There was a festival in the main square. The last days are this weekened, so we almost missed it. That wasn’t why I was walking there.
I wasn’t there for the protest either. I expected to hear about local protests after reading about the arrest of Călin Georgescu, but I didn’t expect to see one in the evening. (The other protests that get more media attention, with the shepherds, might have had Georgescu supporters among them, but were much more complex with economic issues as their focus.)
It was well attended. Compared to the pro-Palestine protests years ago, I counted far more people. Actually, I didn’t count them all, but I estimated a few hundred by counting a couple rows, and then seeing the number of rows. And it kept growing, so by the end, I wouldn’t be surprised if it numbered in the thousands.
Men and women of all ages, including young children, gathered together to hear the speakers. We saw middle aged ladies share food with children. Men greeted their comrades like old friends, like the Portuguese who has seen his old school buddy or a Frenchman greets a soldier he once served with.
The demographics were older than the passing by students, on average, and I would guess that all the protestors were Romanians. I heard a lot of French and English from passers-by, but only Romanian among the protestors.
Most of the first speakers were difficult to hear, over the music from the nearby festival, the traffic, and just because the men who spoke weren’t very loud. You could hear by the echoes that their megaphones were on, however.
Then came the chants. These were much easier to hear. Strangely, they had the same kind of rhythm as the pro-Palestinain protestors, but I didn’t see any protestors in common among the two groups.
Calin Georgescu, nevinovat. (Calin Georgescu, not guilty.)
Jos hoți. (down with theives.)
Jos predatori, (Down with predators)
Justiție nu corrupție. (Justice, not corruption)
Libertate! (Liberty! or, as Americans might say, Freedom!)
The music was a little different. There was one song that I would associate with communist times, another that seemed more modern but that I never heard before.
There were many Romanian flags flying. This isn’t rare for Cluj, many holidays have people flying flags, and there are flags hanging from poles all the way down that avenue. What was unusual was it seemed like an unofficial time to bring personal flags in a circle, they stood in the air. They were very orderly, and if I didn’t know my calendar and I was on the other side of the street, I might have thought it was just another national holiday.
People stood around for group photos, and members of the crowd took photos or videos of the crowd on their phones. I think I might have been in some of those photos, watching with curiosity.
But I had somewhere to go, so I went to complete by piece of business in town.
I passed by some police on my way. Were they there for the protest, or for the market, or both?
When I returned, I heard the tail end of a woman’s speech. I saw an older man approach, attracted as if by a Siren from ancient mythology, seeming to agree with what she said, and joining the crowd. I heard her voice clearly, it was a confident speaker, but my curiosity was not satisfied, as the speech quickly came to an end. So, I couldn’t tell you what she was talking about.
In the market, I heard people murmur about the protest. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but a few seemed to argue with their friends about whether or not to join it. But most of them were talking about other things, in Romanian, in English, or in French. There were fun activities for children in the square, nice things to take selfies with (like the I love Cluj signs) and just lots of other things to see. You could still hear the chants from a few hundred meters away, but many people much closer seemed uninterested, as if they couldn’t hear or see a thing.
For context, Călin Georgescu was arrested for allegedly running a scam that asked for money and promised a huge return in interest. It sounds almost made up, why would someone believe they could earn that much interest so quickly? And considering all the other scams that are going unpunished, like the Nordis real estate fiasco, it’s easy to wonder if this is a case of ‘selective justice.’
Călin Georgescu is guilty of winning the first round of an election that was cancelled. It was cancelled because someone secretly accused his TikTok campaign of being financed by foreign operatives. Now, the story has changed, and he was financed by a loan-scam.
He’s not the only person who was accused in secret. An expat of Turkish origin, an ethnic Kurd in Timisoara, was recently accused of being a PKK operative and a threat to Romania’s national security. Why would the PKK operate so far from Turkey? What would they have to gain by attacking anything in Romania? Who made the accusation? I don’t know, and I don’t know who to ask.
The Georgescu TikToks were not that good, I don’t think they needed a lot of money to produce. Anyone with a quiet home and a good computer could have made them, with a little talent. Two or three talented supporters is all he needs, and I know from a visits to workplaces that some of the sovereigntists have very talented supporters (and these supporters have day jobs making high end work for the other side). (I also know students who made films of that quality and higher.)
All that said, more people passed by the protest than took part in it. Cluj is probably not the most pro-Georgescu town in Romania. But he has very sincere supporters here.
I did not see any counter protest.
The jailing of Georgescu, the arrests and trials, are keeping him in the news, and strengthening the resolve of his supporters. They are making him into a martyr, and may even be winning more supporters not only to Georgescu, but the sovereigntist cause at large.
Perhaps these trials are there to get our mind off of something larger. They might be there to distract us from the student riots in France, the dangers in the Meditteranean, the little stories in other parts of Romania, and stories that we might otherwise find interesting.
Or, maybe the plan is more sinister. Maybe the plan is for Georgescu to become a martyr, to steer the people toward supporting him, so that Europe can be steered in a new direction that we have yet to imagine. If there is a conspiracy, why is it hard to imagine that both sides might be in on it?
If that’s the case, it’s not working here, at least not yet. The streets and buses, the shops and cafes, are still filled with people talking about other things.