Bessarabia's No Rating!

Whenever it comes to the question of Bessarabia, the common Romanian, just as the exceptional one, will take a deep breathe, and then releases it in a sigh. I mean, you see, the matter is of his highest concern, but he's powerless in tackling it..  Next, perhaps, a brief tirade about history and about its guilt and the Soviet wickedness, some complacent and mannerist sympathy given in false generosity and that's it, our job done. Since 1990, Romania's position towards the territory over Prut was of diplomatic ambiguity. The pro-unionist hysteria of the early 90s melted like a “Bucuria” candy left in the warmth of spiritual heats all kinds. Cheap pathetic words, trollop patriotism, tears. Nothing Lucid, nothing consistent, nothing pragmatic! Romania's entry into the European Union has done nothing else but certify certain growing distance, a sharper indifference. The Flower Bridge has turned into the flower arrangement of a burial wreath, and cross-border projects have taken the air of formality without content. They are accessed for some gentlemen to get some money. As for their outcomes on the actual  interrelations plan, no one knows anything...

How many Romanian knew, for instance, that Sunday, November the 28^th, 2010, on the territory of the Republic of Moldova perhaps the most important election in the past decades were going to take place? I'm not talking here about caring or not caring, but about knowing and not knowing. What was the interest of Romanian televisions in this event, apart from dry information on voter turnout and the chaotic results end of the day? How many political  analysis shows were broadcast during the past weeks, how many experts in foreign affairs expressed their points of view, how many officials expressed, in the media, their involvement in the events taking place in the “homeland” with its capital at Chişinău? Let's face it, a dense and Romanian silence preceded the elections.

I have some friends in Chişinău, several others in Bălţi, one in Cahul and another one in Orhei. Regions with enough coverage of Romanian TV stations for viewers in Bessarabia to understand clearly that, from this perspective, we couldn't care less. “Did your TV stations really forgotten completely about us?" I was asked, and honestly I had a feeling of acute embarrassment. A minimal concern over these issues, perceived, apparently as rating killers would have been represented that tiny dose of solidarity that people over the Prut need more than we would like to believe. The success of the communists (the last ones in all of Europe) is also based on the ideological abandonment, the lack of actual alternatives, the embarrassing silence settled by the Prut valley. In Romania there was no elections campaign, at least in terms of an ordinary and general analysis of the stupidity to vote, indefinitely, like in a hallucination with walls painted in red, a Communist Party that we denied, oh dear, officially.

When Realitatea TV opened a branch in Chişinău, I lived the illusion of a new "bridge", a communicational one on which, with no distortions, information and flow naturally and unhindered. I only understand now that reasons are purely economic, that there isn't the smallest spiritual intentions and that the nobility of media initiatives are bedtime stories. The passivity of the National Television seems Even worse to me; they should have reflected unconditionally and constantly the social, political, cultural, economic events in an allegedly Romanian space. How many newscast did you hear about what happens there? I think that at a careful examination we would see that Romanians were more informed about the society in Sri Lanka than the one in Moldova.

Hypocrisy will go so far as when the counting of the votes ended (at present it seems that the Communists won), there will be two to three inept programs in which someone or some other will give their opinions on why it was so and not different. Lamentation, diptych, and a "that's hoe things are" worthy of the Romanian shepherd and informer ewe. The OTV, on a full moon night, some manele singer will recite from Gheorghe Vieru verses about "the small country" and "the gran'pa in Transnistria”, and on TVR, on a Sunday, at impossible hours, they'll talk about "the future of the relations between the two countries on both sides of the Prut”.

In fact, is there nothing of interest in Bessarabia apart from cigarette smuggling, trafficking in human beings and Cricova wine?