It
was unprecedented that a German Chancellor attacked another European Prime Minister
so publicly. Angela Merkel gave Victor Ponta a dressing down for his attempted
coup and unconstitutional removal of the President in a democracy.
Never
before did the President of the European Union raise his voice to a Prime Minister
of a member country in the manner in which the socialist Martin Schulz
expressed his displeasure to the humiliated socialist Victor Ponta.
Victor
Ponta and his USL (social liberal union) dominated coalition are eager and
desperate to remove President Basescu by any means necessary. In order to
remove the president, USL must win the referendum which must be valid, meaning
that 9 million Romanians must show up to vote, according to the decision of the
Constitutional Court.
Sadly
for Prime Minister Ponta, he and the USL do not have popular support. If they
did, Romanians would show up en masse to vote and President Basescu would be
impeached. The problem is that Romanians are sick of all parties and their
endemic corruption. There is a reason why representatives spend millions to get
elected – they stand to make billions once they win a coveted parliamentary
post.
Prime
Minister Ponta was reminded that Romania is beholden to the powers that rule
the EU and the monetary policy of the euro, the European Central Bank, the IMF,
and indirectly Germany and United States. Romania’s budget is partially covered
by its economy and the tax base from the existing private firms. The rest of
the national income is derived from EU loans, backed by various banks.
When
Romania finally said no to communism in December 1989, the former communist
apparatchiks took advantage of the temporary power vacuum created and
dismantled as much of the industry as possible, selling national assets for
personal gain, piece by piece, without any accountability, to foreign investors
who had no idea that those assets belonged to “the people.” Honest citizens
remained poor – they did not steal anything, and refused million dollar loans
from the west that they knew they could not possibly pay back.
Ponta’s
government has a 70 percent majority in Parliament and there should be no
reason why it cannot begin to govern and implement the anti-crisis plans they had
promised the voters during the electoral campaign. Unfortunately, Romanians know
well that the coalition’s sole interest is the interest of most politicians -
corruption and bribery. Since President Basescu started doing his job and
arrested some of the more blatant corruption culprits, the USL dominated
coalition would have to play by the rules of law, an inconvenience that could
be eliminated by impeaching the President.
Prime
Minister Victor Ponta wrote an article titled “Romanian Reality,” in Foreign
Policy Magazine on July 26, 2012, defending his government takeover attempt.
“Impeachment
proceedings have been carried out in strict accordance with the law, as
confirmed by the Constitutional Court. The proceedings themselves are a
response to Basescu’s repeated abuses of power, again confirmed by the
Constitutional Court. The vote for impeachment passed Parliament by a
two-thirds majority, and 70 percent of voters now oppose Basescu, according to
opinion polls. The final word now rests with the Romanian people, who will vote
in a free and fair referendum on Sunday, July 29…Basescu’s call for a boycott
is an anti-democratic step designed to avoid impeachment at any cost.”
Ponta
forgot to mention in his article how he stripped the Court of its right to
overrule the Parliament when the Constitutional Court made the decision based
on precedent that the President should attend the European summit not the Prime
Minister. He also failed to mention how he replaced some members including the
Ombudsman, with his political allies. Ponta did not mention the fact that “he
seized the official bulletin in which laws were published in an attempt to
control legislation, delay the Court, and prohibit the release of new rules by
President Basescu.” (Andrew MacDowall, Christian Science Monitor, July 12,
2012)
Prime
Minister Ponta sugar-coated the truth with his version of events. Any other
objective witness would have called his coup an attempt to bypass democratic
rule of law, with the final outcome to remove the democratically-elected
President. Traian Basescu may not have been the best and effective president but
the Romanian people should decide his fate at the voting booth.
Romanians
are ambivalent as to which brand of communism they will have to follow because
they know corruption and lawlessness will rule the day. Will it be the winds of
the old guard communism or the new brand of European socialism/communism?
Either way, voters will be stuck between the rock and the hard place of
economic austerity measures proposed by the European Union.
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