, of course, in the first
00:17:46instance, it doesn't mean it gives any guarantee. On the other hand, with Europe,
00:17:50I just wanted to give another example, we had a small, a small research project with colleagues
00:17:54from Czech Republic about mining areas in
00:17:57Germany, former East Germany, in Poland and in and in Czech Republic
00:18:01and, the German state invested huge
00:18:05money, tens of billions in former mining areas that are being
00:18:08closed down, because you realize that you cannot create a black hole, that is,
00:18:12an implosion zone, after all those zones are called sacrifice
00:18:15zones, they produced them, they supported the German economy
00:18:19for a long time and now you say, yes, we're sorry the coal is finished,
00:18:23close the door and go well downwards, no, it cannot
00:18:27do that, I think we need to put our finger on the
00:18:30wound a bit and refer to something you say very clearly
00:18:34here, you say this: the image of
00:18:39Călin Georgescu's voters and of sovereignists in general, which has started to
00:18:42become clearer and clearer in mass media and on social
00:18:45networks, is stereotypical and
00:18:48stigmatizing. And you say this: It shows
00:18:51them as uneducated individuals or even lacking in
00:18:55intelligence, frustrated, conspiracy theorists,
00:18:58violent, eager for verbal and physical
00:19:01revenge, and most often undeserving of
00:19:05pity or understanding. We conducted
00:19:07an analysis of public discourse, we
00:19:11followed certain pages, certain reactions
00:19:14of known people. The first interviews we did were with
00:19:18middle-class people, there weren't many, they were people from
00:19:22Bucharest who shared with us how
00:19:25they managed finding out the news of the elections and they, in turn,
00:19:29had this stereotypical image, maybe not in such broad strokes
00:19:32as, I don't know, in those circulated in the space, but often the image
00:19:36was "we'll pack up and leave", yes, yes, yes, clearly,
00:19:39many, many told us that, I think everyone we talked to among those in
00:19:43the middle class thought of a scenario where they would leave, excuse me, this had for us
00:19:47a signal value, to pack your bags and
00:19:50leave, assumes you have substantial resources, meaning you
00:19:54can't just leave like that, no, first you have no bags to pack and say, "I left
00:19:58Romania", yes, yes, "I left Romania", so you had some resources, you had a
00:20:01surplus, something had to be protected and
00:20:04going on, we understood more and more that there are people who have
00:20:08nothing to protect because they have no accumulations of any
00:20:11kind, neither material, nor financial, nor
00:20:14educational or cultural. And they try
00:20:18to fight this somewhat unequal battle from an unfavorable
00:20:21position and yes. On the other hand, there are people who would simply leave
00:20:24with, as it is said in Romanian so correctly, "I'm leaving with
00:20:28what I have on me", because many
00:20:30are looking
00:20:32in essence for a form of dignity, a form of respect for the dignity
00:20:36of being. No. these ideas are not so complicated, it's not
00:20:39so complicated to understand that people suffer profoundly
00:20:42from a terrible lack of
00:20:46elementary dignity. There have been waves of
00:20:50massive migration in Romania, the first immediately after '89,
00:20:53'90, when perhaps all those who wanted to leave before '89 didn't
00:20:57succeed, they left, after which, at
00:21:01the beginning of the 2000s there was again a wave of massive
00:21:04departure abroad and after the crisis of 2008,
00:21:072010 which manifested itself later here, we again had a
00:21:11massive wave of emigration and any such
00:21:15turmoil, any unrest, political instability
00:21:17which has repercussions later
00:21:21in people's pockets also produces waves,
00:21:25larger or smaller. It is clear that in Romanian society, in the public space,
00:21:29there has been talk about sovereignist voters,
00:21:32pointing fingers, with a contemptuous tone.
00:21:35We must mention the fact that there is also
00:21:39another side of the coin, there are also
00:21:42public instances of expression in Romania that
00:21:45refer to other voters
00:21:49in a similar
00:21:52tone and with similar vocabulary, it's
00:21:55true that, how can I say, yes, the vocabulary is similar
00:21:59because we speak the same language, but some are
00:22:02looked down upon, others are looked upon with profound enmity,
00:22:05it's extremely complicated what's happening there and as I said, everyone
00:22:09knows this, things seem irreconcilable,
00:22:11on the other hand, you
00:22:15demonstrate, you don't affirm, you demonstrate, you
00:22:18demonstrate that when it's said that people with
00:22:22profoundly precarious
00:22:24education, the most precarious education,
00:22:27vote for Călin Georgescu, you demonstrate that this statement is in
00:22:31fact false. Lack of education or precarious
00:22:35education is not the cause in itself, it's not, it's not
00:22:38the root, it's an effect, perhaps, but it's not
00:22:42mandatory, meaning among Georgescu's voters there were also people with higher
00:22:46education, what we wanted to show in fact and what
00:22:49we have shown, we managed to show in this research, is that we cannot
00:22:53individualize the vote, we cannot or it's not
00:22:56healthy to analyze the individual who votes in his isolation,
00:23:00because that individual lives in a community, in a larger
00:23:04or smaller locality, more developed, closer to a
00:23:07city or more distant and that this
00:23:10largely explains why more and more people, beyond,
00:23:13let's say, the accidental phenomenon,
00:23:16the vote of November 2024,
00:23:20the appetite for the sovereignist vote has grown and we showed in
00:23:23this research and we theorized a concept
00:23:26of sovereignization which we analyze neutrally
00:23:30we show how it practically expanded territorially and more and
00:23:33more I think 89% of 89% of
00:23:37the administrative-territorial units in Romania
00:23:40the percentage of votes for Simion increased
00:23:42yes, yes, we called them localities
00:23:46in the research, it increased, so in almost 9
00:23:50this: of Romanian localities the vote
00:23:53for Simion increased compared to what the vote had been for
00:23:56Simion and Georgescu together, you say
00:23:58perhaps few would have expected it, but Georgescu was also voted by
00:24:02young people, with secondary or higher education, including
00:24:05skilled workers, employees with secondary or higher education,
00:24:09students, but also employers. The
00:24:12results of the Exit Poll analyzed by sociologist Cătălin Stoica indicate
00:24:16exactly this: The sovereignist leader whose voters
00:24:19form indeed images formed in public
00:24:22opinion, is George Simion. Yes, in the first
00:24:26phase these are the Exit Poll results from November and I think also
00:24:29December from the parliamentary elections, which he analyzed
00:24:32very well in his book. the second round which
00:24:35was Cătălin Stoica.
00:24:39There, indeed, you can see, what is usually seen in
00:24:42a survey, no matter how representative it may be, not everyone
00:24:46votes in the same way and that there is a dominant
00:24:49profile. of the voter, we showed instead that there is
00:24:53a dominant profile of the localities from which these
00:24:55votes mainly come and we went and did, after
00:24:59the quantitative analysis in which we superimposed the results
00:25:03of the vote on each locality with some social and
00:25:06economic indicators that characterize that locality, meaning we superimposed
00:25:10the results of the vote on how there, on how there
00:25:12exactly the development yes, how developed
00:25:16the locality is, in which development group it falls according to a
00:25:19development indicator. local human development produced by
00:25:22the sociologist Dumitru Sandu, so we
00:25:26showed what these profiles are, after which, because we are
00:25:29both qualitative researchers and have done many projects
00:25:32together in which we went to disadvantaged communities, we talked
00:25:36to people, we like it, we believe that besides quantitative
00:25:40data, some interviews and participatory
00:25:43observations and looking at the context are very
00:25:46useful, we went to three communes,
00:25:50we went there to talk to people who voted
00:25:53or who were going to vote, because some, for example, didn't even know about Georgescu in
00:25:57us, at length the dialogues with these people,
00:26:00the discussions with these compatriots. But you say,
00:26:03you insist and say that the silver bullet
00:26:07theory doesn't really work the way things
00:26:10happened in Romania. Can we explain a bit what the
00:26:13silver bullet theory is? Yes, that is, social networks,
00:26:17manipulation on TikTok. It was believed in America in the 1930s
00:26:20and 40s that once a message is transmitted
00:26:24by radio, in that case, it reaches the individual and
00:26:28influences him to do something, meaning it tells him to buy soap and he goes and buys soap
00:26:31immediately, well, or at the next opportunity this proved over
00:26:35time that it's not a realistic model, that people don't act like that, and indeed
00:26:39in our interviews they didn't say yes, I saw Georgescu
00:26:42on TikTok and that's it, I voted for him, I don't know,
00:26:46maybe one or two would have said that, I don't even know, there were
00:26:50various situations, how can I say, that in
00:26:54many cases the social network was not even invoked,
00:26:57a neighbor had told him, someone else had told him something else or they didn't mention it at all,
00:27:01in other cases they had heard that there were there were
00:27:04locals who had voted for another candidate and who had
00:27:08discovered Georgescu later and then got enthusiastic
00:27:12learning about the discourse and the interest that was given to him
00:27:14later.
00:27:16It was important for us that this discourse of the people
00:27:20we talked to was very rational, it was
00:27:23calm, it wasn't, so TikTok mattered,
00:27:27social networks mattered, but they were not decisive in
00:27:31this story because underneath "it's a world a bit more complicated and older
00:27:34than the social network phenomenon, it's clear that
00:27:38Georgescu's psychological effect, the fact that
00:27:42he spoke and gave you attention and seemed
00:27:45emotionally to enter into communication with you, I even met a 40-year-old
00:27:49man who told us that he would cry when Georgescu spoke, it didn't
00:27:53matter that much, yes, he was a day laborer, had
00:27:56a very fluctuating work regime, poor, five grades,
00:27:59seriously ill child, yes, so he..." had, how can I say, all the downsides that
00:28:02well, a city dweller
00:28:06doesn't have in the same way and someone seemed to finally
00:28:10understand him, but I understand you, my dears, it brings tears to your eyes, he didn't talk about
00:28:13the benchmark, about the cohesion fund or about how it works or that Romania could
00:28:17be downgraded to junk, about God, about
00:28:21ancestors, yes, about how it could be and that he sees it and that he
00:28:24understands it and that it could be better and that we can still and
00:28:28others should not tell us, well, of course I'm oversimplifying and in an
00:28:31atmosphere where a good part of the intellectual elite in Romania
00:28:35looks with a certain disdain, often discreet,
00:28:38but which you can feel, in an atmosphere like
00:28:41this, when someone comes and tells you:
00:28:44my dears, you no longer need to think with your mind, you need to think with
00:28:48your heart, something fundamentally changes in those
00:28:51people, these are people who react to someone
00:28:55who paid attention to them, purely and simply, we need to
00:28:58nuance a bit here, it's not about the ability of a leader to put
00:29:02because probably he trained, Mr. Georgescu, he certainly
00:29:06trained to give some speeches, all politicians do that in the
00:29:09end, it's legitimate to do
00:29:13that, the populist discourse, let's put it under the broad
00:29:16umbrella of populism, it has this
00:29:20characteristic, it simplifies things very much, it addresses
00:29:24emotions rather than reason, and
00:29:27dichotomizes,
00:29:29polarizes, sorry, thanks,
00:29:33we are good, you, we, the people are good, the elites
00:29:36are bad, now all, all, all
00:29:40this, let's say, this
00:29:43type of discourse must be understood in the context in which we are in Romania
00:29:47or were in Romania in 2024, we
00:29:50don't have time now to go through all
00:29:53the scandals, crises, uncertainties, but we know very
00:29:57well that we are already in the sixth
00:30:00crisis, let's say, it started with the pandemic, people in Romania and not
00:30:04only in Romania, but also in the rest of Europe and in the rest of the world
00:30:07have had to face situations with
00:30:10which they had not encountered before, and
00:30:13then for example, the depreciation
00:30:16of money, inflation,
00:30:19the rising cost of living, all these were felt and
00:30:23the uncertainty with which about what will follow,
00:30:26plus a political class that is very
00:30:30disappointing, let's say, for him.
00:30:44he spoke, I don't know how, that he spoke of God,
00:30:47that I don't know what, Simion has a different type of discourse than Georgescu and he succeeded, behold, more than Georgescu, I would give too much
00:30:51credit or too much importance,