Poetry International Poetry International
Article
“People will push the world further”

POETITORIAL: report from the streets of Bucharest

Dan Mihai
August 14, 2018
Poets, like other people, observe society and may want to shape a better one. Radu Vancu, the poet, scholar and translator who serves as PIW Romanian editor, wrote these prescient words in ‘Canto I’ in his 2015 book of verse, 4 A.M. Cantosuri domestice (2015, Casa de Editură Max Blecher): There will be people and they will push the world further. Today it is evening, we are building a Lego police station and we are watching cars go by. Today the world does not deserve to be pushed further than that.
These days, Romanians are pushing back at their world. Here is Vancu’s August 14 report on the enormous democracy demonstration in Bucharest that took place last Friday and was met with government violence:

We gathered in large numbers in Piața Victoriei on August 10. More than 100,000, as the Romanian authorities say; probably even more than double that amount. Romanians working abroad used their vacations in order to join the Romanians within the country in their protest against the Social Democrat Party (PSD) – whose government has led to economic chaos and whose sole aim after winning the elections has been the modification of justice laws so that no corrupt politician could ever be sentenced anymore.

That's exactly what the PSD was afraid of: that we would turn out in large numbers. And that people in Romania and institutions in Europe would see that we are united in our protest for justice and for European values in Romania. And that our united voice will be heard asking them to leave.

The PSD government tried to sabotage our massive protest in two ways: a. By stopping people heading for Bucharest (trains and cars were stopped from entering Bucharest at one point in the evening, when the protest was already large), by forbidding the subway to stop at the station in Piața Victoriei, etc. b. By methodically planning to break the protest with violence.

Any such enormous and violent reaction of the gendarmerie is done only at orders from the highest political level. The Dragnea regime (Liviu Dragnea, the leader of the PSD, has been sentenced twice – for election theft and for abuse of power – hence the aberrant effort to change the laws of justice) chose to become abusively repressive.

Thus, since August 10, being a member of the PSD is synonymous with being repressive.
The images & videos of the atrocities will circulate for days, for months, for  years. Nothing can erase the terrible impression they will have made on Europe: that PSD has turned Romania into a repressive state.

That is why PSD has to leave the government. Because there can be no repressive governments in the European Union.

They did not scare us – on the contrary, they have made us more determined than ever. From now on, it is urgent to be in the street, protesting against this repressive regime. Day after day, night after night. Until the end.

And Romania’s only end is within Europe.


LINK
NPR on the Bucharest rally
Huffington Post interview with the poet
© Radu Vancu
Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds
Lira fonds
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère