Brasov: Capital of Romania
Populist and popular (though its audience is shrinking) OTV is the most honest television station in Romania. Honest because it fully admits that it serves up complete rubbish and never tries to hide the fact. Compare with Pro TV or Antena 1, whose programmes are just as pathetic and sensationalist (especially the news), and yet who claim to be serious television stations.
No, OTV is what it is: crap for the masses, and never claims to be anything but. Good luck to it.
Anyway, OTV – for those who do not know – was one of few television stations that backed Traian Basescu in last year’s presidential election (which Basescu won by a pipsqueak). Over the course of the first half of this year, however, OTV became increasingly critical of Basescu’s government, (the channel is popular with pensioners, whose incomes Basescu is desperate to cut) and to all intents and purposes changed sides.
Just as it did so, OTV’s founder, brains and main presenter (the inexhaustible Dan Diaconescu) was arrested on charges of bribery. Kept in prison for a few days while prosecutors tried to find evidence against him, on his release Diaconescu announced that he was giving up television for politics, forming his own party, the Party of the People (Partidul Poporului; PP. It even has a song.).
Now, as you would expect, the PP’s policies are by and large made up of populist nonsense, the kind of pledges that only parties who will never take power can make. (Despite currently polling at around 13 per cent – the same as the ruling PD-L, we predict that the PP will not take even a single seat in parliament come the next election).
But there is one PP policy we like: make Brasov the capital of Romania.
If ever a city needed its wings clipped, it’s Bucharest. With very little going for it beyond its size – it is more than four times as big as any other city in Romania – and status as Romania’s capital, it gets to punch well above the weight of its merits. Move the capital elsewhere and suddenly Bucharest becomes just a big city in southern Romania.
Brasov on the other hand could do with the leg-up that being Romania’s capital would give it. If accompanied by a prolonged series of government-led investment in infrastructure, in new public buildings, in new homes and – most importantly – an airport, the city would suck-in tens, even hundreds of thousands of people from the surrounding countryside, at a stroke dragging them out of their subsistence-farming existence.
Countries have moved their capitals before: Brazil (Rio to Brasilia), Germany (Bonn to Berlin) and Kazakhstan (Almaty to Astana) being just three examples, while other countries have two or more capitals (The Netherlands, Bolivia, South Africa). For anyone remotely interested, this generally sceptical academic paper discusses the ins and outs of moving a capital, focusing on the Kazak decision to move the capital from Almaty to Astana. During World War I, Romania moved its capital to Iasi.
In all probability, Romania is about as likely to move its capital to Brasov as Bucharest Life is to become Romania’s next president. It is not going to happen. (Alas).
But it’s a decent subject for dinner-party/pub discussion, and here’s to the all-conquering Partidul Poporului for raising it.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I would especially like if a mountain town became capital because of the scenery. Bucharest is too flat
I would vote for my native town of Campulung Muscel (the first capital of Tara Romaneasca). We have plenty of space 
nobody else would vote for Campulung.
I don’t think Brasov would be a better place if 10s of thousands of people moved in and all the vultures from Bucharest descended on the place. It shouldn’t need to become the capital to justify an airport.
As somebody said to me yesterday there might not in fact be tens thousands of people in the surrounding countryside: the area around Brasov has seen more emigration than most others in Romania.