The Swedish Model

Do you remember the "Swedish model"? The one promoted by the same fellow that whetted the Romanians against each other and delayed our admittance in the civilized world for at least a decade. The FSN-Romanian state, the sinister mutation of the Romanian-communist state, was a prison, the economy was going down, the miners were terrorizing the Capital. The historical parties and the intellectual elites were suppressed with the use of force, television had become a manipulation instrument that had built the premises of a civil war. The files of the Security members were being burnt at Berevoiesti. Inflation was galloping, the cities were collapsing, and the stray dogs were mating on the Boulevards. Romania had never looked like this before. Looking back, the Ceausescu era doesn’t seem so bad at all as compared to the life in the lies and manipulation in the early 90s when Iliescu and his state-party took the lead. The fact that now, fifteen years after the Revolution, this Romanian Lukasenko is still having a place in the Parliament instead of being behind bars, that he appears in the history books as a President instead of being considered the exponent of a criminal ideology shows that Romania is still in the hands of the bastards of the past.

In spite of showing concern for the national disaster surrounding him, Iliescu was talking about the Swedish model. If he did this in front of his neighbors, they would have probably called an Ambulance to take him to bedlam. However, as the President of the country, using the television as megaphone, he got to be listened and even believed. The poor Romanians didn’t have anything to eat, but they were watching the "Swedish model" soap opera every day. They were dreaming about tons of snow, reindeers and very rich people that drove their hundreds of Volvos through counties enlightened by the aurora borealis… They were dreaming about graceful flight attendants called Emanuelle bringing them Martinis aboard their personal jets… It seemed nice…

Last night, I got back from Sweden, where I have talked to a lot of people from different areas of the society about the things going on in their country. They all smiled when they heard that, in the 90s, there was a politician that was proposing the Swedish model as a development model for their country. They all told me that the Swedish model had disappeared a long time before that. It had been trendy in the 1970s. Sweden itself had gone on to other strategies and the world itself had changed, but certain communists hadn’t found this out.

The Swedish prosperity (which they see as the actual quality of life and is measured in the quantity of clean air inspired) is based on the fact that the Swedish people form a healthy, modest and simple community. Their parties are just ways to finding simple solutions for their problems. Their Church unites them. Their culture is still felt as a soul of the community. The ecology replaces the ideologies.

In Sweden, I was under the impression that I was living in one of the greatest worlds mankind had ever created. Unfortunately, Mr. Brucan died and there is no other person capable of telling us how many decades it would take us to get there…