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03.22.2003

The Arrogance and the
Lack of Responsibility Pack

The Anti-corruption pack the Adrian Nastase government took the responsibility of gave birth to numerous arguments, linked especially to the unconstitutional feature of the procedure and to the major flaws in the project. However, the principles aspects of the situation were less debated: why do we create laws in the first place and more specific, what is the role of a law.

Or, for us, these aspects are crucial. We think that a new law has to bring an absolute improvement to the status of things in the society, a better functioning of a particular field of activity. To do this, a law does need to be realistic, crystal clear and easy to put in practice: its devices have to be efficient and its foresights have to ensure the reaching of its own goal. Within Romania there is an already ancient tradition of over reglementation, of creating laws that are either too stuffy either too vague, too unrealistic to be put successfully into practice. The objectives which are fixed by the laws are out of too many times either too vague, either too "generous" and the ways of accomplishing them winding and hard to be checked up.
Well, this is just the problem of the nowadays reforms (as well as a great number of the latest years laws are referring to reform): these are only half made just to be able to mark as checked another issue of the list.
And just as these halves of reforms are creating more confusion and are consuming material and psychical resources which were waiting for the reform, the halves laws are not really managing to reach their objectives in a satisfactory manner; all they can achieve is to maintain themselves to the appearances level and to have "European institution" or "European standards", etc to the image level only. Beyond image there still exist the confusion and the growing loneliness of all pretensions and reality look -alike.

This is the exact case of the Anti-corruption Pack through which the Adrian Nastase government is thinking of responding to the hallucinated level this phenomenon reached and especially to its reflection in mass media.
It is quite an indigestible mixture of projects of laws and amendment of some laws many of which do not have really anything to do with corruption. This time, the confusion that is emerging from this is not any longer the inevitable consequence of a "traditional" manner of enacting but one of obvious intentions. The "anti-corruption" in pack with other reglementations, concerning the juvenile pornography or the informatics infractions will be easily imposed, not only in the Parliament, which is anyway passed-by through the procedure of assuming responsibility, but in general by the society. The accreditation of this law pack as real instrument of fight against the corruption will be so much easier because in this legislative maze which is the Parquet it will be harder to see that the reglementations concerning the conflict of interests or the declaration of the dignitaries fortunes are insufficient, all having the predicted result, mentioned here on, of creating the illusion that the problem has been solved, though everything is only limiting to some exterior signs.

To begin combating the corruption with the aid of an unconstitutional law is an aberration (The Constitution foresees clearly by art. 113 the fact that the govern can take full responsibility of a "law project"). The corruption is mainly due to the fact that institutions which are supposed to fight against it are functioning aleatory, being easily available for buying or for intimidating, thing which can only thank for, on his turn to the fact that the political class is intentionally keeping them under the dependency state; the subordination of justice to the government, for example, is inadmissible, taking it further from the European reglementation concerning this particular field, and the Police is even after demilitarization, an institution that has escaped all control, institution that can do whatever it pleases it. As a consequence, the combating of the corruption by forming parallel institutions like PNA is nothing but a joke; this one is functioning worse than the institutions it is doubling and not because of a bad interior organization but thanks to its strict political subordonance, clearly taking sides. The favoring is developing in general, by not supporting the files that are inconvenient to the power (which is the great majority of corruption files), thing that produces the same blockage effect of a process by creating a special institution to handle it.

Just as it is useful creating another institution so long the doubled institution does not work, is quite doubtful the utility of the new law so long the existing similar laws are not being put into practice. The foresights of the new law can be a little more comprehensive than the ones of the ancient law, but this does not mean that they will improve the activity they are reglementing.

We believe that all anti-corruption campaign has to start by consolidating the institutions that have the job to assure the applicability of the law. Even more, here is where the re-launchement of the Romanian society in general, which is clearly in an obvious deadlock now, should start from. We cannot hope blindly to a political system of ultimate performance, to a "functional market economy" and to European standards of civilization as long as the rules the society is guiding after are being daily brought down and stepped onto by those who know how to benefit from the carences of the system.

We believe that rules have to be by the letter applied, the "good ones" and the "bad ones", because law is not optional and is not subject of negotiation. No one has the right of deciding that some laws are not benefic to the society or that other are too hard to put into practice (respectively that are offering too many escape doors). Nevertheless, the correct appliance of less fortunate laws has the paradoxical advantage of forcing their improvement; we are talking about that confrontation, absolutely necessary between law and reality.

The Constitution is foreseeing that assuming responsibility on behalf of a government can have as objective, by a law project a program or a general politics declaration. We believe that the last two articles are being more appropriate for this procedure meant to publicly relief a governing program. The assuming responsibility of a law project should be reserved more to extraordinary situations; or, the corruption is a chronic phenomenon in Romania, a phenomenon which has almost become "normality" within the last years, well this kind of phenomenon can not at all be an exceptional situation.

We believe that projects of the breadth of the battle against corruption, projects vital for the chances of evolution of Romania should be debated not only in Parliament, but in society, too. The way in which PSD avoided both debates, by taking responsibility within the Parliament and by organizing formal debates with the civil society is equivalent to a greatly significant resignation from developing projects in long term. This thing requires, in order to be viable, a minimal agreement among those who wish to spoke their mind on political business. It is not necessarily a perfect agreement, an agreement that is perhaps equally impossible and undesired, but an agreement on those common directions one should adopt when talking about a crisis situation, because their necessity is really obvious. These agreements existed sometimes in the Romanian history in crisis moments, and the nowadays situation is obvious a crisis one. PSD is the moment party because it is the party of stagnation and Romania is stagnating somewhere between the inherited sub developing and the developing it does not succeed in releasing and sustaining. In fact, the stagnation of Romania is equivalent to the involution, because today nothing more is stagnating, not the European Union towards we are dreaming of, nor the countries that are aspirating to.

As a conclusion, the Anti-Corruption Pack imposed by PSD to the society is not a viable long term project, but merely an image campaign; this fact is certified by even Adrian Nastase, who, just as in many other different occasions, motivated his initiative by saying it "was time to give a signal to the press". The Anti-Corruption Pack is not signaling anything else but lack of responsibility an d the arrogance of a governing party which is opposing too little resistance to and which there have been too little alternatives to.