Like in the shell game: the pea never leaves the cup it was under from the very beginning. It is only the fools’ attention that leaves the premises. And, just as in that infamous game, so too in cruel reality.

Why do you keep dazing us with all this?

For money, of course. Exactly. To take it, because no one has invented the return leg yet. God forbid! That would be a case of force majeure.

And whom is God supposed to protect anymore? Only us, from you. As for you, I doubt He even looks your way anymore.

What is there to see?

In the clergy division:

The seminary in Huși? Dangerous.

A former Securitate operative suddenly turned priest? Absurdly stupid.

Pomohaci? Oh, piss off! To quote a Roma columnist.

Little burial houses at 200,000 lei apiece (unfinished)? Well, is that arrogance? Nooooo. You cannot rest in the next world unless you have, courtesy of the BOR, both an asphalt car park and lighting and video surveillance. Another 200,000 lei. For each compound.

I am still trying to work out how you justify a coffin with a roof, at €40,000 apiece. Do you need heating? A bathroom? Parquet flooring? Double-glazed windows? BGS security? Are you going to have electricity connected?

Will St Peter give you a dressing-down in the next world?

“Hello… hello… Great big priests, rattling about like Norwegians in clogs, in simple wooden boxes, in the no-man’s-land towards eternity. Turn around. Off to economy class, please!”

Or do you feel remorse, and therefore need a cage rather than a box, so that you cannot come back??

In the politicians’ division:

Well, this year you gave 1.9 billion lei in the state budget to Religious Affairs – in the name of the Good Lord. Even though the Religious Affairs authorities had requested only 1.8 billion. It was a good year. Just not for those in Research. But perhaps they should open their eyes, too, and put the books down. Let them take note of how things are done. What is all this fuss about research, research… We shall continue the litany.

On top of the 1.9 billion, you also gave 100,000,000 lei to the Cathedral of the Salvation of Your Nation and 10,000,000 lei for THE NECESSITIES for 2026 – to some monks. FOUR of them. Great souls. Podromu Hermitage. Or why not call this magical place by its real name: The Island of Romanian Political Love.

You all crawled up Mount Athos, on your elbows, on your bellies, riding donkeys, covered in little crosses like the windscreen of an articulated lorry – all the way to the top. May the holy signal reach you… and your pockets… from now on. And for ever and ever.

And power? Well, if you simply tossed it from one person to another – would that still be power? It would not do. Power comes from grace, you see. Yes. And grace grabs hold of you the moment you feel your backside getting singed.

But as soon as something starts smelling burnt, what luck, His Most Dark Eminence arrives immediately. Who? The Tanker Rider. Orthodoxy’s Area Sales Manager for Tomis. Thank goodness for the pure and holy idea of bottling, labelling and selling 0.5-litre bottles of water on Epiphany – because I was terribly worried that, in all that enthusiasm, the devil might break a leg jumping from one tanker to another.

Your Most Dark Eminence, Tanker Rider – according to your axiom that a raped woman should also go to prison, because she was the one who tempted the animal, after all, and in any case she is also to blame for the level of blatant ignorance that Your Darkness demonstrates day after day.

Let us return to the same template: priests who allow themselves to be tempted by politicians – and that too, with complete openness and mutual consent – should they not spend some time in prison alongside their party-going colleagues, at least for the shameless debauchery committed without the slightest sign of repentance, at the country’s expense?

And shall we all climb down from the tree of arrogance now?

Yes. I am talking to you as well!

• When you have your lackeys conceal the little cross on top of your mitres because you cannot fit, so “puffed up”, into your expensive limousines…
  
• When you collect donations without limit, without ever having heard of accounting or the tax authorities;
  
• When you fleece people by putting a price on kissing bones, or on the same bread rolls that you resell five or six times a day to every pensioner who comes to have their dead remembered;
  
• And if you are really desperate to have your dead remembered in church, well… the dead cannot hear you anyway. Except when you turn up with seven parcels. If you have fewer, well… come back to the visiting room when you are properly prepared.
  
• When you stage exorcisms that make our little old ladies spin around more than MC Hammer in his glory days;
  
• When Mungiu received the Palme d’Or and three awards at Cannes for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days;
  
• When you demand that we call you: The Most Blessed…

Do you have even a shred of shame for all the misery and poverty of the people you ride roughshod over?

Because shepherding seems to be a job reserved for exceptions. Yes, there are exceptions. But, just as in the justice system, far too few for them to matter.

Your Most Reverend Eminences, with stage names and no identification by national identity card: even the Son of God had a first name and a surname!

But what do you know? … Herod did not.

As for politics?

Shall we open the betting book, seeing as you operate solely on chicanery and hope?

1. You have no interest in forming a government for the time being. Why? Well, who is the clever one, boss? While we were fighting over merdenele and bread rolls and you took Georgescu out for a little fresh air, like the relics of Saint Nectarios; let me repeat – while we were hitting ourselves over the head with bread because of hunger and all that inflation, who had an approved budget and banks eager to lend to suckers, with no upper limit?

(Yes, you understood correctly – who got this windfall? Why, who else? The most enterprising, thrifty and good-housekeeping people in the state apparatus. Mayors of villages and communes. The best of the best. No limit! Regardless of repayment capacity!!!)

2. The money in the State Budget this year? The money bearing Ilie Bolojan’s signature? Pfff, no problem, boss! A small amendment and there is no need for either a PM or ministers. Withdrawals against the sums approved by Ilie Bolojan in the 2026 State Budget can be made this year by the heads of institutions subordinate to ministries as well – by submitting a direct request to the Ministry of Finance. Simplified procedure. No consultation with Parliament.

3. When will we have a government? Well, they have no reason to have one before the end of the year. What do you want? Someone to be held responsible for the spending??? That is not how you steal. You do it the way they are doing it now. Decisions beyond the limits of responsibility, shielded by the governmental vacuum.

4. And when we do have a government, it will consist exclusively of PSD, PNL and UDMR. The certain positions:

• A. Nazare: because he kept the stock ledger up to date with the withdrawals while the bosses were on fictitious sick leave, and only he knows how much was given and to whom;
  
• Ministry of the Environment – which will undoubtedly, and unfortunately, go back to the UDMR. Unfortunately, because across the entire Romanian political landscape, I can name only one person who is capable, honest and hard-working – Diana Buzoianu;
  
• And the PM? Do not rush. Let us analyse the cudgels. When PNL put forward Klaus Iohannis for the presidency, what did PSD oppose him with? Exactly. Viorica Dăncilă. Now, when PNL has successively come forward with Ciucă, with Vestea, and continues crawling on its belly with makeshift ideas and people thrown into the arena without the slightest chance; pushed right up to the absolute limit of their incompetence… we have to ask ourselves: who is the sacrifice for this time? And the answer is not Grindeanu, but rather Victor Ponta.

As for Mr Nicușor Dan – I did not believe him from the beginning. As honest as he was as mayor, the compromise on the basis of which he ended up becoming… such a President appears to be equally serious. And I do not understand you, Mr Dan. Why do you keep bursting into laughter at the persistent and well-founded questions from civil society – about the shameful transformation you are going through?

“Broadly speaking, I have achieved the objectives I set for myself with regard to my supporters.”

That is what you said yesterday. True. Except that you did not say who these supporters are.

We merely elected you.

And as for you, Mr Bolojan? When did I begin not to believe you either?

The day you entered negotiations over the sums in the State Budget.

Everything you negotiated, absolutely everything – down to the last penny – was solely for the same rotten, ageing mechanism of power. Not a single leu for Romanians.

You came out of the negotiations with 1,057,397,000 lei more than the total with which you went in. Only two beneficiaries – for the entire sum of more than one billion lei: mayors of villages and communes, and parish priests. Annex 7.03 to the State Budget. That is all. Down to the last leu.

And, as fate would have it, this is also the only annex in Romania’s State Budget – without any legislative anchor or legal basis whatsoever. In other words, without legal cover.

VAT revenues are not divided preferentially. You were aware of what you were doing. The fact that every PM before you did the same thing, over a period of more than 11 years, with sums up to ten times larger (see the case of Viorica Dăncilă – Annex 7.03 had a value of 11 billion lei during her term and under her signature), does not excuse you.

I repeat: the mistakes of your predecessors do not justify or exonerate your choice.

Or perhaps, for a while, you merely appeared more upright than you really are.

Chapeau. It worked.

My question is:

Was it worth it?

The 2026 State Budget Law, Official Gazette, link here:

https://mfinante.gov.ro/static/10/Mfp/buget2026/legeabugetuluidestat2026.pdf

Starting on page 170 of the 2026 State Budget Law (link attached above), you can find the breakdown of Annex 7.03.

An extract from the first page of Annex 7.03 (2026), below.