{"id":1797,"date":"2014-05-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/%20rroma.org\/28-05-2014-rroma-elections-and-political-double-standards-in-eastern-europe\/"},"modified":"2022-08-04T11:42:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T10:42:45","slug":"28-05-2014-rroma-elections-and-political-double-standards-in-eastern-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/28-05-2014-rroma-elections-and-political-double-standards-in-eastern-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"28.05.2014 Rroma, elections and political double standards in Eastern Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\" class=\"MsoNormal\">Jovanovic (2014) \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\taddresses the problem that Rroma concerns are implemented only very rarely in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpolitics. Jovanovic attributes this to the highly widespread corruption in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEastern Europe. Yet, he doesn\u2019t really search for the reasons of favouritism \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tbut presupposes it as a fact. This leads to few new insights as to which things \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twould have to change in order to improve the situation of the Rroma. Instead, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJovanobic conveys a too simple notion of illiterate Rroma, living in debt and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpoverty, who cannot get out of their misery cycle. Illiteracy among poor Rroma \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tmust clearly be identified as a phenomenon of educational alienation that has \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tnothing to do with cultural traditions. The reason for the ongoing, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tunsatisfying status quo of the European Rroma policy, Jovanovic sees in a \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcorrupt political system that urges the Rroma to vote for certain candidates in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\texchange for support: <em style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u201cEach election \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tseason, politicians across Eastern Europe manipulate, bribe, extort and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tthreaten the Roma community into selling their vote to local gangsters in the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpocket of political parties. Some voters select multiple candidates so as not \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tto show any favouritism, thus spoiling their ballots. But most Roma voters are \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpressed to sell their ballots for a sack of flour or surrender them in the face \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tof intimidation from creditors, or mafiosi who endanger their families. This \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tleads to voter apathy, disillusionment and a sense of political powerlessness. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t[\u2026] Some are threatened with dismissal from work if they don\u2019t vote a certain \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tway. Buoyed by these kinds of manipulation, politicians elected in this way sit \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tin national parliaments with little regard for the plight of the Roma who \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\telected them.\u201d<\/em> Jovanovic\u2019s denunciation of corruption and nepotism is \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\timportant. However, he conveys a too simple notion of the social and political \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tconditions in Eastern Europe. He doesn\u2019t mention that the Rroma, although they \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcontribute important votes, ultimately only represent a minority of voters. In \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia where the largest Rroma minorities \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tlive, Rroma represent eight to ten percent of the total population. It is \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttherefore not only corruption, but also the unwillingness of the established \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tparties to do something about the marginalization of Rroma that must be \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tdenounced.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jovanovic, Zeljko (2014) Rallying the Roma, Europe&#8217;s most neglected minority. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn: <em style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Al Jazeera America online<\/em> vom \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t25.5.2014. <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/opinions\/2014\/5\/eu-parliament-electionsromaminorityrights.html\" style=\"font-family: Arial;\">http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/opinions\/2014\/5\/eu-parliament-electionsromaminorityrights.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jovanovic (2014) addresses the problem that Rroma concerns are implemented only very rarely in politics. Jovanovic attributes this to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[601,599,14,15,630,605],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bulgaria","category-hungary","category-news-eastern-europe","category-news-western-europe","category-north-macedonia","category-romania","tag-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11038,"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions\/11038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}