“Populism, corruption and incompetence go hand in hand and are the death of democracy”

Collective Affair wears a Romanian film for the first time at the Oscars, which will be awarded on Sunday 25 April. Named in the “best documentary” and “best foreign film” categories, the film, which takes the pulse of an ubiquitous Romania, concerns us all. Its starting point is a news item. On October 30, 2015, a fire ravaged the Colectiv Club, a Bucharest nightclub, in which some fifty people died. An equivalent number of wounded, theoretically out of the woods, died in the following days in hospital.

The director then follows in the footsteps of journalist Catalin Tolontan, whose investigation will reveal a network of criminal corruption and a large-scale health scandal.

The Minister of Health, who nevertheless belongs to a reformist government appointed for one year, is forced to resign. His successor aims to cleanse the Augean stables of a rotten health system to the core. He will not have time to accomplish this task. When the film ends, the elections brought victory back to the corrupt and populist Social Democratic Party. Back to square one. It remains for the spectator to pinch himself to know that he has not dreamed.

Your film is terrifying, strictly speaking. It brings us into a long-standing system where corruption plagues everything – including the health care system – and literally kills people. Your film also shows that the attempt to set up an integrity policy following this scandal is ultimately disowned by the ballot box. Why, according to you, this fatality?

I think that the prospects for improving a company are much longer than that of an individual. Confidence in politics is very hard to gain and very easy to lose. It is almost impossible to solicit trust for any other kind of politics when most of the media are in the pay of a populist power and manipulate public opinion all day long. This is also why I believe that good journalism which seeks to establish and verify the truth of the facts is now vital for our democracies.

In the case of the current situation in Romania, I think the fault lies with a technocratic government which promised transparency and reforms and which not only did not keep its promises but hired a minister of health, itself. same hospital director, who covered up the scandal of the diluted disinfectant. This is a lesson for all governments: as long as policies protect the privileged and the privileges, they will be rolled at the ballot box by the populists.

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