Apparently just 20% of the 1.8 mil people with the right to vote from Bucharest cared enough to go out and give their vote. That is very low I think and it signals rather the non-interest or disgust for the political offer one has available in the Romanian political market. If I were a politician I would be worried -- the product is not selling anymore, if we look from the business perspective the problem is that it's just some sort of an oligopoly whereas all products are in the low end segment competing on similar features, somewhat differently wrapped from a marketing perspective.
Even though they tend to position differently, since the target is segmented, deep down the fundamentals of the product are pretty much the same. Or perceived that way. As such, people prefer not to consume it than having to digerate crappy propositions. But of course the politicians are not that worried since most of their positions were secured by financial means in a system that looks very hard to break.
The future does not look very bright since credibility is very much at stake. The only solution that I can see is a rapid change of generations, even though the young are not really prepared to take over, they are fast learners I think. The problem, as always, is that older generations will never give in, and, moreover, created a sick system that is very hard to break from outside -- see for example Basescu's declarations that he will not be defeated by the Securitate as Constantinescu was (a former Romanian president who had publicly acknowledged so).
My guess is that the system will rather break from within - the divide et impera approach. This combined with the nominal vote should be some very important shocks for a corrupt and evil system.The stakes are very high though and it is very difficult to predict which cards to play and when. Besides, there isn't only one master of puppets, on the contrary, there's more circles that reinforce each other and make the whole system strong.
The only good perspective is that, regardless the idiots that are making the political class nowadays in Romania, things will improve because of the European context which forces them to go into the right direction. Painfully and with a lot of mistakes and sacrifices for the little ones, the ordinary Romanians, who actually are supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the outcome the above-mentioned idiots must come up with. But those costs are also a result of the BIG ignorance and talk-rather-than-action atitude that Romanians have in their genes. Sad but true.
"That is very low I think and it signals rather the non-interest or disgust for the political offer one has available in the Romanian political market. If I were a politician I would be worried -- the product is not selling anymore" If only that were true, we'd be in good shape! If people decided politicians need less power and stopped buying into the the redistributive state rhetoric, things would be allright. Unfortunately this is never the case in Romania. Instead, people seem to kid themselves with the "if only we found the right politician" pipedreams. Yes, a liberal - socialist alliance won the ellections, replacing a purely socialist government. But if you look at their platform, or at the level of government spending - ultimately the only benchmark for how "liberal" a government is (to what extent do you decide what you do with your own money?) - you notice little change. The sad reality is that a true liberal party would not win any votes in Romania today. The people somehow are still "buying" the socialist "product", and this is what the politicians are supplying.
But Silviu, 80% not going to express their vote means 80% of people refusing to buy it. It's as simple as that. The problem is, that unlike market economy where if a product is not good, you just kill it and come up with a better one, the politicians model depends on a small market share of the product being sold for being elected and getting the system working. And that's a bad variable of the model. Besides, as I said, and you also touched upon, people's ignorance and lack of understanding makes it difficult to imposible to sell conceptually different (better ultimately) products. And, such as in business, not the best product will always win, but the ones that get market acceptance. That's why the product fundamentals are relatively similar and only the marketing wrapping somewhat differs - the market is not ready for going to the next level. I'd say we are quite lucky with the EU environment and all its related effects.