State of the Nation

Return of the National Salvation Front

By Vivid writer: Mark Percival

Cobbled together following an election deemed irrelevant by the majority of voters, Romania's latest attempt at government has a distinct sense of deja vu about it

Posted: 06/04/2009

After a farcical argument over power sharing, Emil Boc emerged as Romania's prime minister.

The parliamentary elections on 30 November last year were a non-event for most Romanians who are far too disillusioned with the political class, and too preoccupied with the challenges of day-to-day life to have had much interest in their outcome. Turnout at national level was 39 per cent, a very low figure for a general election, reflecting the atmosphere of disillusionment. (In most European countries, the average turnout is around 60-70 per cent.) So a majority of Romanians rejected their entire political class. In Bucharest and other major towns, the turnout was even lower. The atmosphere was very different from 2004, when there was a significant turnout in round two of the presidential elections, as many Romanians placed their hopes in Traian Basescu after four years of corruption under the PSD administration. Most voters now accept that there is little difference between the main parties.

Romania does not have genuine political parties based on real principles or ideology. Instead, politics is made up of interest groups which give themselves names like liberals, democrats or social democrats but which in reality merely represent the economic interests of a particular clique. So it was not surprising that there was little in the way of real debate on principles or policies during the election campaign. Instead, each party came out with the usual promises to improve the standard of living, with little in the way of scientific analysis to back this up.

In the last few weeks before the poll, the Liberal government engaged in blatant electioneering with a Government Emergency Ordinance to cut various taxes, and introduce bonuses for early payment. The government claimed that its "economic stimulus package" was intended to help Romania weather the global financial crisis, but its real purpose was to help the Liberals win votes. The Liberal government gave no evidence that its package was economically viable, and most of the measures have subsequently been revoked by the PDL-PSD-led administration, which took office in December. The whole fiasco added instability to the economy at a time of deep crisis.

In another act of flagrant electioneering, the Liberal government announced "three" new public holidays, the first and second days of the Orthodox festival Rusalii in June, as well as 15 August, the Orthodox celebration of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. However the first day of Rusalii is always a Sunday, meaning that only the second day is a real extra holiday, while 15 August falls on a Saturday in 2009 and a Sunday in 2010, so it will be 2011 before Romanians benefit from this extra free day.

Once the election had taken place, a lengthy period of horse-trading followed, which does not auger well for long term political stability or effective management of the economy. There were several possible combinations, including PDL-PNL, which would have been a revival of the 2004 Alianta DA or PSD-PNL, which would have built on the fact that after the breakup of the DA Alliance, the Liberal minority government often drew its support more from the PSD in parliament than from its former allies. In spring 2007, the PSD and PNL had joined together in an attempt to oust President Traian Basescu.

In the event, the PSD and PDL have combined, with members of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) settling for Secretary of State level positions after a standoff with PSD who said they did not want the Hungarian party to be in the government. The clock has effectively been turned back to the early 1990s, and the

old National Salvation Front (FSN) has been revived. The Front was the successor of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), and took over much of the PCR's infrastructure immediately after December 1989. Its leading figures such as Ion Iliescu and others were former second rank communists, and by gaining all the advantages of the old PCR infrastructure, made sure that the leadership change after the fall of the communist regime was limited, and that the positions of former high ranking officials was protected.

The Front used nationalism as a way to protect the position of former top communists, particularly in Transylvania, and the PSD's recent objections to UDMR presence in the government look like a throwback to those times. (Though UDMR is, itself, largely an evolution from ethnic Hungarian members of the Romanian Communist Party who enjoyed influence in the 1950s and early 1960s before Ceausescu embarked on a more nationalist line). In 1991, the Front broke into two factions. The first was the Democratic National Salvation Front (FDSN) led by Iliescu, which became the Romanian Party of Social Democracy (PDSR), the forerunner of today's PSD. The second was the National Salvation Front (FSN), which then became the Democratic Party (PD) and which after fusion with anti-Tariceanu liberals has become today's PDL. So today's PDL-PSD administration is a revival of the pre-1991 National Salvation Front.

The real question now is whether the new government will be remotely capable of or interested in helping to mitigate some of the effects on the population of the global financial crisis. In the last few years, there has been unprecedented economic growth, and the weakness of public administration has been less obvious. Now, there is a real need for stable and effective central government. The speculative inflows which have entered the country in the last few years are now starting to pull out. One obvious effect of this has been the sharp depreciation of the national currency.

At the beginning of 2009, the RON plummeted and shows every sign of continuing to depreciate. The worst affected will be those who took out credits in euros, or even in Swiss francs when the RON was strong (its high was 3.11 in 2007) and whose monthly installments have already increased (because banks have raised rates) even before the depreciation of the RON is taken into account. To make matters even worse, many people who bought property towards the end of the boom will now suffer negative equity, an unknown phenomenon in Romania up to now. As investors pull out, unemployment is set to rise, contributing to a downward spiral of falling consumption.

Effective government would concentrate on finding solutions to these problems, in particular by ensuring a good absorption rate of the massive amounts of post-accession EU funding which is available to Romania, and which could be used to finance the infrastructure programmes which the country so badly needs. This would not only be an opportunity for long overdue modernisation, but would also create jobs at a time of economic downturn. But Romanian politicians usually care little about the standard of living of the population, and it is doubtful whether this new administration will meet the challenges which lie ahead.

Comments:

1.
Tuesday 21st April 2009 at 18:04 alina said: "Great point, Mark. I'm trying to write a paper on the coming Romanian elections and it's been very hard trying to find any actual political platforms for these parties. Okay, so everyone likes democracy, freedom, markets, and Romania, but where are these guys DIFFERENT?"