Month: January 2016

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication can be found here.

In September 2015 Romanian Anti-Corruption Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation against intermediaries acting on behalf of the private company ApaNova/Veolia, the provider of water services in Bucharest. Bucharest local councillors had allegedly taken bribes in order to approve tariff increases. The documents presented by the prosecutors showed how water prices doubled between 2008 and 2015 (a 125% increase).

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication in can be found here.

When the newly appointed Romanian Minister of Finance told reporters in an off-the-record meeting that Romanian workers should take a cue from workers in Brazil or India who are ready to work for pennies, she offered one of those rare moments when power speaks the truth. Unintentionally, the minister articulated both the entire trajectory of post-communist transition and also the current strategy for development of the technocratic government, appointed after the November 2015 protests.

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication in can be found here.

Everything started in July 2014 after a fight in the corridors of the Albanian Parliament. Two members of parliament, Arben Ndoka and Pjerin Ndreu from the ruling Socialist Party, used their fists against a fellow MP of the oppositional Democratic Party, Genc Strazimiri. Some minutes before, Strazimiri was speaking against what he called the criminalization of the Parliament by the Socialist Party, by which he meant that several MP’s with criminal records had been elected.

Turkey is in a state of political turmoil, which is likely to end with a full-scale civil war if clashes continue to escalate at this pace. On the one side of the conflict, there is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been riding a pragmatic coalition since the restart of the conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK) and the Turkish state in July. By mobilizing an ultra-nationalist discourse and ending the negotiations with the PKK, Erdoğan was able to recover the electoral losses he suffered in the 7 June 2015 elections within only five months.