Why PSD Must Be Held Morally and Politically Accountable for the „Asylums of Horror” / Ciolacu Condemned the „Corrupt System” Similar to Iliescu’s Critique of „Nepotistic Capitalism” in the Past.

The latest revelations made by an NGO in the case of the „Asylums of Horrors” indicate, once again, a complicity at the top of the government on the part of a PSD minister to cover up the scandal of the Asylums of Horrors, where elderly people, children or people with disabilities were being humiliated at the expense of the state. The Centre for Legal Resources claims that Labour and Social Solidarity Minister Marius Budăi (PSD) unilaterally denounced the agreement on 31 March after being informed several months earlier by four letters about serious irregularities in some of the homes for the elderly in Ilfov.

The CRJ is the NGO that has documented in detail the ” Asylums of Horrors „, with photos, and claims that Minister Budăi accused the CRJ of „not blurring the image of some beneficiaries”.

The pictures were from the St Gabriel the Brave Association Centre (Voluntari) and were intended for him to observe the way people with disabilities are „treated” by the social services provider licensed by the ministry he headed. Subsequently, Minister Budăi and Secretary of State Cristian Vasilcoiu reportedly announced at a national conference organized in Bucharest with the directors of the DGASPC (General Directorate for Social Assistance and Child Protection) that „we got rid of the CRJ visits”.

The NGO asks Prime Minister Ciolacu, in an open letter, to dismiss Minister Budăi. A series of investigations published by the Centre for Media Investigations (Ovidiu Vanghele) and Buletin de București (Bianca Albu) since the beginning of the year revealed the horrors at the Voluntari Centres (St Gabriel the Brave Association). The revelations show that the threads of the business lead to people close to Gabriela Firea (Ligia Enache) or promoted to positions by the former mayor (Ștefan Godei, Ecaterina Voicu).

Minister for Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities Gabriela Firea (PSD) has vehemently denied any involvement in the Voluntari elderly care business. Firea said that neither she nor her husband, Florentin Pandele, the mayor of Voluntari, knew what was going on in the Asylums of Horrors, nor did her sister, Nela Vica Andrieș, former head of Social Welfare in Voluntari when the abuses were taking place, know what was going on there and stressed that they had no control powers.

Firea threatened on Sunday evening in a televised intervention that all publications that had made contact with her family would be taken to court, and she also lashed out at the Orthodox Church spokesman. Vasile Bănescu had criticized, without naming her, that „to disclaim all responsibility and then add a hasty ‘God help us’ is the ultimate proof of abjection and cynicism”.

With each public outing, Gabriela Firea has shown herself to be more concerned with defending her own image and that of her adviser, a witness in the DIICOT case, than with the subject itself, with the horrors and terrible events that took place in the home of the St Gabriel the Brave Association in Voluntari.

The state institutions with supervisory powers, most of them under PSD ministers (Budăi, Rafila), only started to act after the DIICOT prosecutors began their own investigation. To the horrors revealed by the press at the beginning of the year were added new terrifying details about how the elderly were mocked, robbed of their pensions and salaries, beaten and terrorized by the employees of these Asylums of Horrors, with the complicity of the managers and the authorities who turned a blind eye all this time.

Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu reacted, albeit belatedly, but with some correctness and a great deal of empathy. He demanded a chain of resignations in a series of control institutions in Ilfov and Sector 3 of the Capital, ordered urgent inspections at all centers across the country within a week, and announced legislative changes to be implemented in the autumn.

It is highly likely that Marcel Ciolacu will not miss this major scandal to undermine his internal rival, Gabriela Firea, in the race for the mayorship of the Capital. The leader of the PSD (Social Democratic Party) himself is considering a candidacy for the Bucharest mayorship, so the scandal fits his agenda.

Until now, no one from the top of the government has resigned or been asked to step down. Prime Minister Ciolacu vehemently criticized, after a meeting with several ministers, the „villains who created these Houses of Horror.” „And the fact that such a thing was possible shows that we are dealing with a fundamental problem, a corrupt and inert system. That is the truth,” said Prime Minister Ciolacu.

But the whole truth must be told. The „corrupt and inert system” is largely the creation of the party he leads, which for years has campaigned on behalf of vulnerable categories such as the elderly, pensioners, and the socially disadvantaged. Just as Ion Iliescu criticized „nepotistic capitalism” during the Năstase government without pointing fingers at PSD leaders, Marcel Ciolacu fights against the „corrupt system” and the „villains” who created the Houses of Horror, without touching any ministers from his own party.

„Let us shatter this nepotistic capitalism that has formed in Romania, where a group of interested individuals parasitize the state’s finances, nationalizing their losses and retaining all profits,” thundered Ion Iliescu back in 2002 from the parliamentary tribune. „Nepotistic capitalism” has persisted, intact, within the PSD for 20 years, precisely in the form described so accurately by the party’s patriarch, now retired from public life. The Houses of Horror are nothing more than an expression of a way to plunder public resources with the complicity of the state and some „political cronies” at the top of the party.

Similar to Ion Iliescu, Marcel Ciolacu does not utter a word about the major responsibility of his party in the terrible „Houses of Horror” affair. Certainly, criminal responsibility is individual, not collective. However, there is a moral and political responsibility that made the horrors at the Centers in Voluntari possible, and this responsibility falls largely on the PSD.

Now it seems clearer than ever the demagoguery of the leaders of this party, the champions of populism, under which vulnerable individuals have become commodities from which their trusted people, most likely intermediaries or mere interfaces, make good money with the complicity of the state, which is also controlled by them, by the Social Democrats.

No matter how much the PSD leaders try to evade political responsibility, dilute it, or share it with the liberals, reality catches up with them: the „corrupt system” is their creation, the „villains” are their own, the „completely dehumanized individuals” are promoted by them, and the „organized criminal group” is, nevertheless, the specialty of the party.

Marcel Ciolacu has only one chance if he does not want to become a new Ion Iliescu: after purging the anonymous officials from DGASPC, ANPIS, and AJPIS, he must come with flamethrowers into the government and into his own party, at the top.