OPEN LETTER

One Year of Work and Hope

One year ago, we were just a small group of young persons who decided to offer Romanians a new type of political action, the Union for the Reconstruction of Romania - URR.
At that time our idea sparked the interest and enthusiasm of thousands of Romanians - from within the country and from abroad - who saw in us the hope that not everything is lost. That Romania has, among its millions of apathetic citizens, individuals who are not willing to be silent and to just accept the dominance and prevalence of robbery, lack of decency and incompetence.

In this very first year, all of us made significant efforts. We managed to gather around us proactive, young persons with whom we set up 18 local branches of the party, in Bucharest and across the country. We registered URR with 32.000 founding members from all Romanian counties, as required by the recent law for political parties. We built up the most popular website that a Romanian political party ever had - www.urr.ro.

We worked on projects, we attended trainings and seminars, developed relationships with leaders of foreign center-right parties. We expressed our stand on issues, fighting heavily to break the mass-media blockage, perfidiously imposed by the current administration.
In addition to our regular jobs, we worked as a team so everyone who wants to live in this country may have the chance of a future right here in Romania.

We believe that Romania in its current shape does not fit in Europe. And we also believe that Reconstructed Romania, a country which we can sincerely be proud of, cannot become so as a result of either Europeans or Americans efforts, no matter how many bows our current political leaders make to one group or another. The reconstruction of Romania must be done by us, those who live here and want to raise our children here. We cannot gain the respect of other nations through our tenacity to please them on every occasion, but as a result of our tenacity to construct something enduring and worth of respect.

We, in URR, have started such of construction that is not so easy or quick of a endeavor as we would want it to be. We need resources, but the relationship between politics and money in the last 13 years in Romania has been a muddy one. Although we were "lured", we do not want to enter in this corrupt system and that is why we have to grow by designing a cleaner way of drawing resources and supporters. The Romanian resources of altruism and involvement seem to be drained by the lack of vision and trust that is present all around us.

In order to build something solid, we have to work as a team and working as team requires that we trust each other. Even today, after one year of steady and transparent progress, we meet "grown ups" individuals, who still believe that we are obscurely influenced and led by that person or that party. These people periodically find out, always ahead of us, what group or party we will join or merge and what time. It is as if in Romania it will be inconceivable to believe that there are honest persons who would be willing to work for the common good. If this is the mentality Romania wants to join Europe with, than we can only hope that the "old lady" will survive the shock produced by the appearance of this mutilated portrait in her house.

We want to say it again, loud and clear: what we are building within the URR is not for sale to any person or party at any given price. The construction we are working at every day will have as much life and future as we will be able to give it, all of us who want to protect our dignity and the right for decent living.
Applauses and pats on the back help us but don't push us forward. In a few months, there will come a time at which everyone who wishes us well us at the moment to actively participate in supporting this initiative with money, time, creativity, work and other resources which they are willing to invest for "a different kind of Romania".

Otherwise, the ones that humiliate us each day from TV screens and from their dark windshielded, siren equipped limousines will win again. It will be, again, their victory against honestly working people. We will be led again by the despise of those who make wrong humiliating laws, who are ravaging banks, parasiting dying state owned firms and building fake empires.

One year ago we were a group of enthusiasts. Now we are an organisation of responsible people aware that their road is full of obstacles and hardships. But we are determined to make a different kind of politics in Romania. It is a road we have to cover because we strongly believe that there is another way. It is important to become stronger and stronger in order to make our voice heard, a voice clearly stating the problems we are facing with and viable and efficient solutions for them. When we will succed together to make them work it will be better for you and for your parents and for your children. You are their hope. How much time are you going to delay them?

Cosmin Alexandru
President
The Union for the Reconstruction of Romania - URR