@kek the only external influence that has been going on was the Russian one, and it’s been happening in basically all the European countries - if not in many of them: Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, probably the Baltics too, etc.

Yes, we voted against the establishment, and we now have two candidates that positioned themselves as such. However, one of these candidates has a strong nationalistic rhetoric, wants us to stop helping Ukraine, the country that literally acts as a shield against Russia to us, to not help Moldova and its people despite being a strong unionist in the past (it’s how he gained the popularity of today) and despite moldovans and us being pretty much the same people (today’s Moldova is the result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which pretty much drew the border of nowaday’s Eastern Europe). He literally wants to leave two of our neighbors at the whim of Russia, and isolate us from the rest of the world, bringing that Georgescu guy as a president or as a prime minister (depending on what fits best) - a guy that said he literally wants to do away with all the political parties altogether (not just with the existing ones, but in general) - imo this is clearly extremely undemocratic.

The other guy that’s running for president literally fought in court with the authorities for giving illegal building permits, created the first actually new party since around the '90s upon its creation (most of the others were just creations of older politicians becoming unhappy with their mothership and creating another party and another party, but not bringing any new face in the game) and won the city hall of Bucharest twice, despite facing an ugly disinformation campaign from the established parties. Once in office, he managed to get the finances of the city straight (the previous mayor literally bankrupted the city, but he hid this fact from the public out of fear that the creditors would start asking for money straight away, stranding the local budget even more), he contracted EU funds for repairing the city’s heating pipes (we have pretty much the biggest central heating system in the country), bought new trams, new buses, new trolleybuses, stopped the lawsuits against the journalists (that, again, the previous mayor started because they were too uncomfortable), gradually closed most of the public companies the previous mayor started as a way to siphon public funds etc. Yes, he’s not perfect, he hasn’t really done any wonders while in office so far, there’s still a lot to do for this city, but the intention of him is very clear and because of this he’s a better fit for many as a candidate, even to the post-1989 establishment.

There’s much more to say about both, but this is largely the political landscape we’re faced with the next Sunday. Hope this also clears things up for you too to a certain degree. :)

@Kennystillalive we sadly did. Many people voted for that guy and we, the others that are deeply attached to the EU and it’s values are quite afraid of the possible outcome. Fortunately there is hope.

@kek no, democracy is not when you ban your opponents. Democracy is when you sanction contenders if they don’t respect the rules of the game. When they declare 0 spending in online campaigns, when they don’t properly label their political propaganda material as such (even when the law requests it), when they do not disclose their spending but they spend huge amounts of cash coming from far-right affiliates and other sketchy sources, when they threaten with riots or outright coups involving mercenaries that fought in Congo alongside Wagner, this is when the rules of the game are not respected.

I would be more concerned for democracy if we would have only two political forces and barring one from running would make the other one the only choice, than barring a sketchy guy from entering the race.

Just fyi, we had 11 candidates this election and we had 3 debates last week, where all of them were invited.

@witty_username yesterday. There was a huge gathering in Bucharest and we marched from the University Square (the place of the bloodiest clashes in the 1989 revolution) all the way to the Victoria Square, where the largest protests hapened almost 10 years ago, when corrupt politicians like Dragnea were seizing the state institutions.

There were also gatherings in Iași, Timișoara, Cluj and other cities.

@Anarchotron666

I quit Meta because of tech bro fascism, and hated Twitter even before it was X because, let’s face it - nobody has ever changed their opinion on anything because of a Twitter conversation (I know I’m exaggerating, to get my point across). I was in Reddit for a few weeks […]

I’m assuming you previously used Facebook mostly, right? If so, there’s also a Facebook alternative called Friendica, with pretty much the same core functionality as Facebook (sans Marketplace). Besides that, you can also format your posts and comments, add titles to them, get a dislike button and customize your experience more than you could do there. Plus you can also follow Lemmy communities straight from there, as well as Mastodon accounts, Flipboard publications etc.

Check out friendica.world to try it out.