PCR forever

Popular wisdom produced, during Ceausescu's time, the following explanatory interpretation of the acronym PCR (Romanian Communist Party, in the original): Pile, Cunișțe, Relații (Pile, Cunișțe, Relații, Knowledge, Relations). It captures Romanian society perfectly, even today.
Both the saga of Deputy Prime Minister Anastasiu's resignation from the Government and the nostalgia for Ceausescu revealed by the INSCOP poll commissioned by IICMER - the two topics that dominated last week - are, in essence, symptoms of this pattern of Romanian society.
As someone who lived during Ceausescu's time (I was 22 in December 1989), I can assure you that it is impossible to feel that life was better. At most, you can accept the explanation that some of the nostalgic old people regret their past youth, but even that explanation only denotes a population incapable of critical thinking. With the exception of lost youth, in the rest, any other comparison is incomparably better in favor of the present times, with all its shortcomings: from the standard of living, to national security, to freedom of movement, to the right to an opinion or the chances to fulfill your dreams. Of course, we haven't yet sacked the Garden of Eden in the Middle East (no one on Earth has managed that yet), but by any indicator you look at, the current times are incomparably better.
The neighbor's goat
On an individual level, it is true, however, that we live in comparison with our fellow human beings. And if, in Ceausescu's time, those who were "doing well" were perhaps fewer and more discreet (they were afraid of the repressive apparatus, i.e. of rivalries and possible revenge on the part of their comrades), today the discrepancies are more visible. The inequities are, however, the direct result of the perpetuation of this system of valorization - Piles, Knowledge, Relations. But the PCR has been "democratized" (sic!), and if in Ceausescu's time only a few hundred top echelons of the party, the Securitate or the Militia were allowed to abuse the system, today the system is looted down to the director level. And the profiteers have little fear of anything other than fracturing the system.
Make me lucky mom and throw me out...
There's no point in being nostalgic as a people. There are 10-20% of nations that are better off than we are, but thanks to a history of many hundreds of years of refining their society and cultivating forms of meritocracy that confine the PCR that defines our society to us in well-defined corrals. In fact, I would even say that we are a lucky nation if we compare the efforts we have been willing to make with the results. Because, objectively speaking, if today's Romania were geographically located in Africa, I dread to think what our life would have been like. Incidentally, I find the so-called sovereignist current in Romania twice as stupid as in Western countries, precisely because the transfer of decision-making from Bucharest to Brussels has been the cornerstone of the changes for the better in our country. In other words, if the French or the Danes, for example, can look back in history and regret some period when they were better off than the rest of the Europeans, what will these Romanian sovereignists have to refer to? To the legends in history textbooks falsified by the communists?
Jean Valjean of Reform
The Anastasiu soap opera is, in its turn, another episode in the never-ending series of the survival of the PCR in various forms, as long as the wave of moral indignation swallowed up a businessman who became a minister in a few days because he paid a protection tax to the ANAF, while it is raining when it comes, for example, to PSD Deputy Prime Minister Marian Neacșu, who has a full criminal conviction to his credit. In other words, the moral fiber of the people could no longer stand a man who accepted to bribe a state official to be left alone by the authorities, so he took some money out of his pocket to buy his peace of mind, but is not bothered at all by a man who hired his rubedeniile on well reputed posts, so he reached into the public pocket and transferred the money into his family's pocket!? Of course, it doesn't make any sense and, in fact, the reason for his exclusion can only be that Dragoș Anastasiu was about to upset the system. To fracture the everlasting and all-powerful PCR, in antithesis with his colleague Neacșu who did nothing but practicing the basic principles of the system.
Let us be clear! The PCR, as a system, cannot be eradicated. Like corruption in general. No one has ever succeeded in the history of mankind. What can be done, however, is to confine it within limits that society finds acceptable.
Anastasiu's maiming raises two important issues. The theoretical one concerns the extent to which Romanian society is willing and interested in limiting the system of Pile, Knowledge and Relationships that it has cultivated until now. The second one, the practical one, concerns who would be the person who would be willing to risk his or her peace of mind and image to design the "fences of the enclosure" in which we would be willing to limit the influence of the PCR?
I don't understand why the public debate is conducted exclusively in terms of pro and anti Anastasiu. Neither is he some reform saint, proof that in his career he has resorted to a bribe/protection tax to protect his personal interests, but neither is he some evil put upon scapegoat, proof that he has upset the corrupt system enough to be removed. As with the parliamentary/presidential/local elections, the stakes are not some providential individual, but the majority choice behind the appearances we hold so dear. In any case, the PCR does not die, the PCR transforms.