(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 13)
Whatever protocol the coalition will sign now, whatever compromise it will reach, if any, to achieve it, it will have lost any credibility. The crisis unfolding these days, although a comeback of what we have been seeing for four years now, with the same players, but with reversed roles, shatters any passion and leaves little place for consideration. The Democratic Party once again proves willing to place group interests and principles above all priorities it had pledged to respect. If it were indeed to leave the coalition at the moment when European Union accession talks are effectively beginning, it means the party does not believe itself in the slogans it launched a month ago at the National Convention – a four-year programme with EU integration as the key word. Neither do the parties that drove PD to threatening to leave government prove too much commitment to the laws they had listed among legislative priorities. How could two of the three ownership laws pass in three months without PD after they failed to do so in four years? How can PD respect a protocol that includes property laws, especially the state farms law, after it has been hampering them during four years in government? What is truly new is the fact that if PD does leave government, the coalition partners will not see it as a disaster. Even more, we are now in a situation when PD is practically invited to step out of the ruling alliance. The party led by Petre Roman is being blackmailed after having itself practised blackmail as an instrument of communication with the coalition partners. As Liberal leader Valeriu Stoica said, PD no longer has the weapon it had used to fight all the “battles” in the coalition. In other words, since early elections are no longer possible, who should be scared of the “scarecrow” they’ve become used to pull out at the negotiations table? For three weeks, it has been obvious that the issue is not the Defence Ministry but PD’s position in the Government. Although there have been no statements of effective political support for Victor Babiuc, it was clear that PNL (first of all) and PN?CD are waiting for the moment to challenge Petre Roman’s party. The algorithm or the continuity at the Defence Ministry are therefore only the “costumes” for the actors. The algorithm is one of the most vulnerable, but also most often used, principles of this alliance. Since it has been bypassed when a technocrat was nominated to lead the Government, to the detriment of PN?CD, perhaps PD’s partners in the coalition thought that Roman’s party also could give up a post that’s rightfully theirs. So that, regardless of the most official statements that the position is PD’s, it is obvious that PNL and PN?CD did not seriously consider replacing Victor Babiuc, and the minister himself, although he had received only appreciation, not explicit and concrete political support, has been the coalition’s instrument of blackmail. But this conflict had another facet that contains yet another indication that to the Democratic Party, its own image and electoral interests come first. The fact that the Foreign Ministry, led by Petre Roman, can be used as an instrument in the party personality clash, even at the risk of sending abroad a message of instability that is more unwelcome than ever. Another matter being discussed that cannot be credible is the list of laws that represented PD’s condition for signing the protocol approving Victor Babiuc’s replacement. Among them, property. PD’s hitherto unseen appetite to returning ownership is unlikely to have been acquired in these last minutes of government. We remember the scandals that have kept the coalition at gunpoint all these years, namely because the PD was difficult to persuade to vote for returning 50 hectares of land, because it imposed the 10 hectares of forest instead of the higher limit all the other partners wanted; the memory is still fresh of the condition to return nationalised real estate to former owners when protection is offered to tenants. As for the state farms law, PD did not vote for it in the Chamber of Deputies (it passed on the back of PDSR), so what makes the coalition think PD will vote for it in Senate? Who needs a budget-voting arrangement, the package that accelerates reform in Justice, the amendments to election laws? Aren’t they part of the government programme, aren’t they natural steps for accession? Is it that a new government would be formed? Has the coalition forgotten its pledges? In any case, any government party faced with such a list would have perhaps said “nothing simpler, it exists in the government protocol, it must pass Parliament!” But perhaps the scent of the electoral campaign has entered too deep into the nostrils of politicians in power for anything else to count. For instance, how interesting these scandals can still be for the electorate!