The last serious protests I can remember were in August 2018, when tens of thousands of people they went out into the street to demand the resignation of the Government.
Protest in Victoriei Square Photo: Inquam Photos / Ilona Andrei
Since then there have been protests here and there, and those organized through social media have proven to be a failure. From thousands of virtual supporters, a few dozen took to the streets.
Although the quality of life has decreased, people are no longer hungry for protests. The National Institute of Statistics has conducted a research on this for the first time, and the conclusions are quite sad. “In the last 12 months, the share of people who participated in active citizenship actions was 3.1%,” Statistics says.
Statistics link “active citizenship” to protests, including signing a petition, attending demonstrations, writing a letter to the media, etc.
Regardless of active citizenship activities, the main reason given by people who did not participate in any of them is that they were not interestedthe Statistics research shows.
Also, a consistent part (around 20%) of those surveyed cited lack of time.
By regions of Romania, in active citizenship activities, higher participation weights were recorded in the West (6.2%), North-East (4.5%) and Center (4.2%) development regions.
In other countries, political decisions have generated much harsher protests from the population
In France, the retirement age reform generated massive protests, resulting in violent incidents between the authorities and demonstrators.
In Romania, although it is very likely that we will witness similar changes, in addition to the uncertain fiscal reforms that the Government has committed to (but without specifying them rigorously), we will see tax increases, changes likely to complicate the existence of entrepreneurs (and so precarious for the fair, with taxes paid up to date)
Despite all these shortcomings, the world still sees its own. The business environment becomes vocal only through extremely “good” press releases, small entrepreneurs say that they would protest in vain because nothing would change… Social anesthesia seems generalized.
HotNews talked to a sociologist to explain why this phenomenon is happening. Claudiu Tufiš, doctor in political sciences (Pennsylvania State University, 2007), specialist in political culture, political participation, social movements, explained to us what could be the reasons for this low appetite for civic actions
“Probably, the percentage calculated by the INS would actually be somewhere between 3%-5%, the professor believes. “Let’s not forget two things, he draws attention: the INS data is collected at a time when people were still getting used to activities in public after the years of pandemic and restrictions. And the second thing, we tend to see things around us rather than things from a distance. Bucharest, Cluj and 2-3 other university cities are not at all representative of the rest of Romania, given that half of Romanians live in the countryside and only about 13% live in the main university cities, where there is a bit more civic activity” , explains Claudiu Tufiš.
Romania is a country with a very small blanket of wealthy people who can afford civic activism
It is true, the social bond was also fractured by the authorities, through the unfortunate tax policies, through which they created antagonistic classes: discriminatory tax facilities (see IT professionals, builders, farmers), tax changes in the field of CAS and CASS payment.
This contribution to pensions is related to inter-generational solidarity, says Gabriel Biriș. “That is, we pay today with the idea that tomorrow someone will pay so that we can also receive our pension. At CASS, we are talking about an actual, present solidarity. And solidarity is the bond that makes any population a nation”, states Gabriel Biriș.
The lack of appetite to protest when your rights are violated is attributed by the sociologist Claudiu Tufiš to the lack of money.
“If you look at the tables in the INS report that contain the distribution by age, education, wealth, etc. you will see that the percentage of civic activism is higher among young people, among those who have the resources to spend some of it on exotic things like civic activism. These resources are both material (income, wealth) and symbolic (education, mainly)”, explains the Romanian researcher
Is it a problem of civic education (or rather the lack of it)?
He also appreciates that Romania is, unfortunately, a country with a very small blanket of people rich enough to afford civic activism and it is also a country with a very small percentage of people with higher education. “All this goes towards the idea that the percentage is not small, but it is what it is for a country like Romania – poorer than the rest, less educated than the rest, more individualistic than many others”, says Claudiu Tufiš.
Asked if it is also a problem of civic education (or rather the lack of it), the sociologist says that although these courses exist in schools, “in grades V-VIII for less than ten years, insufficient time to produce effects . And I say this for three reasons: (1) civic education is done for too little time, and citizenship issues are done in a single year, in the 7th grade, (2) a year of civic education oriented the subject of citizenship cannot remove the effects of seven years of religion (by the time of 7th grade).
Religion does not promote active citizenship and the 7th grade student must discuss active citizenship after seven years of being taught obedience to authorities in religion classes. I won’t mention that from the 8th grade citizenship is no longer discussed, but the religion classes continue until the 12th grade. And last but not least, the third reason is that, although the way civic education is taught has been changed, in many places those who teach it are not people with political science or sociology studies, but are either history teachers (or they are not the most open-minded of the group of teachers), or who knows what other teachers who thus supplement their norm. Not everyone is prepared to convincingly discuss the topics that need to be discussed, namely civic education”, says Claudiu Tufiš.
The INS paper can be read here.
2023-09-17 14:50:00
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