Conservative Party Makes Fatal Decision To Stay In Office

Traian Basescu owed his win in the 2004 presidential elections to a radical mutation in the electorate’s way to perceive politicians. The younger, dynamic, capitalist oriented voters slowly replaced the elder, conservative, socialism conditioned ones. So the final vote favored the risk takers, like Basescu was. He made a positive and lasting impression with his audacity, sudden moves, and clear-cut, final decisions.

One has to admit that Basescu fallowed into the footsteps of Corneliu Vadim Tudor, president of the Greater Romania Party, in opposition, and is emulated by Gigi Becali, president of the New Generation Party. The people following the speech Sunday of Conservative Party president Dan Voiculescu, at the National Council about to decide if the party would leave the ruling coalition, might have had the same feeling: that Voiculescu too was imitating Basescu.

During the quarter of an hour speech none could tell if Voiculescu was pleading for leaving or staying in government. At one point one was ready to swear the conservatives would leave the center-right ruling coalition, and at the next point one was ready to swear the opposite. It was very much like in those old action movies, in which one was ready to kill the other, but instead of pulling the trigger one started a long-winding monologue debating on the pros and cons of doing it. In the end the party took a vote on a resolution which recommended it stayed in government; and it voted for it.

The resolution attaches some strings on its coalition partners, stating the conservatives would continue to support them provided in six months they comply with a list of requirements.

The public perception, however, is that the Conservative Party will continue to stay in power not because its partners complied with its demands, but in spite of the fact that they insulted the party repeatedly.

The list of insults is long, starting with Basescu famously naming the conservatives arrival into the coalition fold as an "immoral solution," and ending with the pressures in the past weeks against Voiculescu, who was exposed for his alleged cooperation with the communist times intelligence services once he expressed intention to join the government as a deputy-PM.

I stated previously that a conservatives’ ruling against leaving government would prove fatal to both Voiculescu and his Conservative Party.

I stay by my words, now that the party took that disastrous decision. The label the conservatives were opportunists to the extreme stuck with them, since they joined the ruling coalition.

Basescu’s innuendo, when he branded the party as the "immoral solution", was that the conservatives entered parliament on a ticket with the Social Democrat Party, which it deserted after elections, to join the center-right coalition.

As time went by, their political allies reinforced that image of the crooked conservatives always blackmailing their partners in exchange for political support in parliament and government. Things are not looking better now, that the conservatives decided to stay in the coalition, while their partners look more embarrassed than happy with the decision.

Neither Basescu, formerly leader of the Democrat Party, nor PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu, leader of the National Liberal Party, formally and publicly asked the Conservative Party to stay in office.

Furthermore, both the media outlets close to the President, and the PM’s advisers continue their campaign against the conservatives, which reinforces the public perception the latter cling claws and teeth to stay in office, in spite of the kicks they get day in and day out from their partners.

The official reactions of both the liberals and democrats were lukewarm, when they heard the conservatives just rocked the coalition boat, but decided to not jump it.

The scandal which ensued when allegations about Voiculescu’s collaboration with the Securitate surfaced it would have been the Conservative Party opportunity to opt out of government and get rid of its label as an "immoral solution."

The mind-boggling decision of its National Council to stay in government gives the premise for that label to stick to the conservatives’ foreheads forever.

Translated by Anca Paduraru