For a Political Clearing Up

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 country’s 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, let’s 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 didn’t 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 don’t 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.

As for the second poll, I think that the natural alternative for liberalism is social - democracy, a slower, but, maybe, safer mean. In nowadays’ Romania there is no social-democratic party. The only way for it to appear is the breaking into pieces of the monster named SDP, by melting its communist dense armor and sending its patriarchs to retirement. From its cleaner and a little bit modern side, combined with some transfers from the DP, there might finally appear something to call social - democracy. Do you remember the expiation of the liberal unification? It was nothing compared to the one of the SDP members. It would be an agonizing, slow and violent clearance process, because it is a natural thing for the crocodiles to survive the geological eras and to eat people nowadays as well. There is still a fact that must be clear for the young SDP members: the allies of the crocodiles end up as their victims. The real SDP members don’t have to make the regain of the elections their most important goal, but take any risk for creating the social-democratic poll. If SDP forms the Government again in four years time from now, the social - democracy, but it will loose its only chance of appearing in Romania.

So, let’s put aside the popular and populist aberrations. We need liberalism. We need social - democracy. We need the democratic alternation between them, and we need it to happen in a climate of political normality that, unfortunately, is very far from us today.