THE SHARKS' THEOREM

I would have voted for Nicușor Dan. Honestly. And now I congratulate myself on no longer having the right to vote. At least I have escaped the dilemma of having to choose between one disappointment and another. The man is a mathematician. And what an achievement! He has managed to demolish every equation of common sense. He may have been brilliant at mathematics. In politics, however, he seems to have discovered a revolutionary formula: change the axioms according to your interests, move the unknowns according to your needs, and whenever a contradiction emerges, solemnly declare that you know one hundred times more. Here enters the famous presidential line: “I know one hundred times better.” Extraordinary! Aristotle, the father of logic and the syllogism, would probably have closed his book and gone home. Not because he would have failed to understand the statement, but because he would have wanted to know precisely when “I know better” became an argument. “I know one hundred times better” proves nothing. It is merely the presidential version of “because I say so”, multiplied by enough arrogance to make it sound like authority. And this is where the real surprise begins: the transformation. In barely a year, the politician who appeared to be made of principles has acquired all the classic virtues of the seasoned politician who has learned the ways of power: slippery, slow when required to answer, and suddenly very agile when required to adapt.

Political lizard skin. A new temperature? A different position. Different pressure? A different explanation. A different question? More fog. He has forgotten his roots. Or perhaps we were naïve enough to believe that he had any. The electorate did not vote for him out of enthusiasm. For many, it was a vote of necessity, at a moment when the alternative appeared even worse. And now those same people are watching in astonishment as the man presented as the alternative begins to accommodate himself precisely to the mechanism he was supposed to change. He has moved closer to the old guard, to the political veterans of December 1989, to figures who built their careers in the previous century and who, like officials permanently entrenched in office, seem determined to remain in the same positions well into the next one. And when the uncomfortable questions arrive? There is no answer. There is fog. “I didn’t say that.” “I don’t understand the question.” “The situation is complex.” And if all of that fails, out comes the nuclear weapon: “I know better.” Perfect. Then we can abolish the press, questions, debates, and logic. There is no longer any need for arguments. We have a man who knows. One hundred times more. Why? It does not matter. He knows. This is the new presidential mathematics: proof becomes optional, explanation becomes suspect, and personal certainty takes the place of evidence. And how beautifully it fits his rise! The man who once appeared incapable of playing politics has learned the rules at astonishing speed. You almost get the impression that he completed an accelerated master’s degree in Romanian politics, with the system itself serving as his professor. And this is where the story becomes truly delicious: the rise and fall of the nerdy mathematician. The boy with the formulas, graphs, and paperwork, the outsider who seemed far too serious for the political fauna, becomes the head of the very system that many had hoped he would reform. What a monumental irony! From the mathematician’s desk straight into the seat of power. From outside the system to its very centre. From critic of the mechanism to administrator of it. And now he has to swim. Not in an Olympic swimming pool, where there are rules, lanes, and referees. But in the Romanian political ocean. Among sharks. The old sharks of the system, dressed in impeccable suits, equipped with positions, connections, survival instincts, and a political memory so selective that they forget everything that needs to be forgotten while remembering perfectly everything that serves their interests. And our mathematician swims among them, probably convinced that the ocean, too, can be solved through an equation. Except that here there is one problem no mathematics textbook can solve: sharks do not obey theorems. And so, the boy who appeared to have come to change the system has ended up in charge of that very system, swimming peacefully in the same aquarium as those whom his voters wanted gone. This, ultimately, is the grotesque tragedy of his transformation: The Rise: the outsider mathematician becomes president. The Metamorphosis: he discovers that power has rules of its own. The Decline: he begins to speak the language of the system. The Finale: he swims among sharks and, with scholarly confidence, explains to us that he knows one hundred times better. Perhaps he does. But there is a small problem. Romanians can see. And sometimes, when a politician tells you that he knows one hundred times better, the healthiest thing you can do is look around and ask a simple question: If you know so much better, how did you end up swimming with the sharks?