Decree 13 reloaded? PSD announces massive giveaways, same as in January 2017

Talk of a new emergency decree on amnesty and pardon is growing by the day. And the PSD’s conduct is a carbon copy of that back in January 2017, when Liviu Dragnea and his lot were pouring with promises of giveaways to buy the silence of the population. Today alone, prime minister Dancila made more promises than if she were running for office, pledging happiness upon teachers, children, veterans, construction workers, farmers, and cement companies.

Here is the list with all the promises premier Dancila made today in Alba Iulia:

– 3,000 lei the minimum gross wage for construction workers, with labor tax cuts for employers and employees
-subsidies for the manufacturers and exporters of building materials
-salary and pension increases for teachers: two additional gross salaries per year, 5,000 euros for the teachers in rural areas, and the equivalent of six times the gross average wage at retirement for those with 30 years of seniority.
– a state-owned company to buy agricultural produce directly from producers
-savings accounts for all children, subsidized by the state
– a five times increase of the indemnity amount for persons with disabilities, for war veterans and for the widows of veterans beginning January 1, 2019

All these add up to costs of hundreds of millions of lei a year for the budget. Add to these the increase in salaries for public sector workers come January 1st, 2019, and the increases to pensions by the new law beginning September 2019 – other billions of lei. All these amid a slowdown in economic growth and a lack of any relevant public works investment.

We’ve seen this before. Back in January 2017, a month only after the PSD won a crushing victory in the elections and after installing a new government, Liviu Dragnea was touting everyday dizzying increases in pensions, wages, subsidies, facilities, and tax cuts.

Vlad Petreanu had noticed then the strangeness of the moment and had a perfect intuition of what was to come: Dragnea intended to buy the silence of the population, to bribe the Romanian people so as not to stir any protests against the all-out attack on the judiciary that was to follow soon after. And that is precisely what came about: decree #13, but also massive protests that turned around and stopped the amnesty and pardoning of the crooks. The population – or an important part of it, lively and proud –did not fall for the bribe.

The urge for Dragnea and his backers – from Dan Voiculescu to the „Monaco group” – to issue the amnesty and pardon decree grows increasingly acute. It had already wreaked havoc to almost the entire justice system, with the complicity of the constitutional court and a few scattered groups of lackeys in the prosecution and in the courts. But that is not enough for him, nor for the puppeteers with criminal files and convictions. It’s through amnesty and pardon only that all their problems will completely go away.

So Liviu Dragnea is pushing hard for a new decree. He removed from the government all those who resisted one way or another. He solved the Tariceanu-Tudorel Toader problem, and Dancila cannot hold back much longer, that is, of course, is she wanted to resist the attack in the first place. Dan Tapalaga has written extensively about the developments in the PSD and the coalition with the ALDE.

Codrin Stefanescu announced it publicly two days ago, Liviu Dragnea and Darius Valcov (both convicted to long prison sentences in the lower courts) have asked for it publicly. Information from PSD hints that the week of December 17-22 will be a critical one. It is the exact same week that Romania celebrates the Revolution of 1989.

It is a new test for democracy in Romania, for the strength of the state and of the institutions in the system of checks and balances. After the tests in 2012 and 2018, we will find out if centennial Romania has it in her to withstand the full-scale attack unleashed upon it by the corrupted.

If Viorica Dancila will be persuaded by Liviu Dragnea to issue the decree on amnesty and pardon, from the moment the decree will be published in Monitorul Official (the Official Gazette of Romania), we will be waking up in a country illegally annexed by the Republic of Mafia.

Traducerea: Ovidiu Harfas