The scenes showing senators Marius Marinescu and senator Corneliu Vadim Tudor throwing insults around, offending their political opponents, the TV show hosts and guests, the candidates running in the general Bucharest mayor elections, can but reopen debate on the triumph of rudeness on Romania's public stage. It is a triumph fueled by dirty, negative campaigns,using all the filthy ammunition fired in the 18 years that have passed since the fall of communism. I was invited to support Ludovic Orban during the TV confrontation with Liviu Mihai as host, a show broadcast live on TVR 1. I am no member of the National Liberal Party or of any other party. Readers can tell I am a most serious critic of certain high officials, starting with the culture minister Adrian Iorgulescu and ending with the education minister Cristian Adomnitei. I have decided to support Ludovic Orban due to an accomplishment of his that is something very rare: he gave the Royal Train to the writers for the most important pro-reading campaign ever in Romania's history. And he gave it for free. Therefore I was sharing the status with the refined stage director Alexandru Darie, denied by the two senators mentioned above simply because he decided to attend the launch of Vasile Blaga's candidacy. There was nothing more. Neither myself nor Alexandru Darie have got involved in the electoral campaigns of candidates Ludovic Orban and Vasile Blaga. But it is true I was the embodiment of a standard in the policy of culture, wishing that the future general mayor of Bucharest would take it over more energically. So the two senators took the microphone hostage to voice gross accusations and rude attacks against private persons, hopeful that Vasile Blaga will make a fit. The accusations were mainly against Traian Basescu. As for the tone, the arguments and the enery used, all these looked like the media bombs the president has familiarized us with: manipulation of discourse and political issues by the press magnates such as Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, Dan Voiculescu and even Adrian Sarbu, political manipulation of opinion polls, forging of ballots, confiscation of public interest by transpolitical groups of interests. The two senators representing the Conservative Party and the "Greater Romania" Party took them from Traian Basescu. Let's admit that, as far as the negative campaign is concerned, the scandal the two senators made reached as high as possible, close to the dirtiest suburb of politics. What seems to be most serious on this stage without political arguments is the fascination for the negative campaign, with the dirtiest aspects possible and with destruction under focus. After 18 of democracy exercises, the orgen supposed to listen and have dialogue is still tortured by the guns of the extremist, ultranationalist and pathologic rhetoric. The latter is a devil that throws dregs of political mind and language anytime and anyway. And this devil manages to seduce even some reasonable politicians. Instead of debating on specific matters, on technical matters such as candidates' approaches to the budgets for culture, education, ecology, social services and programs, all we are getting is negative messages persuading us into not voting for one or the other. The trivialization and the talibanization of political communication effect from the negative campaign strategies of some candidates, who are aware only of the power to demolish and strike. Please take a look and see how many candidates are there to rely only on projects and on the feasibility of their electoral offers. You can thus understand how far he self-consciousness of our political class and of its ability to do something go. .Instead of a polemics on ideas, technical arguments and counter-arguments on the technical, financial and human grounds of what a certain candidate proposes, those candidates standing no odds to win have counted on media fuss and scandal only. So what is an elector supposed to do, dizzy as he is with so many cries and electoral promises? He can go voting trusting that his choice can prevent pigs' ascent in our public life. Someone's vote is never a wasted bullet!

Dan Mircea CIPARIU