Not in front of the children!

If ever there was a subject calculated to divide opinions and families in europe, it is immigration. It is not one which this blog often covers – although the political fall-out over Brexit saw me reading at the end of last year (and commenting about) both The Strange Death of Europe – immigration, identity, Islam by Douglas Murray (2017); and The Road to Somewhere – the new tribes shaping British politics; by David Goodhart (2017).

And, in anticipating the Brexit vote in 2016, I did spell out why immigration was the only issue in the referendum.

It was, however, the horrific images in 2015 of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, scaling the fences and marching to Germany which brought home to most people like myself the scale of the global exodus. But I readily confess that I thereafter ignored the issue – although I was well aware that prevailing liberal (for which read economists’) opinion dismissed people’s fears.

It was therefore only this week that I discovered that there was at least one writer who had – as long ago as 2013 - demonstrated in his forensic examination of the issue the even-handedness you expect of a real professional. And that is Paul Collier whose Exodus – immigration and multiculturalism in the 21^st century (2013) tells us on its very first page that his own grandfather had migrated from a German village a hundred years earlier.

You  would therefore expect Sir Paul (for he was knighted a few years back) to be one of the globalists very much in favour of migration.

But far from it – his decades of working in Africa as a development economist have made him painfully aware not merely of the increasing attractions of rich European cities to poor people but of the social costs involved in such upheavals - for both host societies and those left behind.
His “Exodus” is a painstaking attempt to separate out various arguments – social and economic – and to explore the dynamics of the relevant “stocks” and “flows” and is essential reading for those who would dare to venture into the policy debate.
He looks at the migrant (both skilled and unskilled); at the costs and benefits incurred by the society he leaves; and at the costs and benefits to the host society in a variety of scenarios. 
One interesting feature of his analysis is the focus on the diapora - and the rate at which immigrants are “absorbed” or socialised into the host society….easier in America than in Europe.

The book was a change of focus for him – trying to understand the impact of immigration on a society like the UK and bringing a sensibility unfortunately all too rare amongst economists. 

When a year or so later he received an invitation to help Lebanon brainstorm about how it should deal with the increasing pressures of refugees from surrounding countries, he agreed only because the colleague who accompanied him was a refugee expert – the result is as strong a critique as you will find of how countries have dealt with the refugee crisis…Refuge – transforming a broken refugee system; Betts and Collier (2018)

Further Reading

http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl/vol-3-no-1-june-2014/book-reviews/paul-collier-2013-exodus-immigration-and-multiculturalism-21st

https://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2013/11/new-exodus

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-dream-review-and-authors-response/

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/too-diverse-david-goodhart-multiculturalism-britain-immigration-globalisation

Changing the Beast – being part V of a series

In certain circles, to be accused of trying to reform – rather than transform – capitalism has long been one of the gravest criticisms. Not only this accusation but the very distinction has, however, always seemed a bit ridiculous. What would “transformation” actually mean? And who on earth could be attracted to the notion of wholescale nationalisation and associated bureaucratic power – to say nothing of even worse scenarios?? 

Temperamentally, I grant you, I’ve always been an incrementalist – rather than a revolutionary – influenced first by Tony Crosland’s 1956 revisionist “The Future of Socialism”; then, at University, by Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies” and, in the early 80s, by Charles Lindblom – who got us all to respect incrementalism.
  
Although Margaret Thatcher kept assering that capitalism was the only way – or, in her own words, “there is No Alternative”, a mantra which soon attracted the acronym TINA – we have, since the end of the Cold War, become familiar with the “Varieties of capitalism” literature. Eased into it by Michel Albert, with later work by the likes of Crouch, Hall and Soskice being much more academic and, often, impenetrable

By the turn of the millennium the message seemed to be that Capitalism takes various forms; is constantly changing; and will always be with us. But increasingly, people were wondering whether it was not out of control. Pages 57-66 of my Dispatches to the Next Generation plot the increasing dystoptic aspect of book titles

But a few years back, something changed. It wasn’t the global crisis in itself but rather the combination of two things – first the suggestion that the entire engine of the system (profitability)was reaching vanishing point; and, second, a sudden realisation that robotization was a serious threat to even middle-class jobs.

Now the titles talk of the new phenomenon of “post-capitalism” 

Paul Collier’s book – “The Future of Capitalism – our present anxieties” to which I have devoted 4 posts – touches only very briefly on the second of the changes. But I recommend the book for its rare moral – rather than technocratic - tone and for it being the first book I can remember which takes as its starting point the concerns of ordinary people and tries to identify practical policies which might actually deal with issues such as the decline in social trust

Essential follow-up reading

I realise the previous reading list was too long. The following are they key bits of writing I would recommend for those who want to know more

Why the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”; Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..(google sample only)..reviewed here

Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). A short, overdue assessment of the relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas - more than a decade after his death

Associationalism for 150 years – and still alive and well in Denmark; Kaspersen (2002)

Communitarianism Revisited; Amitai Etzioni (2015) The father of the modern movement revisits the issues

Those curious about the “Varieties of Capitalism” literature and able and willing to subject themselves to the torture of academic writing can skim one of the following..

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db5f/97bbe6f769bdf8ca138a89bd090f35e3a39d.pdf

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~phall/VofCIntro.pdf

http://web.unideb.hu/jkapas/pdf/Kapas_varieties%20of%20capitalism.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328807093_Rhine-and_Anglo_Saxon_Capitalist_Models_and_the_1960-1993_Automotive_Industry_in_Germany_and_the_United_States/link/5be427cc92851c6b27af5c67/download

https://jeremygilbertwriting.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/psychedelic-socialism.pdf

The Future of Capitalism - IV

“Acknowledgements” are normally the least-read section of any book – into which are pored often embarrassingly-excessive expression of thankful debts. Indeed if the book is American, the section will read like an Oscar speech.

But Paul Collier’s “Acknowledgements” (unusually in the end-section) made me think about the whole issue of who an author thinks (s)he is writing for – and how that affects the style and content of a book

He explains that, having started with a review of some books, he realised that what was really needed was

“a synthesis of moral philosophy, political economics, finance, economic geography, social psychology and social policy”   

and that he then proceeded to identify and work with a small “brains trust” of individuals in these various fields he was able to find within the enclaves of Oxford University

We imagine that an author is writing for us – if not personally, that he has a mental picture  of the sort of person likely to pick the book up…But Collier reveals here that the people whose opinion he sought and  listened to were a small group of specific individuals. This perhaps explains a couple of things - one of which I only noticed when I went back to reread the book. First, as I had signalled last week, I found it curious that he failed to acknowledge the range of others who have explored similar themes – from GDH Cole, through Paul Hirst to the Third Way and beyond. I’m sure Collier is familiar with those strands but perhaps not the specialists he consulted….

It’s rare for me to return to a book for a second, closer reading within a month of the first read. But it’s perhaps something I should do more often since, this time around, I found myself scribbling quite a few question marks and remarks against sections that I simply couldn’t understand. I had the feeling, quite frankly, that one of the experts on his Brain’s Trust had advised him to include something which he didn’t quite feel he could explain properly….

And, as several of the reviewers have noticed, there were too many sections which aere too scrappy and need a lot more thought….particularly in Part II in the chapters on the “ethical company, family and world”

Future of Capitalism - Useful References and follow-up reading

The wide ranging nature of Collier’s book threw up an unusually wide assortment of papers and blogs….

Branko Milanovic honoured it with two separate posts – the first suggesting that it smacked of “nostalgia for a past that never was”; the second exploring what he has to say about healthy families, organisations and worlds

The radical American economist James K Galbraith (son of JF) reviews it along with a new book from Joseph Stiglitz and a forthcoming one from Branko Milanovic

The author of “TheThird Pillar” can be heard discussing his book in transcript and on podcast

The Denmark Lesson; short piece commenting on Collier’s Danish comments

Why the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”; Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..reviewed here

Revisiting Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). An overdue assessment of the relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas more than a decade after his death

Associationalism for 150 years – and still alive and well in Denmark; Kaspersen (2002)

Beyond the Third Way (Geyer 2001)

Can Democracies tackle illiberal and “inward-looking” drives?; Daniel Danaiu (Romanian Jounral of European Affairs June 2019) A broad-ranging overview of recent trends and writing by an ex-Governor of the Romanian National Bank

The Fix – how nations survive and thrive in a world in decline; Jonathan Tepperman (2016) one of the positive analyses selected by Collier

There’s a useful discussion here on how the concept of meritocracy has become obsolete…

Can the genie be put back in the bottle? part III of the discussion of Collier's Future of Capitalism

Half-way through writing this post I discovered that the great Branko Milanovic was also these days thinking and writing about Paul Collier’s “The Future of Capitalism” but beat me by a day!

And another book has appeared suggesting that markets and the state (alone or combined) are not sufficient to deal with our social needs – by an ex-Governor of the Bank of India. It is The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave Community Behind; Raghuram G. Rajan (2019) the main thrust of which can be found in this article,

To someone with my background, this critique is an obvious one. Indeed its relative rarity reflects the grip which technocrats have developed on our minds these past few decades.  

Our collective memories have become so short these days, people need to be reminded of the “Big Society” (Cameron 2010) and “The Third Way” (Blair 1997) both of which were doomed to failure by virtue of their elitist support and origins - although the “Third Way” was more philosophically grounded by the writings of Anthony Giddens. It was also less focused on Britain – with support from not only Bill Clinton but also Gerhard Schroeder (as witness this 1998 manifesto)

Why the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”; Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..

The last post reminded us all that the discussion about the respective roles of state and market goes back at least a hundred years (and was evident in deeds if not words in the late 19^th century as both the UK and Germany started to respond to working class pressures); and suggested that there were two ways we could look at what might be called the “communitarian” option – as a set of policies and beliefs; or as an historical settlement reflecting specific conditions.

My suggestion of “stress tests” for what is obviously a set of highly sensible propositions was, I appreciate, a bit opaque. In phrasing it in this manner, I was conscious of the charge which the famous Angus Deaton had already made of Collier’s and Rajan’s books – that the “genie (in this case of “meritocracy”) could not be put back in the bottle”… meaning exactly what?? It’s odd that he just leaves the (obvious) question dangling at the end of his comments..

Does he perhaps mean that we have as a society experienced certain new things we will not readily give up? If so, what things?

Or has something contaminated the appreciation we had previously for certain values and behaviour? If so, what exactly is this contaminant of “meritocracy”? Michael Young wrote his famous “Rise of Meritocracy” as a satire in 1958 - its full title is actually The Rise of Meritocracy 1870-2033 – an essay on education and equality).

Is Angus Deaton really saying that human nature has changed so dramatically since 1970 or so that we no longer have the capacity to choose our own future? Whatever happened to “free will”?

It is understandable that Etzioni was unable to persuade his fellow north Americans to adopt “communitarianism” in the 1990s – in “the land of the free” its emphasis on social responsibilities perhaps smacks too much of the country’s early Puritan settlers – the decline of whose spirit I discussed last week - and of the contemporary Amash sect

I sense a lot of historical whitewashing going on in these exchanges. Paul Collier is quite open about his contempt for leftist writing (and seems particularly hostile to Wolfgang Streeck, a favourite of mine) – which explains the absence of some obvious names from the index to his book.And the “Third Way” scribblers are also absent (despite their centralist position) presumably because they have been guilty of ideological sloganizing….
But why is Paul Hirst and his associationalism missing from the book  - despite a recent celebration of his work? Perhaps the publisher is too left-wing? Or the phrase “associative democracy” too narrow for the scope of Collier’s book? Such excisions from the history book don’t do anyone any favours…

Collier refers to a talk he was invited to give to the Danish social democrats in 2017 where he met the new leader whom he recently praised in this article – which also suggests their party as a good example of the sort of pragmatism which he considers European social democracy needs these days - although a lot of us thought that New Labour's emphasis on "triangulation" and "evidence-based" approach was as pragmatic as you get......
 Remarkably, my googling had just unearthed this fascinating history of the development over a 150 year period of “Associationalism” in Denmark

My point therefore about “stress tests” is that clearly some countries are more disposed to communal ideas than others. Take, for example, my own country – Scotland. We may be part of o United “Kingdom” but the “1707 settlement” expressly retained our educational and religious freedoms in which schooling, for example, has always been more open; one of the most famous books about this bears the title “The Democratic Intellect”. And we have also been more open to ideas of support for community endeavour – with community planning and social enterprise being amongst the central planks of the Scottish government for the past 20 years.

Indeed there is an argument that it is the smaller countries who are most able to offer the sort of support for civilised ideas of the healthy family, organisation and society which Collier has made the core of his book.

Communitarianism, anyone?

Is a communitarian agenda a possibility for British – or any – politics these days?

This question arises from the appearance in the past year of both Hilary Cottam’s “Radical Help” (2019) and Paul Collier’s “The Future of Capitalism – facing the new anxieties” (2018) - and of similar ideas being expressed in a variety of places over the past decade, including The “Kafka Brigade” (de Jong); clumsy solutions (Grint); “Reinventing Organisations” (Laloux); The “Big Society” (Cameron); and Red Tory/Blue Labour (Bond)

And, of course, behind all this lies the shadow, of the millenium’s “The Third Way” (admittedly more of a rhetorical than real moment); Paul Hirst’s writings of the 1990s on “associationalism”; the communitarian movement embodied in Amitai Etzioni’s writings and activities in the US in the latter part of the 20^th century; and those of GDH Cole in the pre-war period.

So there have clearly been a set of powerful – if peripheral - ideas with which we have been very reluctant to part ……could it be that their time is coming?

I want to explore this question – using three approaches

-       identifying the common, distinctive features of policies, values and behaviour which can be found under these various labels

-       reminding ourselves of the original debates more than 100 years ago around “community”

-       setting up some “stress tests” for what is obviously a set of highly relevant propositions

1.  The common agenda

Collier’s critique of “utilitarian technocrats and Rawlsian lawyers corroding” the values of cooperation is, for me, very apt  

As far as I am aware, no one has so far attempted to extract (from the disparate elements I’ve sketched above) a common agenda. This is my first, very rough attempt -

- a dramatic change in the balance of rights and responsibilities – with more effort put into strengthening citizen “obligations” and less into “rights”

- Increased role for voluntary organisations – and cooperative activity

- Greater role for mutualised societies; and for (smaller) local authorities

- Municipalisation of services such as water

- More support for social enterprise
- and for local banks
- taxation of rent-seeking activities

- less emphasis on university education and more on vocational education

- development in youth services of “role model” (mentoring)

- rethink on aspects of state regulations in health and safety field

- importance of values of “respect” and “trust” being developed (by example!)

2.   The original debate about “community”

Movement from the close, if not stifling, “community” of towns and villages of past centuries (governed by social norms of respect, trust and acceptable behaviour) to modern “society” - where relationships are looser and anonymous – was a product of industrialisation. And industrialisation took a good two centuries to work through – it was in the late 1980s that the term “post-industrial” was first heard.

It was German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936) who gave us the terms “Gemeinschaft” and “Gesellschaft” with which to make sense of that movement. And the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) first used the term “anomie” in 1893 to describe this feature of modern society.

The blog has several times this year found itself exploring issues of community solidarity - which had been one of the priorities of my political activity between 1968 and 1990. Some social scientists were telling us, in the 1960s, that the process of clearing the old slums had broken a crucial system of mutual neighbourly support (although other forces were also at work); and that a new system of social support was needed.

This coincided with the establishment in the early 1970s of a new department in local government for such things which, in Scotland, was given a quite explicit “preventive” objective. I became Chairman of such a committee in 1971 and used it to ensure the appointment of community workers to try to build more of the spirit of community in areas whose residents were suffering from what was called in those days “multiple deprivation”

In 1977 the UK national weekly "Social Work Today" commissioned me to write a substantial article which argued that our democratic system was failing such citizens - and that political parties no longer performed some of the functions we had attributed to them. In the meantime a few of us had managed to develop a strategy which saw support for these communities deepening – a strategy which has been continued by successive Scottish governments… 

Only one of the reviews I’ve read so far of the Collier book questions its realism – but does so in a rather smart way which reveals all that’s worst in a book review –

Collier’s paragon of the wise and ethical centrist is Emmanuel Macron, a man who, fewer than two years into his presidency, has disastrously low approval ratings, is widely seen as a tool of the wealthy, and just endured the most destructive burst of popular outrage France has seen since 1968. If that analogy didn’t already look foolish when Collier was writing The Future of Capitalism in 2017 and early 2018, it certainly does now.

The dream of a post-ideological pragmatism is itself ideological, of course, but what’s most interesting about Collier’s proposals is that if implemented, they would require not a variety of business-friendly Macronism but something closer to the redistributive politics of Bernie Sanders. The blunt policy instrument Collier most regularly suggests wielding is taxation. But because he’s a serious economist writing a book and the imagined remit of the serious book-writing economist is to rise above politics, to “move beyond the tired binary of Right and Left,” in the equally tired phrase you always find in works like The Future of Capitalism, Collier can’t bring himself to subscribe to a leftist budgetary project. Il faut être absolument centriste.

In the end what emerges most forcefully from The Future of Capitalism is its past — namely, Collier’s deep nostalgia for the collective purpose of the postwar West, which he himself experienced as a child and young adult growing up in Britain. That sense of collective purpose was forged in the fire of World War II. The institutions that defined the postwar liberal order gained legitimacy from their incorporation within a collective project to preserve peace.

What project exists today that could command a similar consensus and simultaneously revive growth throughout the developed world? Even though consensus is proving enragingly tough to secure, the answer is obvious: climate change. But Collier has little to say on the issue, or indeed several of the other major gyrations affecting the global economy today. The threat of automation, for example, which surely demands at least some consideration if your subject is the future of capitalism, is confidently brushed aside in one sentence: “Robotics is, I think, unlikely to reduce the need for work — our wants are probably insatiable.”

But Nobel-ish Prize-winning economist George Akerlof has called The Future of Capitalism “the most revolutionary work of social science since Keynes,” which is both generous and wrong.

Collier says we need “radical new thinking” to get out of the mess we’re in — and we do — but he himself offers little more than tut-tutting social regressivism. Whatever good ideas The Future of Capitalism does contain struggle to emerge from the crush of their author’s monomania for the Trente Glorieuses.

Taxing the metropolis to fund the revitalization of small cities, giving tenants the right to buy houses at deep discounts: these aren’t bad ideas on their own, but how do we make them happen? The answer, of course, is through the political process, but on that The Future of Capitalism is by turns silent or blithely optimistic.

Collier’s good ideas remain undercooked because they have the misfortune of nesting in a book of political economy that has nothing useful to say about politics.

As I say, this is a good example of a bad book review - my definition of which is one which tells us more about the reviewer than the book! 

The post is already too long. Collier’s book is so important that that I will try to deal with the third of the “approaches” the post talk about in the next post 

update; just come across an essay on communitarianism on an amazing blog

https://theworthyhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/On-Communitarianism-PDF.pdf

Capitalism - facing the new anxieties

I have just completed a book within 24 hours – the first time I have done this in many years. Before I reveal the title, let me offer a short para from page 201 which gives an excellent sense of the book’s focus

Capitalism last worked well between 1945 and 1970 - when policy was guided by a form of social democracy that had suffused through the main political parties (of Britain). Its ethical origins had been in the cooperative movement of the 19^th century created to address the urgent anxieties of the time.

Its narrative of solidarity became the foundation for a deepening web of reciprocal obligations that addressed these anxieties.

But then the ethical foundations of social democracy corroded – as its ethical leadership passed from the cooperative movement to utilitarian technocrats and Rawlsian lawyers. This ethics lacks resonance with people - and voters have gradually withdrawn their support.

The text then continues with what might seem a curious question – “Why did political parties not turn to pragmatism?” to which I will return later….

The book is “The Future of Capitalism – facing the new anxieties” by development economist Paul Collier who shows within a few pages the advantages such economists have over “normal” economists - he quotes extensively from the work of a social psychologist whose “Righteous Mind” I praised to the skies a couple of months ago and he is clearly familiar with works of moral philosophy and politics…..Such “intellectual trespassing” has been unheard of since the great days of Albert Hirschman!!

The author had been invited in 2017 by the editor of TLS to write a review of several books – a review which duly appeared as “How to Save Capitalism” and inspired him to keep pursuing the issues which had been raised in the books he had been given for review. 

Paul Collier is best known for his Bottom Billion – why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it? (2007) which one review put into excellent context in this way –

Before “The Bottom Billion”, the prominent economists’ debate about foreign aid was largely between Jeffrey Sachs’ passionate call for more assistance (“The End of Poverty” and his new “Common Wealth”), countered by William Easterly’s cautionary tales of aid gone wrong (“The Elusive Quest for Growth” and “The White Man’s Burden”). Collier’s Bottom Billion enters the fray with a very different kind of argument, calling for a variety of interventions, some of which are not really aid at all. Sachs wants more aid and Easterly wants less, but Collier wants different

And his disinclination to follow “the conventional wisdom” shows in his latest book which takes aim at both “left” and “right” ideologues – as well as technocrats, financiers, fat-cats and lawyers

There are three parts to the book – the first which looks at the “three appalling cleavages” which now divide societies which Collier designates as “geographical, educational and moral” which are not, for him,

“just problems I study; they are the tragedies that have come to define my sense of purpose in life, This is why I have written this book. I want to change this situation”

Part II is entitled “Restoring Ethics” and starts by reminding us that Adam Smith’s first book, prior to “The Wealth of Nations" was “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” which explored the various moral obligations find have no place in the economists’ rational calculator. He then argues that Jeremy Bentham is responsible for the subsequent wrong path taken by economics and then has short rather tantalising chapters on the “ethical state”, the “ethical firm”, the “ethical family” and the “ethical world”. In that sense it’s thoroughly in line with the thinking on the very recent post about healthy families, organisations and societies  - and indeed uses the same triple structure as Robin Skynner and John Cleese’s famous book on “Life – and how to survive it” (1990)

Part III is called “Restoring the Inclusive Society” and offers a range of interesting suggestions

I'll continue the analysis in future posts......

Reviews

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2018/11/paul-collier-move-left-economy-and-talk-language-belonging

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-future-of-capitalism-paul-collier/

https://www.usaidalumni.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Paul-Collier-book-review-by-Jim-Fox.pdf

http://www.bresserpereira.org.br/terceiros/2019/mar%C3%A7o/19.03-Contemporary-Capitalism.pdf

http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2018/10/the-future-of-capitalism/

https://longreads.com/2019/02/19/maybe-what-we-need-is-more-politics/

https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/98627/angus-deaton-asks-why-advanced-countries-around-1970-economy-no-longer-serves-most

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/06/government-reform-when-will-we-ever.html

The Incredible Lightness of the "Deep" State in Romania

I am today doing something unique in the blog’s 10 year life – commenting on an apparent murder case and the anger it has aroused in the troubled society of Romania in which I have been living for the past few years. For more than a week now, television programmes have had endless, back-to-back discussion of the tragedy – with camera shots lingering over the details of gardens and fields as various searches were conducted.

The blog has covered aspects of Romanian society and politics on numerous occasions – the last being this fairly comprehensive post on the country’s problems a couple of months ago. 

I am moved to offer this coverage of what is actually at least two murders because it reveals very starkly aspects of the “deep state” in this part of the world – and the huge difficulties facing those who want to hold that system to account

The initial source of my information is a post on the issue from a journalist friend of mine who runs the Bridge of Friendship blog. On this occasion he was sharing an important article (in a Bulgarian-based journal called “Baricada”) written by a Romanian journalist Maria Cernat. And my long-suffering Romanian partner, Daniela, has helped me make (some sort of) sense of the issue and its significance.

Nothing is ever as it seems here – and I have therefore added some “editorial” comments to the excerpts I have selected from the “Baricada” article which is very-well written and should be read in its entirety…..

Romania has been in a state of shock for more than a week, after a 15-year old girl – Alexandra Măceşanu, from the southern city of Caracal, was killed on July 25th. Alexandra had gone to a larger city for private lessons. Due to Romania’s general lack of public transport, she was forced to hitchhike back home. The government recently eliminated free regional transport and now private transport companies aren’t obligated to service routes which don’t generate a profit. That is how she was abducted by a 57-year old automobile mechanic, Gheorghe Dincă, who operated an unlicensed taxi service. He took her to a house in Caracal. In spite of the fact that Alexandra called the emergency phone number 112 a few times, police didn’t manage to pinpoint her signal immediately, and didn’t enter the house until the following morning, because of lack of permission from the observing prosecutor. In the 19 hours between the first call until police entered the house where she was being held, Alexandra was repeatedly raped and then killed.

Curiously, the article does not report on what happened next with Dinca being taken to the police station where he demanded to speak with one particular policeman - with whom he was then allowed to speak for one hour and to whom he confessed not only the murder but that he had burned her body (he also confessed to another murder with the victim’s remains also being buried in his garden). There is presumably a tape-recording of that hour’s highly irregular conversation – but we have to ask why on earth it was ever allowed. It has certainly allowed all sorts of conspiracies to emerge and circulate about "collusion" of police and "mafia" and dark networks......

The burned remains were taken to Bucharest and the victim’s DNA confirmed. Not surprisingly, however, the family dispute these results. As indeed the defence lawyers might obviously dispute the confession…..

I give these details simply to demonstrate the murky aspects of the operation of the Romanian state….The article continues.....

The case has shaken Romania not only because of the brutal abuse of the adolescent, but also because state institutions acted with inexplicable slowness, which enabled the criminal to follow his plan to completion. Alexandra phoned 112. It took the police 19 hours to intervene……

Three months prior, another young girl from the zone- Luiza Melencu, was killed by the same man. This horrible fact was publicized, along with a 2012 human trafficking case at the Deveselu military base. The base has been used by American air defence since 2011.

Romanian society is even more upset than it was in the case of the Colectiv nightclub fire, where more than 60 people died. Now various answers are appearing in response to the questions of who is to blame: some condemn the prosecutor, Cristian Ovidiu Popescu, who didn’t permit Alexandra’s rescue, refusing to issue a warrant to allow police access to the house. Police were made to wait for hours on the doorstep of the criminal’s house. Popescu was lauded by the former anti-corruption prosecution (DNA) chief, Laura Koveşi. To some people this means that he is from the movement #rezist (which was a main force behind the 2017 protests in support of anti-corruption – note of the translator). But others say that the police didn’t need a warrant, but could have entered the house out of the need to save a life. In that case, the blame falls on the Social Democratic party-ruled government.

The article doesn’t mention that Popescu was sacked immediately the media got hold of this information and a new prosecutor appointed who then seems to have enforced a 5-day closure of the house before a proper search could be carried out. This beggars belief – just imagine the outrage in northern Europe if a proper search was not carried out until 5 days had elapsed!!

The audio of the victim’s phone calls with the 112 emergency hotline operator and the police officer were released recently. This has sparked a huge debate about ethical journalistic standards since the parents initially agreed only to the printed version of the phone calls being released. The audio is almost unbearable to listen to. Alexandra called 112 three times. In one conversation she says she has been kidnapped and raped and the police officer tells her to hang up because she’s keeping the line busy and there are other people calling!

Then, as if this horror was not enough, the press released the recording of a phone call between one local chief of police and someone who is known in the city as a local head of an organized crime network. The gangster criticized the police while the officer humbly thanked him for his cooperation!

Ecaterina Andronescu, the Minister of Education from the Social Democratic party, the party which basically destroyed public transportation and left children such as Alexandra at the mercy of people who own cars, was sacked. Andronescu declared that she was taught as a child not to get into strangers’ cars! The cruelty of this declaration knows no bounds since Alexandra had no means of transportation due to the decisions of these politicians! 

At this stage I have two observations – the article fails to mention that this “gangster” actually operates a security company (under due legal authority) which is obliged to cooperate with the police and to respond to any police requests for assistance. Indeed it was after such an approach that the “gangster” actually identified and reported the perpetrator’s car to the police – leading to the reported expression of gratitude! Security companies are, at the best of times, "shady enterprises" and I am not suggesting that its boss in this instance was a model citizen. But, in the unforgettable words of a political colleague of mine in the 1970s - 

"we have to be careful with words - it's all we have!!" 

My second point is that it is simply untrue to imply that the Minister of Education “left children at the mercy of people who own cars” since this is the Minister who actually initiated the system of school buses some years ago…..But this tragedy happened during school holidays when that system was suspended (as happens throughout Europe during the summer vacations) 

Romanian journalists, it appears, can never miss an opportunity to take partisan shots…..

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My previous posts on Romania have emphasised what a divided society it is – in the last few years the country has become very polarised with the implicit attitude that "if you’re not for us, you’re against us" 
The neutral mugwumps who want fair reporting are simply crushed between the 2 forces.
But please read the full article to see how it places the murder as what Maria Cernat, the author, calls a "symptom of:

-       a passive culture, in which neighbours and family knew about Dincă’s violence  against women (because he had a history of domestic violence), but didn’t react;

-        a profoundly vicious economic system, which generates inequalities that can be fatal for those who lack the good fortune of being born to the privileged elite;

-       the reactionary attitudes of politicians, who want half-baked solutions to serious problems – be it the #rezist camp, which seems to be inescapably locked into a pathetic slogan, “F*ck PSD” (PSD being the ruling Social Democratic Party – note of the translator)

-        the way, in which tragedies such as this one, lead to solutions such as absurdly giving the police even more force than they had before the tragedy;

-        an apparent strange cohabitation between the institutions of force and the thieves, who have escaped justice miraculously in many cases;

-        the trafficking of vulnerable persons, for whom gender and class are not simply social traits, but social determiners that could easily sentence them to a terrible death".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Forest