How bad you or I think he is is irrelevant. If the people's decision is overturned when the elite do not like it then the country isn't any kind of democracy.
What if it's so bad it would likely lead to lack of democracy? What then? How can democracy defend itself from democratically electing not to be a democracy anymore? Because make no mistake, this was what this election was about.
You elect this guy, you kill democracy. Essentially, this guy's platform was "let's try dictatorship for a change".
Ok, then the answer is simple for me. We kill it with something that is not fascism. And we try to kill it with something that does not end with the suffering of millions of people.
And we try to keep the best option that could lead to having a working democracy again in the shortest possible time.
So let the will of the people stand and then it will just be a democracy with a leader you don't like. Overturning the election is the fascist thing to do.
It doesn't, but if you're in a democracy and the majority well and truly does not want it to be a democracy, I don't think you can stop the transition. Attempting to "save" democracy by imposing a minority will on the majority merely guarantees the end of democracy.
It's rarely as blunt as this, though. Usually people who support such politics will insist that it is democratic, and they do have a point: what they really want is a democracy in which the majority (which includes themselves) gets to do whatever it wants to others.
I agree that you can't really legislate this kind of sentiment away, but I don't think attempts to do so are entirely useless, either - they slow down the process, which, at the very least, buys more time for potential targets to realize what is happening and get out of harm's way through emigration etc.
Dude, you so much reveal what a brainwashing does to the people it is just unreal. We've seen that behavior few weeks ago after the US elections. How the evil has come now what we'll do etc. It is really a sad there're people who decide theirs truth is the only valid one.
Not much worth arguing about in this thread. Multiple sleeper accounts and coopted accounts with the same talking points about how someone who used illegal means to sway votes should just be allowed to take the reins of power with a fine. It's not logical and isn't real discussion just the same nefarious actors using social media to try to sway opinion. Get that good nights sleep and I'm glad your country didn't succumb to this new method of warfare like mine did.
You automatically jump to “anything but fascism” as a solution but that’s not a solution at all. That was Harris & Walz do-nothing strategy advertised as a “just don’t vote for Trump.” This type of anti-campaign is fundamentally rooted at brainwashing us to discount any and all fundamental problems to be solved. Instead, it relies on their constituents to rely on opinions, rather than facts. Relying on opinions and beliefs aren’t inherently bad, but when an entire campaign doesn’t present any other reason to vote for them other than “you’re an idiot if you advocate for a party that claims their election was hacked” or “Think about your daughters future,” that campaign is gaslighting the electorate to believe detractors to those views must be anti-democracy. Lo and behold, 2024 results come in and now the losing party cries “There’s no way the majority of Americans like this guy, early votes must’ve been thrown out.” Congrats, you’ve been brainwashed to only see flaws when your ideas and beliefs aren’t validated and reach for any explanation that preserves your worldview- even explanations that you’ve laughed at when presented by the other side)
It was not a democratic election specifically because of massive foreign interference. Democracy doesn't work with an adversary propaganda channel in your society. This is why RT and Sputnik news were banned just about everywhere in the West. This is why the US has given Tiktok a year to sell their operations to a US company or gtfo. After this I hope the EU follows suit, kicks them out or at least massively fines them into compliance.
> Democracy doesn't work with an adversary propaganda channel in your society.
So the insinuation is that people stop having free agency when they’re allowed to view certain kinds of “wrong” speech? Therefore they aren’t entitled to a vote in an election? That’s not democracy, that’s textbook tyranny.
The correct course of action is to stop the interference before the people vote. Once they vote, the will of the people has been revealed, the ruling party is a sore loser, and you've lost your chance.
They're technically still hold the #1 ballot but now they need other parties to form a coalition, just like in other European countries (Germany, The Nederlands). Which is not that bad, because this party was founded by those trained by Gorbachev's KGB to replace Romania's communist leadership and took the clothes of social democracy. How they came to turn against Russia is not entirely clear. Maybe they tried a balancing act between NATO/EU and Russia as Moldova did in the past, but some factions saw the writing on the wall.
Although in the abstract, we are on the same page, I think it _was_ a democratic election. With interference, a lot of it, but the will of the voters was CG. It's just that CG would have most likely destroyed democracy and destroyed our country.
If the end result of democracy is fascism, one can simply not allow this transition to happen in good conscience. I fetishise democracy less than I value the truth and in turn that less than I value not having people suffer.
We might have dug our own grave here, and the situation is pretty serious. I for one am not a big fan of the CCR decision and am thankful I was not the one to make it. But I understand how they might come to this decision.
He seems like a bad guy. If you thought he would manage to kill democracy you're wrong. Especially with the EU support for civil society and the possibility of sanctions if he did something really undemocratic, like demanding a rerun of an election he lost for example.
Orban has been doing his "illiberal democracy" (i.e. not a democracy) thing for 15+ years now. The EU is about as laughably powerless to stop him as I am to stop a punch by Floyd Mayweather. So it's kinda funny you say that.
He does some bad things but he would not get away with anything as extreme overturning an election based on a pretext like this, nor with widespread voter fraud. Eventually he will lose an election, just like Law and Justice in Poland. Judging by the polling trends that could be as soon as 2026:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2026_H...
The most fucked up part to me is (I’m guessing) the majority of the votes this guy receives were from people that lived under Ceaușescu‘s rule and thought “Yes, let’s bring that era back”. Similar to how domestic abuse victims protect the person abusing them.
You seem to be discussing the Romanian election in a vacuum divorced from the reality that Putin is doing everything in his power to sow chaos in Europe because the calculus just works for him.
Democracy works because it leads to reasonable outcomes for the vas majority of the population. If the election itself leads to unreasonable ones, it ceases to be a good political system.
You know about the old dilemma used for justifying the electoral college "the tyranny of the" majority". Well, me and my countrymen mostly judge that we were about to vote for tyranny in our country. An EC like approach wouldn't have stopped it because of the vote repartition, but only because of electors refusal to vote for a particular candidate. Well, actually, it kind of DID stop it because we had the CCR step in and declare the election null.
This fetishizing of democracy need to take into account the safely valves baked into the law for situations like this and a safety valve just triggered.
What "elite" are you talking about? He broke multiple laws that would made him ineligible to run, and therefore he is ineligible to run. Can you explain what's wrong with this reasoning?
It frankly speaks to your democratic culture, that you can only conceive of a candidate being prevented to run by a shady cabal of elites blocking the candidate they don't like.
Yes how bad he is is irrelevant. I read GP's comment more about how utterly impossible it is for a single person to keep up, let alone fight, the torrent of hyper-optimised propaganda that a few tens of millions can buy on tiktok. Maybe this illustrates why mass social media manipulation skews democracy towards the highest bidder.
He broke multiple laws that would made him ineligible to run, and therefore he is ineligible to run.
Do you have a link to his trial, conviction, and appeals? Was he given an opportunity to respond to the charges, provide his own witnesses and offer his own evidence?
Does the constitution really say, “if foreigners on tik-tok give you too many likes, you may be disqualified”?
It could also be a moderation thing. If the people working on the website mostly just speak English, then it will be much easier for them to moderate an English-only website.
Why morally? If you go for the money and you do not steal it, you certainly bring value into the world, that people are willing to pay for. Do not see what is morally wrong about it.
Besides what on_and_off said (and you can add many more to that list, for example diamonds, oil, construction using migrant workers in bad conditions, etc) there are also people who only care about money, regardless of the harm that it causes (deforestation of the amazon? Tobacco products? Financial products that lead people to ruin? Drug industries? Human trafficking?)
Some people will pay for all kinds of things that are extremely harmful. Your comment seems rather disingenuous. Why are you trying to twist my words to reflect badly on me? Guilt about the products you buy? (See what I did there? Same thing you were doing :D)
You started to talk about society and their good or bad decisions in their life, when they buy things. I thought it was interesting then to ask you as an example of society. There was no judgement from my side. And I certainly have no guilt, when i buy a product, that improves my life.
I am not ignorant. Of course i see, that with my buying decisions, i kind of maintain all these side effects, that come from working off this planet. I want the best product that can be created with as little resources as possible. That would be of big value for me.
But who am i to judge someone else's decision to buy something, that they value. I might not like it. It might not a good decision in the long term. I would prefer that certain decisions were not made. Personally i can only try to make things better. I will not become a dealer, who has to provide a good product to my clients.
In any way, i was just curious. No bad intentions.
(and to the other commenter, i dont know what to answer.)
One flaw in your reasoning is that often times people are willing to pay for things which are bad. For example, the Holocaust was bad (a lot of good people died), but people were willing to pay for help in carrying out the Holocaust. Therefore, it doesn't follow from the fact that people are willing to pay for a thing (the Holocaust), that that thing is a morally correct thing to do (the Holocaust was bad). That is to say, just because someone values something (people valued the Holocaust), doesn't mean that it is a moral thing to do (the Holocaust was not a moral thing to do).
To see my point all you need to do is imagine either a bad person or an ignorant person having money. If you think either of those situations is plausible, then you can surely imagine such a person paying for something which has a bad effect on the world. For most ideas of morality, doing things which can reasonably be expected to have bad effects on the world is considered immoral (this is very loosely stated, but hopefully you can see my point).
