Food is probably the most beneficial improvement in the
lives of Romanians – it is available everywhere and there is no need to stand
in endless lines to leave empty-handed as was the case during the communist
regime. People are no longer faced with having to repair their shoes from year
to year because they could not buy new ones. Grocery stores display an
abundance of food, not just one solitaire salami in the window. Pharmacy
shelves are no longer empty and drugs are available. Fast communication and modern
transportation are now a breeze even in the most isolated corners of the
country.
Brenciu described the standard of living and the buying
power of the Romanian citizen who must live on a minimum net salary of $232 a
month, about 1050 lei. According to economists, the median net salary for the
country is 1,600 lei a month, $384. Yet prices for goods and services are 90
percent in line with prices across Europe. How are Romanians expected to
survive under such conditions and unfair disparity? Even though Romania has
joined the European Union in 2007, life is much harder than in the other EU
members where salaries are much higher and in proportion to prices.
Not one political leader has succeeded in 26 years after the
fall of communism, Brenciu added, to increase the Romanians’ standards of
living to at least the minimum level of their European Union brethren.
The fact that people expect politicians to have solutions
for their problems is quite telling. It is an indication that decades of
communism have brainwashed the citizenry into believing that solutions to their
problems come from big or bigger government’s intrusion into everyone’s lives.
What is to blame for the current unresolved economic disparity?
Incompetence and corruption across the board at the state level are significant,
however, even more important, in Brenciu’s view, are the politics of other foreign
governments, of multinational corporations, and of strategies to undermine the
interests of the Romanian people in order to subjugate a small country with yet
unexploited natural resources. “Onerous patrimonial and business interests
supersede the interests of the Romanian people.”
In his opinion, the Romanian population, after decades of tyrannical
communism, has learned to survive in a harsh environment and to live with very
little and quite poorly, but the younger generation does not seem so eager to
be marginalized at the periphery of the globalized political system.
There are many foreign entities, Brenciu explained, who salivate
at the prospect of dividing the country and claiming parts, they think, are
rightfully theirs. “The Hungarians have exophthalmic eyes for Transylvania;
Europe is thinking out-loud how they can round up all the gypsies into the
Baragan Fields, and the Moldovans on the Russian side of the Prut River dream
of an illusory Big Moldova. Even Bulgarians are not too relaxed about northern
Dobrogea.”
The European Union has had to deal with Greece and its
potential exodus from the EU called Grexit. The technocrats in Brussels “calmed
the waters” with billions of euros in funds that are helping the Greeks
continue their socialist spending. Brenciu thought that “Romania might follow
the same path if EU does not take rapid measures to increase the average pay
for Romanians, even though they would have to break the rules of economic development.”
Brenciu reminded us that Germany was the beneficiary of the
Marshall Plan after WWII, which saved the Germans from an “existential impasse.” He argued, “Romania was in a real war, longer
and more criminal than Germany’s but nobody took this fact into account. What
was communism if not a war of life and death of an entire nation? Why does EU
not organize a system for Romanians, similar to the Marshall Plan, without so
many conditions and strings attached?” He semi-answered his own question when
he described how Holland opposed Romania’s entry into the Schengen Zone because
Romania refused the indefinite concession of its main port, Constanta.
What seems to be Romania’s salvation at the moment, he said,
is the fact that Romania is located strategically at the confluence of the
Christian West and the Islamic Orient and the United States is taking a keen
interest in this strategic location.During the fifth decade of the 20th century, heroic anti-communist, anti-Bolshevik resistance fighters hid in the Carpathian mountains, waiting for the American troops to save them. American soldiers never arrived but they are here now, strengthening the buffer zone between Christianity and Islam. It is a blessing, Brenciu added, that “American strategic interests are converging perfectly with Romanian interests” and the ties to Washington are stronger than ever.
Brenciu believed that Europe, with its culture and enlightenment,
the center of human civilization on earth, owes a debt of gratitude to the “poor
Romanians who never betrayed common European and Christian values and were satisfied
with very little in order to survive as shields in the face of so many barbaric
invasions.”
He concluded, “Europe should bow its head in respect and should
produce urgently and with love, the fraternal and just reparations to a people
who defended with their absolute poverty, the splendor of a narcissistic and
profoundly selfish civilization.”As a former Iron Curtain nation, Romania started its road to democracy and to a free market economy at a distinct disadvantage when compared to other former communist Soviet satellite nations. Ceausescu made it a point of pride that Romania should not owe money to foreign lenders; he saw himself as a ‘maverick’ president. He paid all loans quickly by taking away much needed food and funds earmarked for improving the lives of Romanians who were forced to survive in abject poverty, with no decent food, meager rations, no basic necessities, little heat, and intermittent water and electricity.
TO BE CONTINUED
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