Dear Leaders,
Do you ever wonder, if only fleetingly, what your legacy will be? Will school children learn your names, will your statues stand on pedestals in parks? Will you be remembered as wise, enlightened, leaders who made Romania better?
You will be remembered as 'The Post-Communism Communists', 'The Incompetents', 'The Corrupt', 'The New Phanariotes' - though that is a generous comparison, the Phanariotes were at least educated and, at times, capable governors, patriots even. You, on the other hand, will have done nothing more than govern, speak, and behave like the communists you replaced in 1989, though with a touch less patriotism and a lot more incompetence.
How does it feel to know you cannot point to any one single nation-building accomplishment? No crowning achievements. No names to stand out and go down in history, except maybe with the label 'most corrupt'. Who do you think is going to receive this dubious distinction? Iliescu, Nastase, Dragnea, Firea, Basescu, Udrea? There is no shortage of candidates.
Even Ceausescu had the Transfagarasan and a 'Golden Era' in the early years of his tenure. What about you? You've now governed longer than Ceausescu. Where is your Transfagarasan? You couldn't even manage a cross-country highway, to speak nothing of a golden age.
I'm not trying to shame you. I can't do what your family, friends, and supporters should have done when you flaunted your gross disrespect for people, institutions, and laws, when you broke promises, lied, embezzled, showed yourself to be incompetent, ill prepared, and poor decision makers.
The truth of your legacy is that you won't even go down in infamy. Like bad memories, you will disappear into the obscurity of time, forgotten and inconsequential.
There are are two ways of knowing what people are truly like; when they have privacy and when they have power. You've chosen a public life and accepted the trappings of power, so your authentic selves are on display for all Romanians to see. Even worse, you are representative of Romanians to the wider community of nations, and they, too, can see you for who you are.
But you don't represent my values or my culture. You only represent yourselves and your interests.
This is why I am asking you to step aside.
You could set a fine example. You could do something good for Romania. You would, after all, leave an accomplishment in your wake. You might even gain respect and admiration from a nation of people who've got nothing but contempt for you.
Lay down your mandates, retire somewhere out of sight and out of mind - where you like it anyway - and let Romania's course be charted by people who want to leave more than a lakeside villa, an offshore bank account, and a German import as their legacy.
Signed,
A watchful citizen
Image: http://www.ibiblio.org/beastie/russia/russia_trip-Pages/Image654.html
Do you ever wonder, if only fleetingly, what your legacy will be? Will school children learn your names, will your statues stand on pedestals in parks? Will you be remembered as wise, enlightened, leaders who made Romania better?
In case you ever do wonder, the answer to these questions is, of course, 'No'.
You will be remembered as 'The Post-Communism Communists', 'The Incompetents', 'The Corrupt', 'The New Phanariotes' - though that is a generous comparison, the Phanariotes were at least educated and, at times, capable governors, patriots even. You, on the other hand, will have done nothing more than govern, speak, and behave like the communists you replaced in 1989, though with a touch less patriotism and a lot more incompetence.
Even Ceausescu had the Transfagarasan and a 'Golden Era' in the early years of his tenure. What about you? You've now governed longer than Ceausescu. Where is your Transfagarasan? You couldn't even manage a cross-country highway, to speak nothing of a golden age.
I'm not trying to shame you. I can't do what your family, friends, and supporters should have done when you flaunted your gross disrespect for people, institutions, and laws, when you broke promises, lied, embezzled, showed yourself to be incompetent, ill prepared, and poor decision makers.
The truth of your legacy is that you won't even go down in infamy. Like bad memories, you will disappear into the obscurity of time, forgotten and inconsequential.
There are are two ways of knowing what people are truly like; when they have privacy and when they have power. You've chosen a public life and accepted the trappings of power, so your authentic selves are on display for all Romanians to see. Even worse, you are representative of Romanians to the wider community of nations, and they, too, can see you for who you are.
But you don't represent my values or my culture. You only represent yourselves and your interests.
This is why I am asking you to step aside.
You could set a fine example. You could do something good for Romania. You would, after all, leave an accomplishment in your wake. You might even gain respect and admiration from a nation of people who've got nothing but contempt for you.
Lay down your mandates, retire somewhere out of sight and out of mind - where you like it anyway - and let Romania's course be charted by people who want to leave more than a lakeside villa, an offshore bank account, and a German import as their legacy.
Signed,
A watchful citizen
Image: http://www.ibiblio.org/beastie/russia/russia_trip-Pages/Image654.html
I enjoyed reading it.
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