The negotiations

After the election results were made public every candidate that mattered, and I mean the top 3 who got most of the votes, came out to speak about what they will do next in order to achieve some portfolios in the future government.

It was clear that almost everybody was going to be against the actual president and the vote leader from the first round of elections Traian Basescu. The liberal party candidate, Crin Antonescu, and the democratic socialist party candidate who came in 3^rd and 2^nd place have decided to pursue an political accord in order to offer the liberal votes for Mircea Geoana in the second round of the elections. For these votes the liberals desire a joint future government if Mircea Geoana of the socialists wins the second round and becomes president. Also, both PSD and PNL have decided to build this joint government around an independent prime minister, Klaus Johannis the mayor of Sibiu.

The negotiations are under way and it seems that the Magyar minorities party, UDMR, desire to enter this political coalition if the intent to put Klaus Johannis as prime minister is real. This is very important as the UDMR control quite a large number of votes coming from the ethnic Magyars.

It will be interesting to see what the final political coalition will be formed of and if they will succeed in remaining united because past such coalitions have ended in disaster. What is clear is that if these plans go through, they will leave the current vote leader Traian Basescu in political isolation and severely deter his chances to take another 5 year mandate as president.

Results and problems!

Like I said in my last post I will be showing you the results that the Central Bureau for Election (B.E.C.) managed to count and give to the public. So without further ado:

Traian Basescu 32,43 %

Mircea Dan Geoana 31,16 %

George Crin Laurentiu Antonescu 20,02 %

Note that if you want to see the percentages that the rest of the candidates got, I have attached a .pdf file that shows all the results.

Now if you would permit me I would like to make a few comments on how the elections went and what the results mean for the Romanian citizens.

First, I have to say is that the so-called government did not manage to organise these elections as the they should have been organised. There were numerous places with people standing at enormous lines just to vote and allot of them did not manage to vote untill 21.00 when the urns were supposed to close. The urns did not close at 21.00 hours as they should have and that is another organisational flaw that I blame the government. Chaos was the word that seem describe most of the voting sections that I visited in Bucharest and from what I saw at several TV programs that transmitted the elections the same word can be used to most sections around the country.

Second, I would like to talk about a more serious problem that these elections were witness and that is the fact that the political parties in order to get more votes they have resulted in committing fraud. How was that possible? There are several ways to commit fraud in elections:

1. Bribe people to vote for a specific candidate.

2. Move a group of voters from on city to another in order for them to vote a second or even a third time.

3. Get people to intimidate voters to vote for a specific candidate.

Yes, this is what happened in a so-called democratic country, in Europe and the police didn’t seem to do anything. Some of them even helped these political parties. If we manage to get over these problems all in all it was quite an interesting battle for the presidency and it will continue to be an interesting battle till the 6th of December when the second round of elections will come and the president will be decided. But discussions of political alliances and political projects in this race we shall discuss in future posts.

RESULTS

Romania and the presidential election

Today was quite an important day for all Romanians and for Romania as a country. The presidential elections were held today and all citizens of that have the right to vote were called upon to express their right on the question of the day: Who is going to lead the country for the next five years? There were 12 candidates that entered the election race, but to be fair there were only 3 who really had a  chance to win the “crown” : Crin Antonescu, Mircea Geoana and Traian Basescu.

But enough with all the already known info. Here are the results from the exit polls :

Traian Basescu 33,72%

Mircea Geoana 31,44%

Crin Antonescu 21,52%

With little over 50% of the population with the right to vote going to actually exercise this right those are the above mentioned results from the exit polls and we await eagerly for the official results. What is for sure is that there will be a second round of elections with Traian Basescu and Mircea Geoana going head to head to resolve the deal.

I will keep you up to date and have a more detailed post tomorrow.

 

The 2009 HAND-MADE FARE.

I would like to take a moment and make an announcement about a very important event hosted by A.S.I.D.  It will be the greatest fare  in Bucharest  and one of the most original as you will be able to find hand-made objects and jewelery from local artists and craftsmen. If you are in Bucharest, from the 8th till the 10th of December, and near the University you should come and check it out and I assure you that you will enjoy it.

I would also like to mention the people responsible for the organisation of this event:

Simona Barbu

Alexandra Radu

Catalin Ion

Bogdan Rentea

LE QUAI 54

LE QUAI 54.   What is it? I’m not going to stress myself to write about this great streetball tournament. All I have to say is that I got there for the experience of this hard-core street tournament, and even if we played only in the qualifiers we were beaten in the end by a team that made the last 16 in the tournament, so it’s a start for any Romanian team.

BLACKSTREET REPRESENT

Surprising results UEFA Champions League. Match day 4.

It’s that time again in sports, and when I mean sports I mean football. This Tuesday and Wednesday took place matchday 4 of the prestigious UEFA Champions League. And not to analyze all the games because it would take forever we shall take only the surprising results of this last matchday.

First we have Manchester United versus CSKA Moskva. A game that was spectacular for any neutral fan as it ended 3-3 on Manchester’s home ground. It was a great game for CSKA as any team should have in order to get some points from Old Trafford. Let’s see what happened, Dzagoev opened the scoring fiesta in the 25^th minute, 4 minutes later Michael Owen equalized. The draw really fired up CSKA as in the 31^st minute and in the 47^th minute Milos Krasic and Vasili Berezutski gave the Russian side a 2 goal advantage. Manchester couldn’t stand the humiliation and pushed forward and in the 84^th minute and late in the over time Scholes and Valencia  ended the score at 3-3. Great game to watch and a poor draw for Manchester.

Second in line is the game between Olimpique de Marseille vs FC Zurich. No doubt the score of the competition till now as OM destroyed the swiss side with an end result of 6-1. For OM almost everybody got in to scoring in this game from defence leader Hilton to midfielders Fabrice Abriel and Cheyrou to attackers Niang and Brandao. But the gold festival was started by on own goal in the 3^rd minute by Zurich’s Aegerter. The swiss side also managed to score a consolation goal as thru Alphonse. All in all an absolute massacre.

Moving on to the next game we have Atletico de Madrid and Chelsea. The score? A 2-2 draw. A great draw for Atletico as they have not performing particularly well in the league but they really got a good one with Chelsea. A player from each side decided the final score. Rising star Aguero and veteran striker Didie Drogba got two a piece. Good game for Atletico.

Moving on let’s mention the game between Barcelona and Rubin Kazan. Well there isn’t much to talk about here. Cold weather, cold players, cold game, cold score. The result? A COLD 0-0.

We shall end the report with the games from group G of the competition. First, Unirea Urziceni and Glasgow Rangers got a 1-1 draw with McCulloch bagging one for Rangers in the 79^th minute and Unirea’s Onofras equalizing in the 88^th minute. Good game all around and a good result for Unirea Urziceni. Second the game between Sevilla and Stuttgart also a good game but still a 1-1 draw. Sevilla never really wanted to get the 3 points here and was just satisfied herself with just not losing in from of home fans. Jesus Navas opened score in the 14^th minute and the young star from Serbia Zdravko Kuzmanovic equalized for Stuttgart in the 79^th minute.

This is it for now. Let’s see in the future what football has to offer. Cheers!

The swine flu in Romania.

The swine flu, also known as AH1N1 is the great health problem that the humanity is having in this time of financial and economic crisis. All around the world there are states with this problem and allot of them have a great victim count. It has slowly spread from Mexico to North America and then to Europe and a few months ago it reached Romania. Never thought it would get in this part of the world. But it did.

Till a few days ago there have only been isolated cases of this new flu and most of them in large city’s like Bucharest and Iasi and in several other remote communities. Most of them have been taken care off but just recently an outburst at a hotel in Sinaia, a famous mountainous resort. 40 people were infected or are just suspects and have been placed in quarantine.

It seems that the Romanian authorities have already taken the next step to helping the population fight this flu and have preordered 1 million dozes off the famous vaccine that is supposed to protect us from this pandemic flu.

Although it may seem that I criticize the Romanian government allot in my post, I just want to say that in times of great health problems, like this new swine flu and the aviary flu, the Romanian government has dealt with any problem swiftly.

Afghan election.

Since my last post was about the ongoing presidential election in Romania, I saw an interesting but short report on CNN the other day about the situation in Afghanistan and the way they’re elections are going. I did not get the whole report but then I found an article on BBC News website about the subject.

I knew that the elections in Afghanistan were in this period but to be quite frank I didn’t really follow them. When I read the respective article I found out that two candidates were going head to head in the election. First, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah the opposition leader who was trying to get the presidential seat and Hamid Karzai the current non elected president.

I guess what you can say what’s wrong with a decent fight between two political adversaries in the run-off poll? Well nothing really, that would be a great situation but in this case the opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah recently withdrew from the fight motivating his decision that the first round of the election were a fraud and that the results are and will not be true.

Now the elections are left in a could of confusion and everyone is looking to the US and Great Britain to answer the question. What was they’re answer? They said that the afghan authorities should find a solution for this and that they will not intervene.

Great answer lads. Let’s see if they have the situation under control and prove that they are a self sustaining democratic country. WRONG! They are not a democratic country, not by far. They still have enormous problems with the Taliban’s and in every other area of a normal democratic country. But you gotta handle to the NATO occupants, they try to offer them the freedom that any country deserves,  and in this attempt they don’t understand that Afghanistan cannot be a democratic country even if the population wants it to be.

We shall see what the end result will be and make more comments on the situation but the fact remains that Afghanistan still remains an US, with NATO help, victim to prove they’re geopolitical power. Tought luck for the afghan people!

Romania and the presidential elections.

Romania today. To be perfectly honest Romania today is all about the upcoming presidential elections. The start of the campaign, to be more precise on the 22 of October, has been quite calm so far. The candidates have only appeared in a few speeches and are struggling to keep up with all the important events that take place around the country. Let me just make a short introduction about who the main candidates are for the top position in state.

First, we have the socialist party leader Mr. Mircea Geoana, an ex US ambassador and an ex foreign affairs minister for Romania. As leader of the PSD (Democrat Socialist Party) he is a man who focuses is presidential campaign on public appearances and speeches plus a wide variety of social programs and anti-crisis programs. Second, we have the liberal party leader Mr. Crin Antonescu, a man who is approaching the presidential election with the image of one of the best seen party’s in state, the National Liberal Party. Third in line is the independent candidate Mr. Sorin Oprescu, a man who is currently holding the the function of mayor of our great capital Bucharest. He is a man who has wide respect from the population all around the country as he is a top surgeon and ex manager of one of the biggest country in Bucharest. Last but certainly not least we have the acting president Mr. Traian Basescu. He is a man that focuses his presidential campaign allot public appearances and with his extravagant decisions to hold the hostile political opposition, who occupy most of parliament, in line. He is a man who started with allot of popularity but this factor is surely decreasing and as we are in the last few miles of the race he is currently struggling to hold this one flourishing fame.

All in all we shall see the results on the 22 of november when the country’s population is called upon to decide it’s future. Who will be the winner? We shall see. What is certain is that most specialists say that no candidate will get over 50% of the votes and so a second phase of the elections. Time will tell. Also, what is more to tell about the election si that the actual president, Traian Basescu, has called upon a referendum on the same day in order to reform the parliament and at the same time decrease their number from 471 to 300.

Afghanistan and Iraq.The new Vietnam

Afghanistan and Iraq are the second war’s for the US since the Vietnam war with a high death rate. But first let me show you some statistics I found in a really interesting article in the “The Washington Post”.

Vietnam

Duration: 1964-73

Peak deployment of U.S. troops: 536,000

U.S. deaths: 58,220

LEBANON

Duration: 1982-84

Peak deployment: 1,200

U.S. deaths: 265

EL SALVADOR

Duration: 1980-92

Peak deployment: 108

U.S. deaths: 5

PERSIAN GULF WAR

Duration: 1990-91

Peak deployment: 694,550

U.S. deaths: 382

SOMALIA

Duration: 1992-94

Peak deployment: 6,300

U.S. deaths: 43

HAITI

Duration: 1994-96

Peak deployment: 17,500

U.S. deaths: 4

BOSNIA

Duration: 1995-2004

Peak deployment: 20,000

U.S. deaths: 1

KOSOVO

Duration: 1999-

Peak deployment: 7,000

U.S. deaths: 1

IRAQ

Duration: 2003-

Peak deployment: 250,000

U.S. deaths: 4,355

AFGHANISTAN

Duration: 2001-

Peak deployment: 68,000

U.S. deaths: approximately 806

So if you take a good look at these statistics we can draw a number of conclusions from them (and most of them will not be in the US governments favor). Let’s just take two examples and I mean the last two wars that the US is still involved in, Afghanistan and Iraq.

You know and I know that if you add the two war’s death list you end up with over 5000 soldiers killed in action. Well I don’t know about you but I believe that this is kind of a high death rate. With today’s highly equipped US army and the change of scenery, from the jungles of Vietnam to the urban guerilla warfare, where NATO and American soldiers fight you can see that the butchers bill in quite enormous, even for a country as big as the USA.

We will not talk about why they still insist to keep troops in these two country’s. The reasons are political and economical. For me one thing is clear IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN represent the new VIETNAM for the US and after they realize this and these wars will end, because anyone can clearly see that these two populations will not back down from the front line, they will have to take full on the press and the public opinion.

I only have one example for you that will show how why they will fail in these two wars. Remember 1979 when the Soviet Union attacked Afghanistan in order to make the country part of the great Soviet giant. Well what was the result? I will tell you. 10 years after the war started the Russians were forced to back down out of Afghanistan. So what makes you think that the US will be able to change things in these two country’s?