State of Nation June/July 2005

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STATE OF THE NATION
The ideological vacuum in Romanian politics

by Mark Percival
June/July 2005

As Romania prepares to send observers to the European Parliament later this year, political parties are busy trying to forge alliances, and define their place in the Strasbourg assembly. All are looking for recognition from one of the established European political groupings, with the hope not only of securing influence in Strasbourg, but also as a badge of recognition, enhancing their reputation at home.

Yet the process has revealed the weakness of ideology in Romanian politics, as parties have been unclear as to which European group to join, and the European bodies themselves have found it even more difficult to identify suitable Romanian partners. The only near certainty is that the PSD will join the European Socialist group, following the unanimous approval of socialist leaders in Paris on 19th May, a move the European organisation may come to regret. The PSD’s admission must be approved by the European Socialists’ Council in June, though this is likely to be a formality.

The situation of the government parties is less certain. In mid-May, discussions took place between PD interim president Emil Boc and the European Socialist leader Philip Cordery. This threw into confusion the Democratic Party’s future political orientation as well as casting doubts over the stability of the governing PD-PNL Alliance. While Boc has denied holding meetings with other European groupings besides the Socialists, Vice President Sorin Frunzaverde has suggested that the Democratic Party might “change its ideology” to become more “conservative” and join the centre right European People’s Party (EPP). The Democrats will apparently decide their orientation at their party conference in June, but once again the absence of clear ideological definitions of Romanian political parties is evident. The European Socialists have appeared confused, with Cordery suggesting that both the PSD and the PD could join, working together in Strasbourg in spite of being on opposite sides of the political divide at home.

Certainly the roots of the PD are on the left, in the sense that the party originated from the post 1989 National Salvation Front. Many of its leading members were close to Romania’s first post-Ceausescu administration – for instance current Transport Minister Gheorghe Dobre, who has been accused of involvement in the miners’ attack on Bucharest in June 1990. As director of the Craiova region of Romania’s national railways, Dobre would have been responsible for organising the passage of trains which brought the Securitate-led miners to Bucharest, where they brutally attacked student demonstrators and ransacked the headquarters of opposition parties as well as anti-government newspapers. The National Salvation Front, which comprised second ranking members of the former Romanian Communist Party (PCR), after the exclusion of genuine dissidents from government in January 1990, eventually split in 1991 into the Democratic National Salvation Front (which became today’s PSD) and the National Salvation Front, which later renamed itself the Democratic Party.

Yet even the idea that a party is on the left through tracing its origins back to the Romanian Communist Party is misleading, in the sense that the PCR itself was an interest group rather than a collection of individuals with any real set of beliefs, at least after it took power in the 1940s. The privileged nomenklatura of the communist period consequently adapted quickly to the new environment after the fall of the Berlin Wall, developing into a mafiocracy which mainly found a home within the PSD and its predecessors, but which also established bastions in other parties, leading to a political system based far more on baronial fiefdoms and personal rivalries than on any real choice between clearly defined political programmes. It is consequently not so surprising that the PD is now simply seeking to join the European grouping which will bring it the greatest advantage.

The uncertain direction of the Alliance is compounded by lack of clarity within the Liberals too, with Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu having shown a clear preference for the party to retain its identity and link with the European Liberals. Tariceanu appears to have eclipsed those in the party who favoured closer links with the EPP and this by definition has distanced the party from its government partners. With both the Liberals and Democrats far from committed to the compromise solution of allying with the EPP, a merger of the two parties looks increasingly unlikely, as does the possibility of a coherent centre right movement emerging out of the PD-PNL alliance.

In addition to the activities of the main parties, there has been an absurd spectacle of smaller groupings all clamouring to join the EPP as a way to gain recognition. So the former Greater Romania Party has changed its name, thinking that adding the word “popular” to its title will be enough to convince the EPP that it has abandoned its nationalist, xenophobic stance and become a mainstream conservative party. Equally the Humanists have become the Conservative Party with the same purpose of attempting to join the EPP. At present the only Romanian parties officially affiliated to the EPP are the former Christian Democrat National Peasant Party, which recently merged with the small URR to form the Popular Christian Democrat Party (clearly using the title “popular” to emphasise its links with the EPP), together with the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) which joined the European grouping as an ethnic party.

While the EPP is unlikely to take seriously the antics of the Greater Romania or Humanist parties, it would be sensible for all the main European groupings to hold off making alliances with Romanian parties until the ideological definitions are more certain. The reality is that there is still not a clear division between centre right and centre left in Romanian politics. The electorate’s choice last autumn was not a democratic one between social democracy and conservatism or liberalism but rather a decision between a corrupt oligarchy aiming at semi-authoritarian rule, and an alternative grouping with apparently more democratic credentials but whose ideological orientation was far from clear. The European Socialists could be severely embarrassed by cultivating too close links with the PSD, in view of the numerous corruption scandals surrounding leading members of that party and its anti-democratic tendencies, which culminated in attempts to retain power fraudulently in last autumn’s elections. For its part, the EPP could find difficulty in defining common goals with parties whose orientation is so ill defined. Romanian politics remain primitive, and it will be some time before any major party is well enough defined to fit into the broad European groupings.

Mark Percival is the managing director of Romania Think Tank, about which more can be found by visiting www.rtt.ro