The unprecedented and accelerated degradation of democracy under the Iohannis-Ciucă regime. With Romania silenced, the PNL is rapidly becoming PSD-ized

Under the leadership of the Iohannis – Ciucă tandem, the PNL has quickly turned into a party with authoritarian reflexes, similar to Dragnea’s PSD. Brutal interventions in the judiciary, complicity with the secret services who are invited to write laws, the muzzling of the press, lies to Brussels, the stifling of the economy – these are all the ingredients of an extremely dangerous regime that eliminates any checks and balances. And it does so with the support of the PSD, which is also happy to remove with someone else’s hand any obstacle to the great plunder of the 80 billion euros.

Never in the last two decades has democracy in Romania been in a more delicate situation than today. And I say this aware of the weight of the statement. Somehow, Romanian society has always known how to create antibodies, to reject authoritarian excesses at the last moment, to make the normal noise in a democracy.

Now, however, the financial stakes of pilfering the public purse are unprecedented. Over the next 7 years, Romania has at its disposal 80 billion euros in European funds (the classic funds and the NRRP) and billions more from the national budget. This stake, of the non-punishable theft, unites the PSD and the PNL in a coalition that is functioning so far without major cracks and that threatens to turn Romania, with the approval of President Iohannis, into a fake democracy, a society controlled de facto by a single party (with two names) and the secret services.

Here are the most worrying signs of the ongoing anti-democratic slide:

– The gagging of the press, nearly the most of it. Bankrolled with tens of millions of euros from the PSD and the PNL budgets, but also through other public contracts, the mainstream media trusts simply don’t tackle the important domestic issues anymore. It is a silence that we did not experience under Nastase, Băsescu, or Dragnea, when there were always opposition voices. With a few small exceptions, the press is no longer a press, but propaganda. But the worst of all is that the press is paid to keep silent, to remain silent, to ignore, to look the other way (see Ciucă’s plagiarism, the national security laws).

– Brutal interventions in the act of justice. G4Media has shown in a series of articles how the investigation of Prime Minister Ciucă’s plagiarism was blocked first by the General Prosecutor’s Office, then by a judge close to the PNL and a former Freemasonry colleague of the government spokesperson.

– The effective subordination of some judges to the executive branch. One of the reasons why Judge Ionela Tudor of the Bucharest Court of Appeal suspended the review of Prime Minister Ciucă’s PhD was „the need for stability in the executive leadership of the state”. It is unprecedented since communism for a judge to explicitly and publicly put himself at the service of a prime minister and not at the service of the legal truth.

– Bringing the intelligence services effectively to the decision-making table. Prime Minister Ciucă himself has admitted that the secret services have written their own new draft laws, drafts revealed by G4Media that would de facto suspend any civilian control over the SRI and SIE and significantly increase their powers. Militarization is increasing at the top of the administration, and some foreign experts compare the situation in Romania to that in Mexico.

– The authorities going after the inconvenient journalists and their sources. The string of abuses is growing by the day, from Emilia Șercan to journalist Alin Cristea in Braila. President Iohannis himself threatened G4Media sources over the security laws, and a judge in Iasi asked journalist Gabriel Gachi to reveal his sources.

– Contempt for integrity. Nicolae Ciucă has had no problems because as a result of the plagiarism accusations, he has even been elected president of the PNL in the meantime, and this at the behest of President Iohannis, the author of the hypocrisy called „Educated Romania”.

– Attacks on economic freedom. Unable to understand anything about economics, let alone produce adequate solutions to the energy crisis and inflation, PSD-PNL leaders have launched the false theme of „speculators” and passed laws aimed at suspending market economy laws…

– Attempts to abolish the whistleblower institution. This is the work of Marcel Ciolacu, who would have explicitly asked Laura Vicol to make changes to the existing law that would make it inoperable. Vicol did not act on her own initiative but had the full support of the coalition leaders. The whistleblower is indispensable in a free society, his role is to draw the attention of the press or the supervisory institutions to serious misconduct by the authorities. The attack came on the same day that EU commissioner Vera Jourova was in Bucharest, one of her major topics of discussion being the whistleblower.

– The attack on the Court of Auditors through provisions that would make the institution give guidance and opinions before the act of control, with the aim of protecting the beneficiary institutions from subsequent controls.

– Total control over prosecutors, by appointing obedient chief prosecutors who will not bother the executive, and by maintaining the SIIJ under another name.

– The annihilation of public prosecutors’ offices. Apart from the case of Chesnoiu, the former agriculture minister accused of abuse of office, the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) and the prosecutors’ offices have no case to show for.

– Deceiving of our strategic partners through duplicitous rhetoric.  Efforts to fool the European Commission on justice are increasing, with the hope of lifting the CVM. Reality shows us that from the so-called abolition of the SIIJ to the miming of reform, Minister Cătălin Predoiu has finally played into the hands of the party’s rogues, without any concern for the simple citizens and justice.

– The appeal to economic populism, so typical of autocratic regimes. Piles of money thrown into dubious measures, followed by veiled attacks on multinational companies and promises to overtax the „wealthy „.

How did we get to this unprecedented degradation of democratic institutions and the rule of law? By President Iohannis’ total abdication of the promises he made during his two electoral campaigns. Guaranteed by Dan Voiculescu in 2009, Iohannis has proved to be the biggest imposter in Romanian politics, a usurper of the reformist vote.

I wrote in February 2020 that „Pax Iohanniana, about to take hold at the central level, is the modus operandi of a redoubtable political operator, who is starting to make more and more moves”. This has unfortunately proved to be correct. Following the model laid down in Sibiu, and now with the help of the secret services, Iohannis has achieved total peace in society, has muzzled the press with cash, has brought the PSD back in power, destroyed the opposition, and rendered useless all the checks and balances institutions. 

The keystone of this construction is the coalition with the PSD, a party that is also thinking only of the 80 billion euros. Without Ciolacu’s social democrats, the whole edifice becomes much more unstable. This is why for Iohannis the war in Ukraine was the perfect opportunity to forge a PSD-PNL coalition, and to publicly presented it as the only capable one of offering stability at such a critical moment.

„Political stability” and „sobriety of governance” are the keywords used by Klaus Iohannis and Nicolae Ciucă in every public outing. Without exception. It is how they justify this monstrous coalition that is destroying the rule of law and economic freedom to a military cadence.

And the friendly media trusts, especially Antena 3 and Digi24, have a clear role in this narrative. Even though the war in Ukraine has entered a stable phase in eastern and south-eastern Ukraine, far from Romania, the tone adopted day after day, night after night by the two government propaganda mouthpieces is alarmist, catastrophic, and even apocalyptic.

Every viewer has the feeling of imminent danger, of war at the border, of a critical situation. But if we were in a critical security situation, we would need political stability, and internal peace to prepare for war with the enemy abroad, right?

That’s what the large TV stations paid tens of millions of euros a year in public money are doing. And, after all, isn’t that what the judge at the Bucharest Court of Appeal told us? Let’s not forget what she was able to write in her reasoning: „At the same time, taking into account the professional and, specifically, the political career of the plaintiff, that the generation of such news has a major impact on the credibility of the electorate and the party, which may lead to the withdrawal of trust, especially in the current social and political context, where there is a need for stability in the executive leadership of the state”.

Under the umbrella of this supposed need for stability at all costs, the PSD and the PNL are doing what they do best: subordinating entire sectors and areas, destroying political and economic competition, and allocating the most lucrative deals of public money to their own companies.

In 30 years, the two parties have created a mafia-like network of companies that control areas and territories. Entire counties are economically paralyzed by the firms of their barons, mayors, and councilors. If you don’t buy ballast or gravel from them, you can’t build anything. 

It feels like the state has been taken hostage, where the lack of equal opportunities becomes suffocating. For Romanians with no ties to the PSD and PNL or with the intelligence services, it has become almost impossible to climb the career ladder in the state institutions or the private sector. The country is dominated by the PSD LLC, the PNL LLC, and the SRI LLC.

To sum things up, Romania has joined the ranks of countries with authoritarian manifestations the likes of Poland and Hungary, where democratic slippages are already sanctioned by the European Commission, with one major difference: Romanian authoritarianism has no ideology, no charismatic leaders, and is not exercised by force. Iliescu’s original democracy of the early 1990s is slowly turning into an original, Romanian, authentic  „under the table” authoritarianism.

Translated article