In 2016, there were three very worthy candidates for the highly coveted Politician of the Year Award.
- In May, I gave the prize to Rodrigo Duterte, the newly elected president of the Philippines, because he assured voters that none of his mistresses were on the public payroll. Gee, what a swell guy!
- In July, I had to reopen the balloting since it was revealed that the follicly-challenged President of France, Francois Hollande, was squandering more than $100,000 per year on a hair stylist.
- And that same month, the Prime Minister of Malaysia became a strong contestant when it was revealed that hundreds of millions of dollars were mysteriously diverted from the government’s cronyist investment fund.
Well, we now have an early contestant for the 2017 prize. And it’s going to be a group award. Romania’s Social Democrats have just voted to legalize abuse of power. I’m not joking, Here are some excerpts from a report by the EU Observer.
Romania’s left-wing government scrapped some anti-corruption rules, in a move likely to allow leading politicians to avoid criminal persecution.
The cabinet of social democrat Sorin Grindeanu…passed an emergency measure to decriminalise some offences. Abuse of power will no longer be prosecuted if it is deemed to have caused financial damage of less than €44,000. …Changes will enter into force within 10 days, without need for approval by the parliament.
Wow. This is so absurd that I wonder whether there’s more to the story.
For instance, I wrote two years ago about the nation of Georgia getting rid of an entire division of the national police force, which sounds like a move to enable crime. But there was a story behind the story. It turns out that lawmakers in Tbilisi got rid of highway cops because the force was pervasively corrupt, basically doing nothing other than extorting money from motorists. So eliminating the force was actually an anti-corruption step.
In the case of Romania, though, I haven’t found any sign of mitigating circumstances. It appears that politicians simply want get-out-of-jail-free cards.
For what it’s worth, many Romanians are not happy that their politicians have made stealing legal.
Some 10,000 people gathered outside the government’s headquarters, calling the government “thieves” and “traitors” and imploring the cabinet to resign. …critics say the measure will clear several leading politicians who are under investigation or on trial in abuse-of-power cases. …Romania’s centre-right president Klaus Iohannis said he would refuse to swear in anyone with a criminal record. On Tuesday, Iohannis announced “a day of mourning for the rule of law”. “The government ignored the dream of millions of Romanians who want live in a country free of corruption,” he posted on Facebook. Laura Codruta Kovesi, the chief prosecutor at Romania’s National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA), said she had only seen a draft of the bill, but its contents would render the fight against corruption in Romania “irrelevant”.
By the way, political corruption appears to be a non-trivial problem.
According to Transparency International, Romania is ranked #57 in the Corruption Perceptions Index, which is the weakest score of any EU nation other than Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria.
But let’s close with some good news. I’ve written (over and over and over again) that big government facilitates corruption. Simply stated, politicians in places like Romania (or the United States!) wouldn’t have favors to sell if the government didn’t have favors to dispense.
So if you want less corruption, shrink the size of the public sector.
And Romania is moving in the right direction. After decades of horrific communist tyranny, it became a transition economy when the Soviet Union collapsed. Ever since, like many other countries in the region, Romania has been trying to shed the shackles of statism so that a market economy can function.
There’s been some success. Romania is one of the many flat tax nations in Eastern Europe. And it ranks #22 in Economic Freedom of the World, which is rather impressive (though it only ranks #61 for the size-of-government category, so there’s obviously room for improvement).
The continuing challenge, not only in Romania, but all over the world, is convincing politicians to reduce the size and scope of government when that means they’ll have less opportunity to line their own pockets. Sort of like asking foxes to guard henhouses.
And it’s not just the fault of politicians. What can really sabotage a nation is when a sufficiently large share of the overall population decides that it’s morally acceptable to loot and mooch. In that case, politicians are simply a reflection of societal rot.
It’s much easier to restore physical capital than it is to restore cultural capital.
Last phrase says it all.
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Actually, the situation is more complex and the propaganda war is usually easier in the case of a remote country for which the interest is not a daily thing in USA, London or Brussels. For example, many of the news appearing world wide about the recent protests in Romania were extremely one side views. In fact they were reproducing at a global scale many slogans coming from a very interested political faction on the Romanian scene. We saw that there are many correspondents of Romanian origin (the one for Bloomberg, for example) which were involved actively in the political struggles in the last years, always on the same partisan side. Other time there are interviewed some local specialist, which also have a well known partisan view. Unfortunately no effort for objectivity, for asking the opposite part or for verifying the information.
For example, the news you are talking about in this article. First of all, the proper translation is not ”abuse of power”, but ”abuse in office” or ”abuse of office” and it is about a highly problematic article in the Penal Code because it is so vague and it give a huge opportunity for the prosecutors to be subjective. This article is missing in almost all the European countries’ legislations, it was criticized by the Venice Commission and Romania is conemned many times at the Europan Court for Human Rights in cases based on this article.
The scope of this article is so wide (for example, a policeman which give a fine which is later canceled enter here) that the Constitutional Court has declared the article partially unconstitutional and has asked for a revise by introducing an amount which should be the limit from which the case become a crime punished by jail. This court decision was taken more than a half of an year ago and the law had to be modified in 45 days.
The recent act of the actual government fixed exactly the requested limit which have been asked by the Constitutional Court. Under that limit there wasn’t at all a freedom for stealing as the propaganda said, but, there the action is not considered as a crime punished by jail anymore. The act is also punished with the administrative tools (to be fired from the job for example) and the amount of the prejudice has to be returned anyway.
Regarding the two persons which are mentioned in the article, it should be mentioned that the president is in a political fight with the party which has won the elections less than 2 month ago, for example, he have refused to assign the prime minister for almost a month. Also, it is highly problematic when chief prosecutor is involved in the political fights, having an obvious partisan view.
In fact, the protests subject were always changing providing evidences for considering them as a protest against the results of the recent election, in consonance with the political interest of the president. They have protested first against the mentioned decree of the government, then, when the act was cancelled under the street pressure, they changed for asking for new elections, some asking even for sending the entire leadership of the party in power or for to ban, to outlaw this party.
It should be mentioned that there were protesting tens of thousands of people (not hundreds of thousands as it was repeated on televisions, since in that square it is impossible to enter more than 40-70.000 people as it is up to 350.000 sqft large). I do not know how efficient was in their case the manipulation, but certainly it wasn’t efficient enough less than 2 months ago, when we had the elections where the opposition parties have received 3700000 votes and have won the majority…
On the other side the expressions ”left-wing”/”right-wing” are not very easy to assign to the Romanian political parties. I will give you just one example: the party of the so called ”right-wing” president is the one which have risen the VAT tax from 19% to 24%, and the so called ”left-wing party” is the one which has cut the VAT back to 19%. Should I mention that the so called ”right-wing” party became ”right-wing” about 10 years ago, in a one night decision and in a moment when it was a member of the Socialist International, but the opportunities were larger on the new side?