Could Speaking for the People Often Mean Lying to the People?

Populism and the Problem of Truth

Dragoş DRAGOMAN

Department of Political Science, “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu

Abstract: The recent developments in Romanian politics have raised a series of questions related to the special relationship between populists and the people. How could one explain that populists are no longer popular? One explanation put forward here is that politics, and especially populism, bear a moral component that affects the political system, in that populists turn democracy into what Sartori would label as “demolatry”. This means that populists keep speaking for the people, but with no real attention paid to the people, and finally, with a total despise for the real people. This changing context, with the populist leader challenging the established power system by mobilising dissatisfied citizens only to accommodate and successfully integrate the power structures previously challenged, and the subsequent moves against the real people, is exemplified for the period between 2008 and 2012, when the populists consolidated in power and were finally and ironically challenged by the people.

Keywords: populism, democracy, legitimacy, violence, truth.

Far from being a clear scientific concept, populism has become an integral part of polemical rhetoric. Loaded with negative connotations, populism has no shared scientific definition, as it touches a wide range of social, political and moral issues[1]. Despite its vagueness and multidimensionality, acknowledged by the majority of political researchers, what is at stake here is its moral component. How could one otherwise explain why populism has been assimilated with a pathology, a syndrome, yet it continues to be largely supported by significant shares of voters in many developed countries[2]. The way populist movements conceive people and speak for the people, how they define their social bases and represent them form one of the most intriguing moral issues in contemporary politics. In fact, populism’s ambiguous relationship with the real people is less related to the range of promises and actions, but rather to the moral values it claims to embed and defend. The aim of this article is to explore the moral dimension of the linkage between populist politicians and the people that support them and to exemplify the ambiguous concept of “people” by a series of claims and actions of populists in Romania. Of course, this is not a pledge for morality in politics, as one could argue that such a claim is just a wish. At the same time, this is neither a legitimation of the unscrupulous use of persuasion and brutal use of power, otherwise it could have been published in the previous issue of the journal that celebrates Machiavelli’s seminal writing. It is rather an attempt to clarify the essential relationship between populists and the people that lies in the core of the populist ethos, with the rapid change between adulating the supporting people and despising, mocking and repressing the opposing people. Using people in order to fight populists’ political adversaries, depicted as rogue elites acting against ordinary people, then consolidating in power and repressing the same people, is at the heart of recent populism in Romania. The political schizophrenia, the ambivalent boundary between legitimation and abuse, electoral campaign promises and the exercise of real power, ideal representation and real political constraints, all raise the question of truth in politics. In the end, can speaking for the people often imply lying to the people?

In an insightful article, Schmitter argues that we have to take into account both vices and virtues of populism[3]. On the one hand, populists dissolve partisan loyalties and rational choices among various political programmes without replacing them with something of their own, they recruit uniformed persons with no clear political preferences and who look for emotional rather than programmatic political satisfactions, they make promises and raise expectations that generally cannot be fulfilled, they identify aliens and alien powers as scapegoats for their own political failures and, most important of all, they can undermine democracy by the support provided by the army or security forces, which make their democratic removal from office unlikely. On the other hand, populist politicians and parties help destructure sclerotic party loyalties and dissolve party coalitions that are based on secret agreements, and they recruit and mobilise previously apathetic persons. By focusing on disparate and hidden political issues, they help articulate previously neglected cleavages and demands; they replace political immobilism and widen the range of possible political solutions to collective problems.

The purpose of this article, which takes its evidence from Romanian politics following the 2004 campaign, is not to prove that pre-campaign promises differ by and large from post-campaign policies. This is somehow common and is not connected exclusively with populist practices. What is specific to populism is the struggle against power elites allegedly grouped into cartels[4], the appeal to the “pure people” against the “corrupt elites”[5], and its self-proclaimed mission to protect people from those elites, by removing all intermediate liberal democratic institutions that mediate representation and by directly speaking for the people[6]. Thus populists persistently purport to promote direct democracy and channel social discontent against elites whom they depict as hostile to ordinary people[7].

Whereas populism may in fact help remove political immobilism by articulating neglected cleavages and demands, as Schmitter argues, it is the very mechanism of speaking for the people that raises the moral question of how populists imagine people and how much people value for populists themselves. Since populists use emotional, simplistic, and manipulative discourses directed at the “gut feelings” of the people, or put in place opportunistic policies aimed at “buying” the support of the people[8], the question seems pertinent. Moreover, as disclosed by the Romanian case-study, persistently claiming to speak for the people may turn into what Sartori would label a “demolatry”, a permanent discussion about the people with no real attention paid to the people, and finally, a total despise for the real people[9]. The changing attitude towards people, who turns from a very source of legitimacy into a bitter political enemy, lies at the heart of populist politics in Romania between 2004 and 2014.

1.       SPEAKING FOR THE PEOPLE:

“THEY STAND BY THEM, WE STAND BY YOU!”

In Romania, as in other countries in the region, populism largely consolidated in power by exploiting people’s legitimate expectations for political change, fairness, transparency and accountability. Confronted with difficult negotiations for joining the European Union that exposed its multiple weaknesses, Romania was preparing in 2004 for a general electoral campaign. By promising a more acerbic fight against endemic corruption and state institutions’ inefficiency, Traian Băsescu (president of Romania since 2004) and his party, the populist Democrat Party (PDL), won the 2004 elections under the banner of state reinvigoration, modernisation and constitutional reform. This electoral victory marks the beginning of an alliance between populists and the people which is very clearly stated by the next electoral campaign slogan in 2008, “they stand by them, we stand by you!” Where “they” refers to the corrupt elite, “we” epitomises populists and “you” the supporting people.

One cannot understand this campaign slogan with any reference to the populists’ fight against political elites between 2004 and 2008. Often accused of pervasive corruption, the power elites are fought by populists everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe[10]. In Romania, those political and economic elites are seen as inheriting their influence from the previous power networks of the communist regime and are accused of outright ruling with the support of the judiciary system and of a large part of mass-media, which they actually own. By labelling parliament as the expression of the most corrupt and obsolete power elite, the courts of justice as the very expression of a privileged and disrespectful interest group and the free media as a pressure instrument used to manipulate the “people”, Romanian populists strongly emphasised these issues during their 2008 successful campaign.

One cannot understand this campaign slogan with any reference to the populists’ fight against political elites between 2004 and 2008. Often accused of pervasive corruption, the power elites are fought by populists everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe[11]. In Romania, those political and economic elites are seen as inheriting their influence from the previous power networks of the communist regime and are accused of outright ruling with the support of the judiciary system and of a large part of mass-media, which they actually own. By labelling parliament as the expression of the most corrupt and obsolete power elite, the courts of justice as the very expression of a privileged and disrespectful interest group and the free media as a pressure instrument used to manipulate the “people”, Romanian populists strongly emphasised these issues during their 2008 successful campaign.

The failed impeachment consolidated the populists’ claims of fighting corrupt power elites and strengthened the image of the president as a victorious hero. After the impeachment, the populists claimed that the parliament’s allegedly privileged position had to be challenged through a new institutional design. Launching his counteroffensive by pitting his personal popularity against the low esteem for the parliament[12], and according to his constitutional right to appoint referendums, the restored president called for a serious change in the composition of the parliament. A referendum was therefore settled out to accompany regular presidential elections in 2009. The wording of the referendum included the populists’ proposal of reducing the number of MPs from 471 to no more than 300, and the passage to a mono-cameral representative body. The majority of the electors (50.16%) voted in favour of the referendum, accompanying a very small majority of voters who confirmed Traian Băsescu back in office.

The 2008 successful campaign marks not only the vigorous advance of populism, but the strong professionalisation of electoral campaigning. Popular music, for instance, was acknowledged for its communication potential and seriously taken into account by populists as a valuable electoral vehicle in order to mobilise generally undereducated and disengaged young people. As those young people form a political target generally difficult to reach by ordinary means, as will be emphasised below, populists ingeniously used a very popular music genre in Romania, called “manele”[13]. Thus the privileged relationship between the populist leader and the people, in the early stages, is to be also found in popular music.

As an essential social product, popular music offers compelling insights into the social world we live in. Popular music is a social sign because it creates an effect in the perceiver that is not only aesthetic, but also socially meaningful. Moreover, popular music is a sign because it appeals to the emotions of a generation, particularly a young generation[14]. Thus popular music is the bearer of cultural images and symbols that surround the music and generate a particular narrative[15]. It can act as any other vehicle carrying images and symbols in order to reach an objective. Popular music may also serve as vehicle for frustration, anger and protest against the established values and norms[16], since music is probably the most appropriate way for young people to express not only their identity[17], but their political knowledge and orientations, in indirect or more direct ways[18]. In our particular case, popular music is epitomised by “manele” (singular: “manea”), a series of widely popular songs that are considered to accurately express the citizens’ social and political knowledge and orientations[19]. Those songs are widespread cultural items, especially among young people, since the beginning of the post-communist transition in 1990. It is not at all unusual to hear “manele” in buses or in railway stations, in taxis or in restaurants.

The general perspective emphasised by manele is gloomy, as it depicts remote social forces that tend to overwhelm marginal individuals. Those forces are conceived as an impersonal social environment largely defined by hatred, a general environment labelled as a “mean world”, where no one can be trusted and where marginal single individuals feel powerless. Whereas visible enemies work as a booster for social competition, with individuals strongly motivated to overcome and defeat their covetous enemies, the “mean world” is full of uncertainty. This is a gloomy world, where even close friends and allies may turn into bitter enemies, and where reigns the constant suspicion that close friends might attempt to outsmart, seduce and dupe. Covetous, ungrateful and misleading friends thus add new significance to the “mean world”, helping to intensify the powerlessness and hopelessness feeling. This is exactly the political environment exploited by populists in order to predicate the difference between the populist hero and his alleged enemies.

It is worth noticing that, on the other hand, manele largely express a process of differentiation of the hero, the one who finally defeats its enemies and manages to overpass life’s difficulties. In the predication process, the manele singer, who embodies the hero, generally portrays himself as “cooler”, cleverer, richer, more hard working. The difference is predicated by comparing the manale hero to his social rivals, who generally envy him for his social success. By translating this social pattern of rivalry into the political field, populists forged the image of the populist leader, the president Băsescu, who finally manages to overcome his political enemies and keeps fighting them once back in office, despite their attempt to impeach him. This image was constructed and spread out by means of various vehicles, including manele. In the “manea” (singular for “manele”) written for the 2008-2009 campaigns, the incumbent president Băsescu is portrayed as the true “people’s” hero.[20] This assertion of certain popularity is based in the “manea” on the first name of the president, which is Traian, emphasised in the text as a Latin name, echoing that of the Roman Emperor Trajan[21]. In connection with the gloomy social world put forward by this popular music genre, the populist hero is forced to experience once again the drama generally depicted by the “manele”. He is betrayed by his closest ally, namely by the prime-minister Tăriceanu, a rogue and ungrateful (former) “brother” that has been seduced with large sums of money by the president’s worse enemies. Those enemies are, in fact, specific to Romanian populist discourses, and they are a number of interest groups. Since interest groups that allegedly attempt to control Romania are common place in the populists’ discourse, it is not surprising to find them pointed out in the “manele” texts as president Băsescu’s sworn enemies. They have thus plotted against him and unfairly attacked him from behind, while impeaching him in 2007.

The special “manea” composed for accompanying PDL and president Băsescu’s electoral campaigns in 2008-2009, is to be taken as the climax of populism, when the people was supporting the populist hero in his bitter fight against the people’s enemies, regrouped under the large banner of interest groups plotting against ordinary people. In fact, “manele” strongly underline a dimension that is inherent to populists’ discourse, namely the ultimate conflict with a terrible enemy. In their reductionist view, the institutional conflict of 2007 between democratic institutions, the parliament and the government, on the one hand, and the president, on the other hand, turned out to be a savage conflict for political survival. This is, in the end, how PDL’s slogan is to be understood, as the logic of the bitter conflict between “us” and ‘them’ that spreads across the whole society, opposing the populists and “them”, the opposition parties in toxic alliance with a large array of interest groups, power elites and people’s enemies.

2.       CHALLENGING THE PEOPLE: THE ENEMY FROM WITHIN

Following highly controversial presidential elections organised by his own party in government, Traian Băsescu was reconfirmed in office in 2009. This time, the supporting people were reduced to a narrow margin, but still enough to put him back in office[22]. Nevertheless, the previous relationship between the populist leader, strongly backed by his populist party, and the people was deteriorating rapidly, due to economic choices. Confronted with the alternative of increasing taxes for companies in order to support the state budget and keep the pace with public investment, the PDL government chose in May 2010 to adopt the hardest social cuts at that time in the European Union. In one fell swoop, the VAT increased by 25%, whereas salaries in the public sector suffered a 25% cut and pensions in the same public sector a 15% drop[23]. The move was long prepared with a large public campaign conducted by PDL denying any social cuts or tax increase. Although the law that was adopted by the PDL majority in the parliament for reducing pensions was considered anti-constitutional by the Constitutional Court and was finally withdrawn, the VAT increase and the severe cut of public salaries seriously undermined social security and fuelled deprivation[24]. Moreover, the pensions were reduced by a flat tax of 16% on every pension surpassing a given threshold and by a supplementary social insurance tax of 15.5%. From then on, populists had to adopt a different strategy of coping with public demands.

The first strategy was to divide the people by publically unmask a bitter enemy from within. Those to be pinpointed as enemies were employees in the public sector who constitute an unfair burden on the shoulders of the private sector. The enemies who were previously external to the people, namely corrupt elites and sinister interest groups, are now internal: doctors and nurses who unfairly demand higher salaries instead of leaving the country and working in foreign hospitals, teachers from Romanian schools who were producing but idiot graduates, desperate mothers with babies in their arms crying for unfair social benefits[25]. None of them deserve to benefit from public support, since they are not socially significant[26].

The second strategy was to compensate the loss in direct social benefits by promising essential indirect benefits from huge public investments, some of them in relation with campaign promises made back in 2008[27]. When cutting the social aid for supporting mothers with children under the age of two, back in 2010, PDL promised a visible increase in the construction of new kindergartens. When the PDL government decided to close down dozens of public hospitals in 2011, it promised to turn every single hospital into a special unit for elderly care. In the spring of 2012, when the last PDL government was dismissed by the parliament, there were hardly a couple of kindergartens and hospitals turned into social care units and less than 100 kilometres of motor highways. The investments were turned instead into very controversial and costly projects of sports and tourist facilities, including a new tourist national branding campaign and several football pitches in rural country-side[28]. No green-field general hospitals or significant brand new sports arenas were actually built. The accusations of widespread official corruption, made by the independent Romanian media and experts against high government officials, including the head of the Fiscal National Agency and the minister of Youth in the PDL government[29], were largely reflected by the public opinion. The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for Romania indicates setbacks in 2011 and 2010, as compared to 2009 and 2008. The last option taken by populists was to finally confront the people by denying its legitimate right to inquire into and express on public issues.

3.     DESPISING THE REAL PEOPLE:

DENYING PEOPLE’S LEGITIMATE POWER

The beginning of 2011 was marked by one of the tensest situations involving populists and the people, once taken as the ultimate source of their legitimacy. The public protests sparking in the major Romanian cities were the most unusual scene for populists, namely facing the real people.[30] Whereas confronted by people in the streets, PDL retrenched in parliament and let police and the security forces to deal with demonstrators. Using the government’s right to automatically pass laws by assuming its responsibility, the PDL government adopted the most controversial laws concerning the judicial reform, education, health and social care systems by means of the automatic legiferation. Although it is not illegal, this mechanism used no less than 13 times by PDL was set to avoid public debate on the matter. Moreover, the access of ordinary citizens was restricted, despite their constitutional right to attend the parliament’s sessions. It was customary as citizens attend important parliament sessions from the balcony of the plenary session room. Despising its own deputies, who have been elected in order to represent citizens from electoral constituencies, PDL decided in 2010 that MPs were not allowed anymore to stand up, express their views or vote in parliament votes of confidence, in favour of or against the government[31]. They were forced to be seated and wait for the end of the plenary session, which generally ended with the defeat of the opposition and the confirmation of the PDL government in office. The most extreme decision against MPs was taken in April 2012, when many PDL elected deputies and senators were not allowed to enter the plenary session room and vote, following another responsibility assumed by the government.

To complicate furthermore the tense relationship between the populists and the real people, which seriously questioned the populists’ legitimate role of speaking for the people when the real people opposed them, the second time when the parliament suspended the president witnessed the quest for the answer at the meaningful question who and where the people was. What “people” really means for populists, since the people do no longer support populists in office? Back in 2007, the president Băsescu was put back in office with people voting “no” to the referendum for dismissal, with no concern regarding the participation threshold. In order to secure his second presidential mandate, the PDL majority voted in parliament a change to the law regarding the referendum and imposed an absolute majority as threshold for the referendum’s validation. For then on, it would be enough for a president to be elected by a mere simple majority, but not enough to be dismissed. The legitimacy of the president can derive from a simple majority, yet the people are not legitimate to remove the same president from office unless it converges into a qualified majority.

The definition of “people” and the way the president Băsescu addressed this people were at the heart of the political dispute in 2012. When the parliament suspended him for the second time, in regular plenary session, he condemned the move and labelled it as a coup. Despite protests from some European officials and politicians from several EU states who embraced the allegations, the president was forced to confront the real people. Before the parliament’s decision, he made an appeal to his electorate to keep on supporting him and to vote into a future referendum, since he would not desire to be put back in office by a Constitutional Court decision that would have invalidated the referendum, due to the lack of qualified majority at the polls[32]. When finally suspended, he made a televised appeal for the boycott of the referendum, viewed as a sinister coup against democracy and even against Europe itself[33].

Following the referendum that surprised by the large participation, compared to regular elections, the Constitutional Court decided that the presence was not sufficient and invalidated the referendum, putting the president Băsescu back in office. The Court founded its decision on an essential democratic question: who is the people? According to Sartori, the people can be defined as the totality of citizens or as a majority, expressing accurately enough its sovereignty[34]. In order to calculate the threshold majority, the Court decided to use the available public data of the 2002 general official census[35]. Based on this benchmark, the presence acknowledged by the Court counted for only 46%. The Court refused to take into account any other legal, practical or sociological consideration, namely the severe demographic drop of the overall population and high figures of emigration, with millions of people establishing their permanent residence in Western Europe, especially in Spain, Italy, France and Germany, making thus impossible to expect them to vote in large shares in a referendum.

Although legal, the Court’s decision frustrated the overwhelming share of citizens voting for the president’s dismissal (more than 7.4 million people, almost 90% of those who voted) and shed new light on the relationship between populists and the real people. As emphasised by Sartori, the demolatry turns “people” into a fiction, with no concern for the real people. Following the Court’s final decision, president Băsescu praised in an official televised statement the victory of the democracy and of those who did not express their views by refraining from voting[36]. Moreover, he accused widespread irregularities in casting the ballots and pinpointed his adversaries’ misconduct, who allegedly falsified no less than 2 million votes[37]. The judicial subsequent tribulations, including the penal inquiries against hundreds of peasants who were accused of electoral misconduct, are to be seen as the president’s struggle to overcome a democratic contradiction: how to safeguard legitimacy and to conciliate a 5.2 million vote in his favour back in 2009, with a crashing 7.4 million in favour of his dismissal[38].

4.       POPULISM AND THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH: A CONCLUSION

The problem of truth that is addressed here is not a moral claim, as underlined since the beginning of the article. Hence it is not about morality in politics, which is a difficult issue when it comes to deal with real politics. This is only about how populists conceive people as the very source of direct and true democracy, and the subsequent uses (and misuses) of “people” for political legitimation, when “demolatry” turns people from a democratic principle into a neglected category. Speaking for the people thus leads to neglect and despise the “people”, populism becoming a permanent discussion about the people, with no real attention paid to the people. This conundrum lies at the very heart of democratic politics. By contrasting democracy with personal dictatorship, Canovan underlines the threats that occur when democracy becomes more and more inclusive[39]. The democratic paradox is a contradiction between “bringing the people into politics” and “taking politics to the people”. The more successful is the inclusion, the harder is for particular individuals to figure out the location of power and the path conducing to it. And ideology, which reduces the complexity of politics to dogmatic simplicity, is ill-fitted here to deal with the paradox, despite the fact it is essential for mass-politics. Finally, because the ideology of democracy is full of populist themes that stress the sovereignty and the rule of the general will against compromise and accommodation, collective unity against individual diversity, majority against minorities, directness against mediation, simplicity against political complexity, this is a standing invitation for populists[40]. This is the perfect situation for populists to demand the restoration of democracy that has been betrayed by elites and interest groups and to mobilise dissatisfied citizens. In fact, populism can be conceptualised as a way of political practice, as populist mobilisation[41]. Unchallenged by democratic forces, populists can easily use this invitation to consolidate in power, undermine representative institutions, and decisively attack their political rivals. Finally, they even manage to recombine existing and novel political and social resources and to accommodate the claim for direct democracy with the most hegemonic neo-liberalism, thus re-conciliating irreconcilable factors as populism, nationalism and harsh neo-liberalism[42].

The recombinant populism in Romania has finally shown how speaking for the people, there is forging an image of directness and transparency, can happily coexist with profound neo-liberalism, by turning the “people” from the very source of any legitimacy into a neglected category at the periphery of a system based on the need for power, pure personal will, high-official corruption and opaque business interests. Although winning the elections as embodying the hero challenging the established political order[43], as all populists generally do when people do not trust institutions,[44] populists in Romania have rapidly accommodated and successfully integrated the power structures previously challenged[45]. It soon became obvious that the real people would benefit no more of real attention and that any conflict opposing the people and the new establishment would be solved with a clear preference for the establishment, and not for the people. This goes for political matters, but most essentially for social and economic issues, as a general trope of our times[46]. Populists in Romania are now at a cross-road, trying to recombine resources and to overcome a chain of dilemmas: truly speaking for the people, or often lying to the people and looking primarily at themselves? Challenging the established elites or replacing them? Finally, these questions remain: how could it be that populists are no longer popular? Who will be the next populist leader and what political establishment will he/she challenge, since former populists turned so easily into predatory elites?

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