From facing fear with anger, fear won in Romania on Sunday. Fear of economic collapse and especially of uncertainty, of losing the world we live in with its many evils, but with those few essential landmarks without which the future seems inconceivable.
Nicușor Dan won by projecting the stability of a project, of a path. George Simion lost by projecting instability, an uncertain, contradictory, and unserious future.
Romanian society made a huge effort to defend what it could irreversibly lose or very difficult to recover. And it succeeded. We did not plunge into darkness, the bullet missed us. And it is extremely important that Romanians, for the most part, understood that, no matter how dissatisfied we are, we have more to lose.
Which does not mean that Romania's problems have ended. On the contrary, a very difficult period is beginning. Romania is currently divided in half between two sides that have fought and detested each other for weeks. The counties were divided almost equally between the two candidates. We have a president within the borders and one for the diaspora. A president of the big cities, and one of the rural and small urban areas.
Romania is divided between two cultures, between two worlds. The fact that one of them lost does not mean that it is no longer there, with the same frustrations, perhaps even greater.
Nicușor Dan's essential mission will be to unite this country. And what follows after the elections, inevitable budget corrections, probable tax increases, will not be unifying. On the contrary, it will generate new tensions. Fear calmed down after prevailing, but anger may intensify.
Nicușor Dan's first mission will be to designate a prime minister capable of creating a majority. This implies the return of the PSD to the ruling coalition, which many Social Democrats do not want, because they know what follows.
And if they return, they will not accept to give the prime minister, because the party that leads the Government is the most exposed. But who would accept to take over the responsibility from a smaller party, while the PSD will be both in the Government and in the Opposition, as it did during the Ciucă Government?
The parties that need to govern, with the remarkable exception of UDMR, are themselves in crisis. Ilie Bolojan needs to reform the PNL, which will not be easy or smooth. The factions within the PSD are already engaged in the battle for power that Marcel Ciolacu de facto no longer has. He lost a significant amount of voters and needs to regain them before the next elections.
Crisis-stricken parties governing a country in economic crisis cannot generate stability.
A government of technocrats supported by Parliament may follow as a sacrificial government to take the tough measures, but it will not be easy to find those willing to make this sacrifice.
Expectations for Nicușor Dan are high, as they were for Klaus Iohannis, his margin for maneuver is not very large and in Romania's difficult conditions, the period of euphoria and honey will be short-lived.
If Nicușor Dan's regime, through the governments he will endorse, fails to calm and satisfy the majority, if they do not overcome the economic crisis in acceptable conditions and we do not have certain state reforms on all levels, extremism will sweep everything in the next parliamentary elections.
It was the last time the bullet narrowly missed us. Next time, either it won't miss the target, or it will hit us head-on. And if it happens, it largely depends on understanding the causes that brought us here, the causes of despair that led so many Romanians to fall into the trap of political charlatans.