What about the citizens?

After the announcement about his candidacy for the Presidential elections in France, Nicolas Sarkozy took part in a long TV debate. At a certain moment in time, an enterprise manager reproached him the fact that he was too strict with the French employers. This is true if we take into consideration the fact that most of the managers are professionally competent and honest people. However, I have to add that the discussion between Sarkozy and the respective manager had a background of major controversies regarding the behavior of certain enterprise managers. There were a lot of cases in which, even though the productivity of the enterprises was decreasing, the salaries of the top managers were increasing. The leader of the patronage in France, Claude Bebear, wrote a protest book called "Ils vont tuer la capitalisme" (They Will Kill Capitalism) in which he referred to certain colleagues of his who had legal and moral issues. However, Sarkozy made a reasonable assertion: it is one thing when one accepts the relation between the profit of an employer and taking certain risks, but it is a totally different situation when the top managers give themselves higher and higher salaries, while the employees are forced to accept the freezing or the diminution of their salaries.

I used this somewhat longer prologue in order to emphasize an issue that appeared more and more often during the past weeks in Romania based on the scandals regarding a series of privatizations. I am talking about the possible reaction of the foreign investors, about the negative impression caused by these events. Actually, the investors generally want a stable business environment, without taking into consideration the finalized transactions. Moreover, this situation emphasized the weaknesses of the public administration as well as the high-level corruption. This is why the opinion of the investors is very important when judging the context (the foreign media has already talked about the measures of the Romanian authorities regarding the recent corruption cases).

However, the foreign investors think this rhetoric is unilateral; it mystifies the main aspect of the present public debate. In fact, we are talking about the citizens’ public interest, which should be in our attention. I mean the way in which the privatization of certain public utilities takes into account the interests of the citizens. The foreign investors usually bring better management, superior technology, and investment resources. But when certain privatizations are made in the clear disadvantage of the citizens or when incredible corruption situations occur, there is a question that becomes legit: what do the citizens think? Shouldn’t they be upset?

Democracy says that the Government and the business persons should take into account the opinion of the citizens. Amartya Sen, a well known philosopher and economist, speaks a lot about the organic connection between the human dignity, respect and democracy, between the human dignity and the way economy works. This is why I include the businessmen in this equation. The pragmatic interest of the companies should force them to find the way to profit in a friendly and stable social and economical environment. We always have to ask ourselves: what do the people think? How do they see the things happening around them, how is their everyday life affected by these facts? This is not about populism, but about the profound relation between economy, society and politics, between economy and democracy.

Without respect and reciprocal trust, without human dignity, democracy cannot be authentic, and economy gets to exclude more and more persons. Therefore, when the citizens get very upset the consequences are of the worst kind!
When the citizens get very upset the consequences are of the worst kind!