I knew there were opinions like this, but I never had the fear that such opinions, such political options would become dominant, says writer Andrei Pleș: You can’t live for decades in absurdity and stay awake.
„This means that we lived in vain under the communist dictatorship, that we lived in vain under the Russian umbrella, and that, in general, we are decades behind,” adds Andrei Pleșu, in a special edition of Punctul pe știri, on Rock Fm.
"These are the most dangerous people, in my opinion, and the fact that there are so many Romanians, and many young people who have assumed this lack of rationality, real interrogativity, political and historical realism, the fact that there are so many who were ready to vote for him is chilling."
"I think we live in a different definition of man. I don't want to be radical, and I realize it's an excess. But there is a sentence in Dostoevsky, which I have quoted before: man is stupid. Unusually stupid. There is a poison in our guts, a degrading substance, that makes many people talk nonsense.
Gossip always has more success than the truth, because it is more spectacular," he also says, in dialogue with Magda Grădinaru.
Andrei Pleșu is pessimistic in a possible scenario with Călin Georgescu as president and says we must also look at the electorate that has been convinced by the patriotic-warlike messages of such a candidate.
"I think we need the courage or audacity to nag the voters. Because politicians, after all, are the product of votes. And if the Romanian electorate was able to bring this Mr. Georgescu to the forefront for the presidency, it means that something is not right there either. With an electorate that has such options, one cannot hope to obtain a normal political class."
"I only have sighs, because I have never lived and never imagined that it is possible to wake up overnight with a stranger who has the highest number of votes for the presidency. And when the stranger starts to be known, he scares you. He is someone who is from another planet at the moment. Meaning, he has nothing to do with contemporaneity. He is in the Legionary phase, in the patriotic-warlike phase, in the socialist phase, somehow pro-Russian.
I don't understand how we got here. And what especially frustrates and scares me is that the services, only after he reached where he is, started delivering information about him.
Well, if they had this information, why didn't they warn the political authorities about it, and if they didn't have it, it means they are either incapable or involved in this absurd construction," says Andrei Pleșu.
"It doesn't necessarily have to be a Western fanatic. And the Western world has its own problems, but it's still about a minimum of decency and political realism, which should make you avoid slipping in directions that have long been proven to be very dangerous.
It's not about falling in love with the West, with an idol, it's about taking what is good from there, aware that there is more normality there than on the other side of the border, where things are in a state of permanent explosion," adds Andrei Pleșu.
"What will happen with the parliamentary elections is very important. It could be a chance to recover a minimum of normality. /.../ Let's vote in such a way that the Parliament is more normal and stronger than the president, if the president turns out to be who we fear might come out," he warns.