by MIRCEA CARTARESCU - January 25th 2005
The optimal configuration of the Government for a country like Romania is no other than the governing alternation of two opposite political polls. This system worked in the times of the countryâs real democracy and must work now, too.
What I want to emphasize is the fact that neither the victory in 1996 of the Democratic Convention, nor the recent victory of the J.T. (Justice and Truth) Alliance are part of the scheme I am talking about. They were nothing else than the premise (that was missed in 1996 and, letâs hope, the winning move in 2004) of a system to allow the appearance of the alternation. In all these fifteen years that our nation wasted, the democratic opposition didnât fight in a normal political system, in which certain forces, representing different layers of the society, confront each other in order to get to govern. The democratic opposition fought a desperate fight against a gigantic state-party, which was completely opaque to the multi-party idea, following its predecessor, the RCP (Romanian Communist Party). All this time, the Social Democratic Party was anything else but a social-democratic party, in the real, modern, meaning of the term. It was only a survival (and prosperity) instrument for the leading and repressive instruments in the old Socialist Republic. Its repulsion towards the political plurality has been visible immediately, even since the FNS (Front of National Salvation) tried to propose itself as the only valid in the after-the-revolution Romania.
As a consequence, in order for the political life in Romania to get normal, the two political polls I was talking about must be defined. The paradox is the fact that the liberal poll will be defined faster than the social-democratic one. I am expecting the planned unification between the DP (Democratic Party) and the NLP (National Liberal Party) to simply cause the appearance of a liberal party (the Romanian Liberal Party?), and not some political illusion. This is because I believe that Romania really needs a strong and modern liberal party, which would be able to quicken the development of the national economy. There is a lot of talking lately about the initiation (by this unification or by the unification of several small parties) of a "popular" party, with a Christian-Democratic shade. I am very skeptical about this new political creature. Here, no one knows the real meaning of a "popular party". All the popular formations until now in Romania quickly became populist formations. In addition, a Christian democracy with orthodox towers in the background is a really Dadaist idea. We donât need another agitation of the waters right now. We need firm choices, based on two well-built ideologies and with a solid insertion into the social issues. We already have a middle class, which gets more and more prosper, which can form the basis of the new Romanian liberalism.
Translation : SORIN BALAN