The Romanian Boycott Parties of 2018 are exactly what they sound like, boycott something and have a party instead. In an era where we’re told to vote, vote, vote and don’t forget your humble brag sticker, Romania found itself making the opposite plea. Boycott a referendum in the name of democracy.
For about 30 years, Romania has enjoyed a fruitful democracy, which by some western countries’ standards that isn’t very long. It is recent enough, for its citizens to remember what living under communism felt really felt like. For most, it meant feeling out of control and powerless. For a concentrated minority, the opposite.
Three decades on, power and corruption still has a certain gleam to it, but it’s far more difficult to hide corruption in this new glass house called democracy. People can see right inside, and suspicious things get noticed now.
So, what do corrupt politicians do when there’s smoke billowing and they’re desperately trying to hide the fire?
They light a fire somewhere else, a bigger one, one that will catch easily and make everyone turn towards it. That new fire was the referendum.
Just as Romanians could smell the smoky familiarity of corruption, they could also smell the undertones of BS. So they flipped the table and refused to play the game by boycotting the entire referendum.
The referendum wasn’t about berm maintenance it was more knee jerky than that, it was about rolling back marriage equality laws. To many democratic ears, boycotting such a progressive issue might sound backwards. Even more backwards given the conservative leaning of the proposal. The referendum was related to gay marriage and more specifically whether the definition of the family unit should be narrower. Currently the family unit wasn’t specifically hetero defined, it was defined much more broadly. The ballot would ask citizens whether or not this should change. Either a YES vote to re-define marriage as only between “a man and a woman” or a NO on the ballot to retain the current terminology. It was more than semantics, people’s rights and identities were being dangled over the fire.
It was pretty emotive territory, and it was meant to be.
So, what’s the point in boycotting? If you’re pro-equality it seems like a no-brainer! Why deliberately not vote? Why sit on the fence?
Fence sitting reason number one, the current terminology used to define the family unit was already fairly generic and thereby still inclusive. The family unit was currently defined as “spouses” not between a “man and a woman”. Romanians were for the most part pretty cool with the vaguely defined family unit. People did their thing whatever team they batted for. Romania like a lot of countries still had work to do around the equality space. However, legally the wording didn’t exclude same sex couples from the family unit and aside from the usual orthodox circles, there wasn’t mounting pressure or lobbying for it to start.
Also, many felt the referendum was designed to deliberately divide the country, and not by the friendly football kind of division. Division created by making it personal, distracting the public from the corruption going on. To participate in the referendum itself, arguably empowered those intentions and gave this pseudo fire even more undeserved oxygen. Plus, there were accusations of systematic governmental bias in terms of the way the referendum itself was being operationalised. The decision was made to hold the referendum across two days rather than the standard one, allegedly to gather more votes and coverage.
Like most democratic referendums, it needed to get over a certain number of votes for the result to be legally legitimate. The NO campaign’s direction to boycott it, was a gamble on a number of fronts. It would take cooperation, commitment, and nerves of steel en mass.
It could all backfire terribly.
One scenario could be that enough people, who would have in normal circumstances voted against the referendum, boycott it as advised in the name of anti-corruption. However, hold the door open for just enough YES voters to turn out in their absolute droves. There was the possibility of rolling back marriage equality laws and bruising democracy at the same time. Double sad Keanu.
Another scenario is the reverse. Enough well-intentioned equality supporters turn out to vote NO either unaware of the political agenda or understandably just unwilling to gamble such important rights. If enough of them turn out and vote NO, marriage equality would be preserved, but at the cost supporting an alleged corrupt political tactic. You win some. You lose some.
The best case the NO campaign was pushing for is that there be such low turnout across the board, that the referendum is declared illegitimate. Not only keeping the law as is, preserving equality but also sending a very clear message to the powers that be, that Romanians won’t tolerate being divided or manipulated by identity politics. Double Rainbow!
It was a political dilemma where people had to ask themselves what was really the right thing to do? What was worth the risk and at what cost?
The truth was, it wasn’t really about same sex rights and non-traditional family units. It was about how it was being weaponized to divide and distract people from the corruption corroding Romania’s preciously fought for democracy. And in the end, Romanians felt the only way to protect that democracy was by not voting.
And so, the boycott parties became an unofficial national event. Bars, hostels and households all around the country held little boycott events in solidarity with each other. There were live updates throughout the day, people constantly checking their phones and refreshing for updates. People weren’t checking for the result as such, they were checking something much more important. Turn out numbers, and whether those numbers would come under the crucial 30% threshold. Nullifying the result and the referendum.
Boycott parties were held in bars and restaurants across the capital Bucharest. People enjoyed food, beer, live music, merriment, but most importantly not voting. Passive resistance at its finest!
It turns out it was worth the party as the votes came in at 21%, well below the level needed to legitimize the referendum. Enjoy having your cake and eating it too Romania!
While it was a testament to the unification and trust between Romanians, what a cruel test it was. No doubt there will likely be many more in Romania and around the world.
It’s a lesson to the rest of us atop our high horses, democracy doesn’t crumble overnight, there are gradual things that test and chip away at its construct. If we aren’t careful and are distracted by knee jerk reactions, triggering issues and fake fires we won’t see the division attempts happening right in front of us.