Article published in Faclia Cluj Sept 17 after being refused in Turda

Why has Turda Fest moved to Cluj-Napoca (25-27 September)?

By Emil Halastuan

Indrei Ratiu, Vice-President of the Turda Fest Association:

Without the use of Turda’s town center, the Turda Fest brand loses its identity. For us, Turda Fest’s organizers, our local authority’s refusal to allow Turda Fest 2009 to take place in Turda’s town center where it has been held for the last four consecutive years, means cutting Turda Fest off from its established, recognized setting. Without that setting the brand loses its identity.

Reporter:

In Cluj, the festival will not recover its traditional setting. So why didn’t you accept the alternative venue offered by Turda’s local council: Str Tineretului in Turda’s Oprisan district?

Indrei Ratiu

Following the local council’s refusal to allow us to organize Turda Fest in the town center as in the past, we took into consideration a number of factors before deciding on an alternative venue. Of particular concern to us was the fact that over the first four successive Turda Fests (2005-2008) we had always enjoyed the personal support of mayor Tudor Stefanie. But in spite of his support, and even though each year we registered our applications five and sometimes even six months in advance, we invariably received permits to operate Turda Fest with only a few days, and in one case (because then Minster of Agriculture Gheorghe Flutur's 's arrival at Turda Fest was imminent) no days to spare before the festival was due to open. We reasoned that if we had encountered difficulties such as these over the period when we enjoyed the support of mayor Tudor Stefanie, what would things be like for us as festival organizers now that Stefanie had clearly come out against Turda Fest during a meeting of the local council?

Reporter:

Opinions in town, at least those expressed on the websites of the Turda press, have tended to support mayor Tudor Stefanie’s grounds for moving the festival to Turda-Oprisan, and on learning of your decision to move the festival to Cluj, reactions have been downright hostile. Please comment on such attitudes towards members of the Ratiu family in their role as festival organizers...

Indrei Ratiu:

I am aware of some of the opinions that have been posted on certain local sites. Some even say that we decided to move Turda Fest to Cluj because in Turda we have not been making enough money out of it! To clarify this whole aspect we need to go back in time, and cover a bit of history. My family moved to Turda around 1650 after their ancestral lands in Noslac (Nagylak) were confiscated by Prince George Rakoczi I. My ancestors were entitled to take up residence in Turda by virtue of their rank of “nobilis”. They were considered part of Transilvania’s Hungarian nobility even though they were Romanian. Ever since, maybe in part because they considered themselves immigrants, each successive generation of the Ratiu family has tried to contribute something to Turda, the town that had adopted them.

It is well documented that my ancestors’ efforts were not always appreciated by their fellow citizens. For example, in 1894, the people of Turda ransacked the house of the Memorandist Dr Ioan Ratiu because he had campaigned so persistently for civil rights for the Romanians of Transilvania. And even though the statue of my illustrious forbear is today visible from the windows of Turda’s town hall, things are not so very different here today. They are just expressed in a different way.

Not unlike his ancestors before him, my father, the late member of parliament Ion Ratiu believed that he had not managed to do enough for Turda. And that was why, when I too came here in 2004, my colleagues and I established Turda Fest, The Ratiu Center for Democracy, and Turda’s Tourist Information Center. If we add to such investments as these, additional investments made by the family business, Regent House, in the Turda area, we reach an average annual expenditure by the Ratiu family of no less than Euro 500,000 each year from 2004 until the present day. The funds used in this way to promote and consolidate Turda’s reputation come from two sources: The Ratiu Family Foundation of the UK and a share of any profits arising within the family business, Regent House. Under the circumstances the rumour currently circulating in Turda that members of the Ratiu family are making money out of Turda Fest is absurd. We are here to spend money not to make it! Maybe others make money out of organizing festivals... not us!

Reporter:

Would it be fair to say that ever since you declared in a recent meeting of the local council that “20 years after the fall of communism, in parts of Romania we are still living under dictatorship” you have become “persona non grata” in the eyes of the Turda authorities?

Indrei Ratiu

We members of the Ratiu family are here to support Turda. Amongst the many activities that we organize in order to promote our town and contribute to its future development, we also organize Turda Fest. Following recent developments I think it is fair to say that we, members of the Ratiu family, do not share mayor Tudor Stefanie’s vision for the future of Turda in certain respects. Concerning festivals for example, we cannot understand why Turda’s authorities operate under a free rein when it comes to organizing a festival such as “Ziilele Turzii” costing tens of thousands of euros of taxpayers’ money, and yet oppose a festival such as “Turda Fest” that does not cost the council one penny of public money.

Our vision of public administration is that it should be democratic, pluralistic. In our view a democratic mayor has an obligation to recognize the simultaneous existence of multiple opinions and interests within his community because such democratic principles are enshrined in the laws of the European Union of which Romania is now part. In this way, a mayor, not unlike a democratic head of state, needs to maintain an equilibrium between the various ideas, opinions and interest-groups within his or her community. And the result, as between the various instruments in an orchestra, should ideally be “symphony” not “cacophony”. Personally, for example, I am among the first to congratulate mayor Stefanie for his achievements in many areas of community life that are of value to Turda’s future development, but the fact that I disagree with him in some areas does not automatically make me his enemy. In a democratic community, diversity of opinion serves as a motor driving the public life of that community forward. Should any community suffer from having a single vision of the future imposed upon it, that community’s creativity will wither, impoverishment and eventually disaster will result. After all, how can any one man be the source of the only ideas that are of any value, the source of all solutions to any problem? It is in this spirit of democracy and pluralism that our own campaign to promote Turda and all it has to offer will continue, way beyond the limits of our town, even though we are not permitted to do so in Turda itself under its present administration. In the immediate future we shall do this in in Cluj-Napoca, where Turda Fest 2009 will be held on Sept 25-27, but also in Bucharest, London and in December 2009 in Washington DC. Turda will continue to benefit from our efforts as a family, because that is what we came here for.

Emil Halastuan

"We Romanians have no saints..."

My uncle, the distinguished engineer Mircea Dimitrie Ratiu, describes a public lecture delivered by a distinguished German sociologist on "Romanians" at the Humboldt University in Berlin where he was studying in 1943, shortly before his expulsion by Germany's Nazi authorities:
"Romanians" said this scholar (can anyone help me identify him?) "are unusual amongst the peoples of Europe because they have no saints...".

Uncle Mircea, now 85, has never forgotten that statement, because if true (and it probably is) it suggests that we Romanians have great difficulty relating to authority, particularly authority of a moral kind.... but perhaps also to authority of the temporal or political kind. Saintliness (whether Orthodox or Roman Catholic) after all, involves a degree of popular recognition whereas political authority requires none. If we Romanians give little or no popular recognition to either our spiritual or our political authorities, that leaves our politicians freedom to do as they please.....

St Paisie Velichovsky, St John Cassian, the holy apostle St Andrew himself may indeed have resided on what is today Romanian territory but our ancestors in these lands had nothing to do with their beatification. St Stephen the Great of Moldavia may be the notable exception, but don't we Romanians remember him primarily for his military prowess and the marvelous UNESCO heritage painted churches he left behind in Bucovina? Surely we see Stephen the Great as a successful ruler and church-builder, not I think, particularly as a moral authority.

Is there then something unusual about the way in which we Romanians relate to those in positions of authority, whether of the moral or political kind?

I have spent most of my life in western democracies: British, French, Swiss, German, American in particular - democracies where, with few exceptions, authority relates to a FUNCTION that is occupied TEMPORARILY. A British, French or Dutch mayor, for example, never loses, in either his or her own colleagues eyes, his or her citizen status. Everyone recognizes that when mayors' mandates end, they hand over their mayoral functions to the next incumbent. And this recognition of the temporary nature of their position of authority of course strongly affects the way such western mayors exercise their mayoral duties during their mandates.

Yet at this time, 20 years after the official fall of communism, I know Romanian mayors who exercise authority as if was an attribute of their PERSON rather than a mere function - and as if it was a status that they have somehow managed to render PERMANENT rather than temporary. The only jurisdictions where I have seen this phenomenon before include the so-called popular democracies of the pre-1989 soviet bloc, and today in some of the successor states to the Soviet Union, and unfortunately also in much of the Arab world.

It is astonishing to me how few citizens actually question this form of de facto personal dictatorship, even though, in theory, it is not supposed to exist any more - Romania, after all, since 1989 is an electoral democracy, now part of the wider EU community, a country in which our elected officials have to face the vote every four years.

So how is it possible, 20 years after the official end of communism, for those in positions of political authority to behave in ways that are more reminiscent of a former communist dictatorship than of a present day modern democracy?

1. Control of resources: Romanian mayors are heirs to the assets of the former communist regime. It is not unusual for mayors to control all land not already privatized (and themselves have the power to block further privatizations), hospitals, public transportation, utilities, roads, police, schools, sanitation, building permits, population registration, media (through block purchases of advertising), public sector employment and more...

2. Stifling of opposition: Romania's libel laws have yet to acquire teeth. In a post-revolutionary society, freedom of expression, at least for those in positions of authority, is unlimited. For ordinary citizens freedom of expression is fraught with danger. Through block purchases of advertising in the media and control of access to the corridors of local power, mayors are in a position to exercise extensive control over editorial content. Some more fawning editors do not hesitate to defame or slander a mayor's opponents. In my own five years in post revolutionary Transilvania I have seen reputations destroyed in this way.... prominent public figures, especially political opponents of ruling mayors, accused in the press of the most dastardly deeds, who have chosen, as a result, simply to withdraw from public life. I have had my own share of such treatment also....

3. Fear: On my return to Romania in 2004, local acquaintances surprised me by advising: "Here you have to be very careful what people think of you. If you upset those in authority, things could be very bad for you". Today I recognize that although the gulag and summary executions have ended, there are still, in this part of the world, mayors who rule by fear, just as their predecessors ruled by fear throughout Romania's 44 years of communism. Many of them were indeed junior officials under the previous, communist regime. In the town of Turda, Transilvania, for example, the pre-revolutionary communist party secretary Eugen Gergely recently estimated for me "that continuity between the communist and present-day city administrations is around 90%".

In spite of legislation that requires a minimum of accountability from elected officials, I have experienced decisions that are taken without citizen consultation; failures to respond to applications for planning (while mayors themselves build gin-palaces on their meager salaries); failures to respond to applications for holding events in public spaces; gross neglect of minority rights (particularly Roma); decisions that make no public economic sense (such as the spending vast public funds on festivals, while simultaneously blocking events that are privately funded and would therefore be free to the community); grandiose public schemes such as fountains in public parks when hundreds of homes are still without either water or drainage....

Yet out of fear, these issues are not debated in public. The media, in such communities, avoid any remotely negative references to their mayor. Any attempt to overcome this barrier is immediately cut short. This fear of retribution from those in authority is the main reason for the existence of this Blog. I myself can no longer write or say locally what I want about the state of society in this particular corner of Transilvania... Why? Because even though I support some of my own mayor's program and accomplishments, the fact that I do not support all of it, makes me, in his eyes, his public enemy: according to the old communist dictum, "those who are not for us, must be against us...". The democratic, pluralistic ideal of respectful agreement to disagree about how to reach a common goal was considered liberal-minded bourgeois clap-trap by Romania's communist rulers. It is idealistic nonsense to many of those who rule here today...

What risk do I run personally in telling the truth that everybody here knows, but no one dares tell? Out of self-protection I have chosen to maintain my British citizenship and my non-resident status. But members of my team have received threatening, anonymous phone-calls, as well as threats to their future livelihoods should they continue to work with us....

When it comes then moral authority, do we Romanians really have no saints? I cannot readily think of any. We have many saintly people. But they live quiet lives of seclusion in our thousands of convents and monasteries. As a people we are deeply religious, but our faith seems to have little impact on the conduct of our daily affairs. Orthodoxy is extraordinarily flexible and forgiving... and promises us a place of peace and light after death where we no longer have to face the pain or the nonsense I have described here.

But when it comes to temporal (ie political) authority we Romanians have historically tolerated for years leaders who in most cultures would be considered monsters: Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), Ceausescu. Small wonder that today we are willing to tolerate abuses of power by public servants - whether prominent prime-minsters or small-town mayors - with barely a whimper. For us Romanians the realm of the saintly and the realm of the political just don't seem to connect. Morals are for the birds - as long as no one catches you. "May God forgive him/her" we prayerfully repeat whenever any one dies.... as if we all agree how much we all need to forgive one another.

The Romanian diplomat and commentator Silviu Brucan famously predicted that it would take 20 years for the effects of communism to pass. Those 20 years have now expired. The Anglo-German political scientist Lord Dahrendorf equally famously observed that it would take at least 60 years for communism's damage to our E. European psyches and mentalities to pass.
My father, Ion Ratiu, author, politician and above champion of democratic ideals for his beloved Romania, eternally optimistic and ever pragmatic, advised us "not to worry about about what our neighbour is doing, but simply to strive to do better ourselves".

Perhaps if we really got down to that, one by one, we could indeed make this beautiful country of ours a better place for actually living in.

Introduction

Returning to Transilvania 5 years ago to establish the Ratiu Democracy Center in accordance with my late father Ion Ratiu's and my family's wishes, I have been taking a crash course in what it means to attempt to live democratically, ever since.

Although my father Ion Ratiu was passionately committed to democratic principles and behaviors in all his affairs, I have been a slow learner. In this blog I hope to formulate some of the lessons I am slowly learning in my own and my colleagues' attempts to live democratically within our own Transilvanian community and thereby engage in dialogue with all and anyone interested in such grass-roots democracy experiences.

My late father's favourite dictum was (paraphrasing Voltaire): "We have not begun to grasp what democracy is about until we become willing to fight to the last for our opponents' right to disagree with us" What an order! What about when our powerful opponent will not even let us speak?

So these and many other related issues are among the topics that I will be addressing here, based on our own direct experience of grass-roots democracy as we attempt to practice it in our daily affairs at the Ratiu Democracy Center...

You will not find anything theoretical here because by profession I am a management consultant and former journalist. But you will find a growing interest in the writings of political scientists and others as my colleagues and I strive to make sense of our day-to-day grass-roots experience of living democratically in an environment that is FAR from democratic.

And this where we hope you too will join in the discussion...