After Two Years in Office

Two years had passes since the center-right government took power and, judging by the opinion polls, people are content with it.
The best thing having been achieved is the appearance corruption left town, in spite of the arguments to the contrary.
Many people inside and outside Romania truly believe now that people in office do not steal anymore from the public money.

True, information in the news tell from time to time about the hundreds of million of euros which target companies close to the ruling Democrat Party, or about the dominance of National Liberal Party members in the finance area, or about the links of the people in office with the oil, energy and other strategic markets.

But the importance of the image supersedes the one told by the facts.

The past two years since President Traian Basescu and PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu are at the helm political tension was the rule, not the exception.
The general mood was that of constant mutual suspicion, giddiness and negotiations behind the scenes.

Basescu proved to be more concerned with his public image than his main contender in the presidential elections, then Social Democrat Party, or PSD, leader Adrian Nastase.
Basescu wants to make believe that all the other political actors on the market, like Tariceanu; Dan Voiculescu - the head of the Conservative Party; Mircea Geoana - the current leader of the PSD; Corneliu Vadim Tudor - the head of the Greater Romania Party or former president and PSD leader Ion Iliescu.

I have no idea for how long Basescu can count on the faith the electorate placed in him.
Certainly he is no demon, but a person who continually challenges the political world and wants it to revolve around him.
He came to power with the vote of the right-leaning voters but in the past two years lost the support of many intellectuals, who publicly stated their disappointment with his lack of polish.
Some are not afraid to say it is more reminiscent of the behavior of a pirate. So, Basescu fans change by the day, in the sense that he can now rely on the vote of different people than those electing him.
The 55% approval rate that Basescu still has comes from people who enjoy his excess both in terms of displaying authority or bad manners.

Question is if these 55% of the population would be as consistent as to go to the polls in 2009, when Basescu first mandate ends.

Tariceanu was constantly under Basescu’s attacks and failed to retort in kind. It seems he does not trust that the true positive economic results achieved during his holding the PM office would be enough to upset the balance of power in his favor.
Tariceanu somehow lives under the impression that if openly challenging Basescu and go into opposition, he would loose everything.

However, one of the most dangerous displays of power Basescu did was to constantly make the intelligence services a topic of public debate.
As a matter of fact, his first visit to state institutions after taking office in December 2004 was to the headquarters of the intelligence and counter-intelligence offices.

Since then the latter were constantly making the news, be it the hostage crisis in Iraq, the avian flu, the undercover agents in the media, the Rompetrol corruption case, the military procurement cases and so on.

Because of his behavior, Basescu exposed the intelligence services to an unprecedented public pressure, not conducive of higher professionalism in the field.
This was just one of the long lists of strategic mistakes Basescu made during his past two years in office.

Some would wonder if I find anything positive worth mentioning to have happened in the past two years.
Of course I do.
But I let other journalists to praise Basescu, because there is no short supply of those.