Agitated Times

We are living the torturing months that usually follow a change in the political power. They are months of agitation and uncertainty. The failure of the 1996-2000 governing is still present in the memory of the new members of the Government. We all wonder: will there be any history repeating? Will the democratic side of the political picture show us that it is weak and that it doesn""t know how to lead? Will we be again defeated by the institutions of the past? Every move of the new power is being watched with the same nervousness one feels when watching dangerous aerobatics. The analysts jump to blaming the first wrong steps and making dark previsions. The smallest signs of rise in the prices touch the people and they have already started to wail. "You""ll see where they will get us"... The Romanian political environment has always been a boiling cauldron. No one was ever allowed to quietly and calmly build something in time.

However, I cannot remember feeling transition this way. It seems that everything around us is being de-structured in order to be differently arranged. When the leech goes in the cocoon, its entire body decomposes and the amorphous substance slowly turns into the butterfly’s new structures. I hope that, at least now, following this agitation of making and unmaking, our political life will be normal.

Let me not believe that the SDP (Social Democratic Party) will remain a party under the permanent influence of the past. Even if its ultra-conservatory side wins again, even if the Iliescu-Nastase "tandem" monopolizes the party again, the seeds of the change are already there and they cannot be taken out anymore. I believe that, in five years time, we will have a modern SDP, free of the old members and of its image of a crypto-communist party. A smaller and more trustful party. For now, it would be better for this party to start the operations of clearance and purification from the inside. These operations shouldn’t appear only following power’s hard hits. It seems that SDP has a paradoxical fate: the stronger it will look, the weaker it will be. The communist monolith and its members "strongly united around the unique leadership" disappeared in few days time, in December ’89. This will also be the trajectory of SDP, if reformation does not appear.

The power, on the other hand, is in the same state of agitation. There is only one coherent core inside it: the liberal doctrine. However, it does not form a whole, and it is not in majority either. The DP (Democratic Party) is a party formed around Traian Basescu, similar to the SDP, which is known to be Ion Iliescu’s party. They are populist parties, without clear doctrines, that crystallized around certain important people. I am very disappointed in the DUHR (Democratic Union of the Hungarians in Romania). I am angry at the fact that I praised Marko Bela a few months ago. There is nothing modern, firm or moral about this party. They are only a bunch of opportunists. As for the HPR (Humanist Party in Romania), I would like someone to explain me what is these people’s connection to the Parliament and Government.

So, where is the power? Who is offering the coherence and credibility the reform asks for? This why I consider that a unification wearing the liberal sign is necessary. I am referring to a more open, "generic", liberalism that would firmly target the European values and the abidance of the law. This liberalism is, of course, present in the NLP (National Liberal Party), but it is lost in the group of members of the other parties governing. There can be no other basis for the unification.

Therefore, the parties are going through a tough process of clearance. We mustn’t expect them to bring "Romania’s transfiguration". For now, there are only two forces towing the country on the road to development: the Presidency and the European Union. If he is not touched by Emil Constantinescu’s magnificence and if he limits his tendency towards a certain populism, Traian Basescu has the historical opportunity of becoming the reformer we have all been waiting for. There are no signs of fatigue or compromise after his "enthronement". Of course he is sometimes going beyond its duties as President, duties that Emil Constantinescu weakly guarded. But these duties have their flexibility: the institutions adapt to the personality of the person leading and representing them.

As for the EU (and NATO), I believe that not only the power’s supporters, but each citizen will agree with me when I say that their guidance - "the automatic pilot" we always talk about" - put us on the right way, even if contradictions appear always.