"Romanians Go to the Polls, With Corruption High Among Voter Concerns"
General info
Author: Drew Hinshaw
Newspaper: The Wall Street Journal
Publishing date: December 11 2016
Retrieved from: Link
Summary:
This more recent article, published in The Wall Street Journal, deals with the Romanian Parliamentary elections of December 2016. According to the exit polls, PSD, the social democrat party, is in the lead. The article mentions the Colectiv protests and the subsequent change of government, followed by an intensification of the fight against corruption. The elections are thus of utmost importance: they can represent a turning point or a continuation of this process.
The low turnout at the elections is explained by a lack of trust among young voters. The situation, is frequent in former communist countries of Eastern Europe and is the result of the political groups’ inability to attract young generations. PSD, on the other hand, is supported by the older electorate. However, the leader of PSD, Liviu Dragnea, will most likely not become prime minister because of his criminal record.
Analysis:
Although the purpose of this article is mostly informative and concentrates on the elections, the main focus in the title is on corruption. Articles on Romania usually emphasize the leitmotif of corruption right from the title or the first paragraph, with little regard to the content. Lately, the image of Romania has been constructed around corruption in the media discourse . Romanian political battles revolve around this theme, even the judicial system is corrupt, and elections are in peril because of possible fraud.
Corruption is one of the most common media tropes when talking about Eastern Europe. For example, in an article published in the Economist, it is argued that corruption has “replaced communism as the scourge of eastern Europe”. Although corruption is indeed a problem in these countries, it becomes problematic when all Eastern European countries are conflated under the umbrella of “endemic corruption”. Moreover, by assigning such a characteristic to a country, the media discourse promotes the trope of being “stuck in time”, incapable of progress.
