Moldovan society is politicized and oversaturated with political messages, while the musical parodies on political themes that appeared recently facilitate the expression and perception of political ideas in a different form, contributing to increasing the population’s level of political culture. Such conclusions were formulated by the participants in the public debate “Our alliance is not for sale… People’s creation as an expression of political culture in a period of political crisis” that was staged by IPN News Agency.
”The musical parodies about the Moldovan political leaders produced by the radio station “Plai” pursued a number of goals. One of the goals was to bring new elements that are popular with the public on the media market of Moldova. The second goal is related to the fact that Moldovan society started to be extremely politicized. A lot of political information appeared and the people got tired of politics. That’s why we identified a method of conveying political messages taking into account the topicality, so as to deliver the same messages of the news, but in humoristic way to the listeners,” said the program director of Radio “Plai” Vitalie Calugareanu.
He also said that the radio station presented four parodies of the kind, dedicated mainly to the leaders of the former ruling alliance, and the experiment was successful. “This serial of parodies will go on. By the way, we didn’t ignore the Communist leader. The first parody was launched last year before his birthday. After the first parody about the leader of the PL appeared, we received a number of phone calls from people. They asked why this party was the first in the list of our parodies. We thus devoted attention to each of the parties so as to anger no one,” stated Vitalie Calugareanu.
Igor Botan, director of the Association for Participatory Democracy ADEPT, who is the permanent expert of the IPN project, said that the value of the messages conveyed by the recent musical parodies is much greater than the messages of a political analysis. “There are many TV channels where analysts explain the people what happens. But these messages can lead only to despair. The static phenomenon has an entirely different impact. The difference is that the people, after drawing conclusions based on the comments they hear, start to hate those who lied to them. The people feel that revenge is taken by these parodies and they smile,” said Igor Botan.
According to the expert, besides being an artistic creation popular with the public, the parody has a very subtle and efficient message. “The politicians are not afraid of harsh statements, including those made by other politicians and analysts. But they can do nothing against these parodies. “This phenomenon must be cultivated. This initiative starts to create a wave and our politicians will have to watch out,” said Igor Botan.
Andrei Batereanu, leader of the Youth Movement “Together for the Future”, remembered the sad experience of the April 7, 2009 events, when society wanted to make itself heard, but didn’t manage to. “As a leader of youth movement, I pondered often how to sensitize the people and the government so that they hear us. When you find an interesting method of making yourself heard, you become the focus of attention. Satire does well,” he stated.
In the same connection, Valentin Portas, author of fables and epigrams, said that the lack of healthy humor and satire is felt in Moldova and the satiric genres may disappear in the near future. “Political culture starts from a certain general level of political culture of people. They speak about political culture as something separate. But it cannot exist without general culture. Unfortunately, the general culture in Moldovan society is declining,” said Valentin Portas, adding that satire and humor will make society cleaner.
The public debate “Our alliance is not for sale… People’s creation as an expression of political culture in a period of political crisis” is the 16th of the series “Development of political culture by public debates”. The project is supported by Hanns Siedel Foundation.
