The emergency decree is coming! Why we cannot wait and see what will appear in the Official Gazette

This time around, Liviu Dragnea has decided to play with his cards on the table. He summoned, overnight, another National Executive Committee (CEX) to push for the party to assume that it wants to issue an emergency decree (OUG) on amnesty and pardon, bringing a political decision one week closer. Officially, the purpose for issuing the decree is to amend the criminal codes. However, at the next CEX, there will be discussions, at the request of the mayor of Sector 1, whether the party wants to assume an additional OUG for amnesty and pardon. All in plain sight, all with everything on the table.

As we have stated time and again, Dragnea is pushing the government to issue the amnesty and pardon through an OUG. This information has been officially confirmed yesterday by the PSD’s leaders. No one is hiding anything anymore. The decree on amnesty and pardon – that is the PSD leader’s main objective, not the amendment of the criminal codes. Right now, these amendments are of no help to him in getting rid of his first conviction, neither of his trial at the high court nor the investigation in the Teldrum case.

Amending the criminal codes via an OUG seems rather a political maneuver by which Dragnea seeks to avoid an embarrassing defeat in the Chamber of Deputies. He knows full well that he has lost the majority in the Chamber, and he now wants to conceal a predictable defeat by having the government assume responsibility. He hid behind the party, once again, as ever: it was „a colleague” who proposed that the government issue the decree.

So, this is where we find ourselves, openly discussing how the PSD is preparing to destroy the justice system through a decree and to immediately set lose all the defendants, the convicts and those under investigation in politics. Besides, we have come to accept the imminence of the disaster, like a fatality, with no reaction, somehow resigned. Many still do not realize the gravity of the moment and are still hoping that it will not come to pass: „Let’s wait and see what Dancila is going to put in the OUG.”

And herein lies the problem. Even though Prime Minister Dancila is still against the amnesty and pardon, as she has already stated publicly, twice, that no such project is on her table, I do not think that we can afford to find out for how long she will be able to hold-out, what will she eventually sign, and how the final version of the OUG will look like once it gets published in the Official Gazette. The party has just laid on her table the subject she’s been running away from in the last few days. I repeat for the hundredth time, that once an OUG on amnesty and pardon is issued, its effects cannot be undone. Everyone walks free. So, wait for the Official Gazette? Is anyone taking this risk? And please note how Dragnea and the PSD are gradually turning the discussion about the OUG into something justified, necessary and natural.

Can anything still be done? Not much. It’s up to all of us how are we going to treat the extreme cynicism displayed by the PSD leader. After two years of quietly pushing for amnesty and pardon, Dragnea has finally decided to defy an entire country and put it all out in the open, using the party as his voice, that yes, that is what he wants, that everyone walks free. He did not say it himself directly, of course, but made others say it, like Marian Oprisan, to justify the need for amnesty and pardon with the same old rehashed pretexts: the secret protocols, the abuses, the innocent convicts, etc.

Klaus Iohannis has from now on an obligation to attend every government meeting just as those from the USR have asked him, and to at least force the government to justify what the emergency is for amending the criminal codes by an emergency decree. What’s burning? Why does the governing party no longer support the democratic mechanism, the parliamentary lawmaking process, the appeals to the Constitutional Court, and in general all that involves a sound and healthy mechanism of checks and balances?

If all we are going to do is pray that Prime Minister Dancila will resist the infernal pressure she’s sure to be facing in the coming weeks, it will be too little. If we hope that just the changes announced on Monday will find their way in the Official Gazette, it will be too risky and dangerous.

If no one will do anything, as usual, just waiting for the government of Dancila to fall in Parliament (slim chances), or for the Americans or the EU to save us, or for others to do something for us, then we will have no right to cry when we will be told that we have officially become a nation of thieves.

Traducerea: Ovidiu Harfas