Most of you may know already the exit polls of the today's elections from Romania. According to some it was a tie (exactly 50%/50%), according to others it was 50.7 to 49.3 Nastase vs. Basescu. Now, I wouldn't go that far to call a winner even though only by watching the campaign staff on TV it is clear that Basescu's side is happy and relaxed while Nastase's (and the actual PM himself) behaved as if it'd been a funeral.

I would just say that on my way home tonight I stopped downtown for a while and noticed lots of people who were simply happy. Dancing and singing all Basescu's campaign songs. Hoping for a better time. (actually there was a funny-dirty slogan, i hope you won't get offended for me quoting it here -- "nu vrem s-o sugem in urmatorii 5 ani" which means something like "we don't want to s*** for the next 5 years") Most of them were young, perhaps in their 30s on the average. And it just stroke me that in the last 15 years or so I haven't seen so many Romanians being happy except for a sport event (Football World Cup from 1994 that is - when the Romanian team made it to the quarter finals). And I mean going out downtown and celebrating it together. And this simple fact gives me tremendous hope that we are not as stupid as we're presenting ourselves in most of the given circumstances on the official level. We have a big chance actually to make a big leap in a short period of time.

I was watching Iliescu - the actual president - on CNN tonight and I felt ashamed. Embarassed that this guy was speaking in my name. Embarassed that the second question he was asked about Romania was how he can explain the big corruption accusations coming from all over the place. And realized that the guy he endorsed in these elections - Nastase - is no better than him. On the contrary, he would just perpetuate a rotten system.

My believe is that people voting for Nastase (about 25% of the Romanians --- a half from the about 55% people who had voted) can be categorized into the ones that truly believe that he is an option -- and with all due respect IMO they don't really understand the times we live in -- and the opportunistic category. (a very broad one, but I won't go into details at this point) But there is another quarter that understands that we need to be open to change. We need to be smart. We need to be pragmatic and we need to have respect. For ourselves and for the people we deal with. We need to understand the context and create options, so that we can create value for us as a country. We don't really know how to do that now simply because historically speaking we didn't have the chance to learn it properly. And certainly the people with the above-mentioned profile voting for Nastase don't have the right profile for creating this context.

Tomorrow we shall officially learn if we are going to take the long road or the shorter one on our way to become respectable as a nation. On the individual level there's no doubt that we are - it's just that some representing us there don't live up to the world's pulse and to aligning our needs to it. And more than ever this alignment needs to be done asap.