Answers to most frequently asked questions

Questions

1. How can I become a member of URR?
2. Do you have a local organization in my county?
3. I have applied for membership. What do I do next? Was my application approved?
4. Why do you have the "follower" category in addition to normal membership?
5. Many people promised things before you. How do you guarantee that you will keep yours?
6. What are your objectives and how do you plan to meet them?
7. What is your political doctrine and program?
8. How do you plan to stop corruption?

Answers

1. Being a member of URR gives one both rights and obligations. The rights are, mainly, to elect and be elected in all leadership structures of the party. We do however require from all members a certain level of political activism. We firstly accept in our ranks only people who believe in our declaration of Values and Principles and agree to donate a part of their time and energy to the cause of changing the Romanian political landscape. Therefore we formulated a set of criteria that have to be met by anybody wishing to join.

These criteria are:

1. They adhere to our Values and Principles
2. They were not members of the national leadership of any political party (except youth organizations)
3. They declare honestly and openly any cooperation they might have had with the former Securitate.
4. They declare openly and honestly their criminal record, including any amnesty.
5. They pass an interview with a member of the URR HR team.
6. They donate at least 8 hours of their time weekly for party activities.
7. They pay a monthly contribution whose amount they choose for themselves on the day of the admission interview.
   

The activity of the members will be evaluated every 6 months by the HR department and the adherence to the above criteria will be assessed.

Should major gaps be observed the party may withdraw the member status to any given member, following due process according to the party by-laws.
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2. Please read our strategy of territory deployment at www.urr.ro/en/action/plan.shtml.

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3. An application is neither approved nor rejected. It is registered as such. You will be contacted in the immediate future and asked for help in specific actions. After a maximum of three months, if we feel we can cooperate with each other you will be invited to join the ranks of the party, following an admission process. Until this invitation you are considered a "follower". We have this unusually difficult admission procedure to protect you and us from becoming a colleague with opportunists and cronies.

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4. Being a member gives one both rights and obligations. We are not pursuing a very large member base with small individual responsibilities, but rather a small base with extended responsibilities. Therefore we will invite to join us people who, like us, can invest time and energy to the common cause. In order to mutually understand if this requirement is acceptable and feasible we ask prospective members to activate with us for a maximum three months trial period in which both parties can assess their willingness and ability of working together. This period can be shortened or even cancelled if one has good references and/or proves him/herself. Further more, if someone finds our requirements for implication for members excessive but would, nevertheless, like to support the cause of the party somehow, then this "follower" category is actually the most suited for them.

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5. We have do guarantees. If people only undertook those initiatives whose success was guaranteed we would all still be living in caves and pick fruit with sticks. The only guarantee we have is our name and reputation. You can believe us and come with us to take action to solve the many problems our country faces or sit on the fence to see what happens and wait for guarantees. Skepticism is a legitimate attitude but, unfortunately, not at all constructive. This precise attitude of the people allowed the political class to degenerate to the parasitic stage it is in today. Sociologists call this a "self-fulfilling prophecy". This means that if you strongly believe that something, good or bad, will happen then the chance of that event to happen significantly increases. The explanation is very simple: what you believe will influence the way you act and your attitude influences the events around the particular event. In our particular case, skepticism and fence-riding generates inactivity and negative thinking which in turn makes one see more the mistakes than successes which in turn produces inactivity and more inactivity. But changes don't come by magic, they need activism and energy. So the initiative will fail: bingo! You were right! "Just another political party, did I not tell you?" Isn't it wonderful to be always right? Even if it serves no purpose? This is the Romanian fatalism at work and it has already turned us into a spectator nation.

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6. The first step is to participate in the next general elections and win enough seats in Parliament to make a difference. Then we will use this political platform to advocate our beliefs and ideas. The political class is currently blocked in an oligopolistic situation: although they pretend to compete nobody really fights the other because nobody has any real interest in rocking the boat. Such situations are disrupted only by the appearance of a new entrant. A party does not need to be very big to force the system to change. It just needs to be very active and be composed of people who have nothing to win by preserving the status quo and nothing to lose by changing it. Gradually we hope we will expand our power and popularity base and prove that we have real solutions to the problems facing Romania today. We will also use any position of power we might succeed in reaching to prove ourselves and our pragmatic solutions. Thus, gradually, we will change the way politics is run in Romania today.

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7. Our ideology is center-right. This means, mainly, that we believe in individual freedom and liberties, in private property and initiative, in a minimalist state. We also believe in equality in front of the law, in the duty of the society to protect its least favored members and to secure access to basic opportunities for all the members. The state should, in our view, do strictly only what the private initiative can't or won't, i.e. to regulate, to guarantee freedom of individuals and markets, to balance macro-economic forces, to provide the economic and social fabric and infrastructure, to ensure balanced regional development, to establish strategic directions and priorities, to provide public safety and the defense of the nation. It is not to own economic players, to rule by decree, to stifle competition by mandating people to buy products of its own companies, to create meta-strategies by the hundreds on the national level, without applicability and practical result, to control the media, to retain the monopoly in major economic areas, and many, many other absurdities that are so typical for the Romanian state today. In terms of political program, it is currently under construction and debate and we will release parts of it gradually, as we move forward.

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8. We will start by fighting political corruption, because we believe in the old Romanian adagio that says "the fish starts rotting from the head", and therefore we will start by being untouchable ourselves. In order to achieve this we will be extremely restrictive with our admission policy for new members and we will not accept any support that has illegal or illegitimate strings attached. Then, as we move to positions of power, we will promote laws that ban the main sources of political corruption: financing of political parties, conflict of interests, illegal lobbying. Our political program will have a special section dedicated to the subject. Follow the debates on the forum and let us know your views.

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