Calin Georgescu and my aunt

I write a few words on the elections even though I’m not going to bother voting because my passport is in another city. Then I discovered I was wrong, but I'm leaving this here for my own recollection.

Varianta în limba română pe FaṭăCarte Meta Zamolxis.

In the first round, Calin Georgescu won with 22.94% of the vote, going to the second round with Elena-Valerica Lasconi, 19.18%; the biggest and most surprising loser was the prime minister Ion-Marcel Ciolacu, with only 19.15% of the vote.

The chattering class is quick to try to explain this very unexpected win through Tik-Tok, but that’s obviously false. I’d blame Romania TV.

I have several aunts, and they’re all in their 70s and 80s. I only talked about presidential candidates with one of them. Not only that she doesn’t have Tik-Tok, but she doesn’t use the Internet AT ALL. She has a dumb phone and watches a lot of TV, mostly Romania TV. I once had a conversation with her about how terrible that station is – they keep repeating sensational headlines ad nauseam, and the reporters have no journalistic ethics, they push certain viewpoints so blatantly, I can hardly watch and listen without puking. But she gets upset if I press too hard this, so I stopped criticizing this propaganda station.

When I asked her, 1-2 months ago what does she think about presidential candidates, she told me she doesn’t like any of them, except Calin Georgescu, whom she liked even though she knew he had no chance of winning. She said she didn’t plan to vote, maybe because she didn’t want to listen to me trying to change her mind. I’m guessing she liked the nationalist discourse combined with him “being someone” – i.e., his career at UN, etc. suggesting he’s not a complete idiot.

I don’t feel like writing about each and every candidate any more.

LE: I gotta acknowledge my ageing brain: she had said Cristian Diaconescu, and I had forgotten; he got 3.1%, dead last among the majors (George-Nicolae Simion: 13.87%, Nicolae-Ionel Ciuca 8.79%, Mircea-Dan Geoana 6.32%, Hunor Kelemen 4.51%). My aunt is cool and I'm an old fool.

Sources / More info: hn-rezultate, sucr-cgtt

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