Romania’s President KOs The PM

Saturday evening, after stating for two days in a raw that he will not relent, PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu gave up the fight and accepted to give up on Varujan Vosganian as his choice for European Union Commissioner.

The National Liberal Party, or PNL, led by Tariceanu, kept its right to nominate Romania’s candidate for the position, which now is Leonard Orban, the former chief negotiator for the EU accession.

No matter what the future will bring us, the failure to get Vosganian accepted turned into a public image disaster for the PNL and Tariceanu in particular.

Some liberals tried to soften the hard landing when they recalled that other states recently joining the EU had to give up on their first nomination for the Commissioner too.

Indeed.

Only that Romania’s situation is different than those in the Czech Republic and Latvia were.

As I already stated in the editorial I signed Thursday for Jurnalul national, Romanians value higher selecting a candidate for the EU Commission than voting for a president.

This is due to a long tradition of Ottoman influence over Romania’s territory, which made it of paramount importance who the leader accepted by Constantinople was.

What should work as a standard operation to nominate a bureaucrat in the highest bureaucratic position in Brussels was turned by the public in Romania into an operation affecting the very fate of the country.

The future EU Commissioner Romania sends to Brussels turned into a sort of exceptional character, brushing shoulders with the mighty might in Brussels.

The local media does not help to advance the understanding of these issues.

It was ecstatic when recording the smiles between Commissioner Franco Frattini and Romanian minister of Justice Monica Macovei, or the lavish welcome MEP Emma Nicholson gets whenever she visits the country, in spite of her rather modest political stature.

Tariceanu sensed the rather disproportionate strange feelings Romanians have towards the nomination of the Commissioner, and that the person making it would get all the visibility and all the credit.

He made it a point in making Vosganian’s nomination appear as his personal choice. Tariceanu wanted to prove he had the same political muscle President Traian Basescu usually shows.

What was to go as a successful public image coup for Tariceanu, turned into a disaster. He is now to take the heat.

Where did Tariceanu go wrong?

He did not take into account the great ability Basescu has to let go to all scruples when engaged in political fight.

It is obvious Basescu knew Vosganian’s candidacy was flawed and yet he did not prevent it.

Some journalists candidly asked themselves if Basescu could have acted so irresponsibly as to damage Romania’s interests abroad, in the process of getting higher scores in his domestic skirmish with Tariceanu.

That is really a funny question to ask, given Basescu’s past.

He claimed that the first round of the presidential elections in November 2004 was tainted by fraud, though such allegations obviously portrayed Romania as a country unable to meet the democratic standards.

Romania vied then to access the EU too.