Two months into his term, Romania’s new president, Nicușor Dan, has chosen his first hill to die on. No, it’s not an ardent fight against the government’s catastrophic austerity measures, even though these contradict Dan’s explicit campaign promise that VAT would not be raised.

I’m not sure I like this tone, it reads like a propaganda piece. For one, the auaterity measures cannot be catastrophic because to my knowledge they haven’t been applied yet. Also only a fool would’ve believed the VAT declaration was anything but bullshit.

Dan has decided to make his first public and legal presidential intervention by repeatedly challenging a new law project that would increase penalties for promoting and distributing fascist and far-right materials.

IANAL but I think we already had laws against far-right discourse, not sure why more were needed. Of course it would’ve been nice if those laws had been enforced in the first place.

After an eventful electoral season decided through lawfare, the independent mayor of Bucharest appeared as a centrist, liberal, pro-European savior who stopped the fall of yet another country to extremist rule.

He’s not a savior and he did not stop shit and I bet both him and the PM know they are expendable. Forty-five fucking percent of people voted for a ridiculously populist, pro-russian candidate because he promised them the sky. These people will become even more enraged after the austerity measures so Dan and Bolojan will have at most 4 years, if not less, to smooth things over somewhat. After that, jury’s out on where this country’s headed.