Basescu: The last autocrat of Europe by Dietmar Bergtahl 10/11/2013 - 1:52pm Nearly a quarter-century after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the painful cries for “Freedom” can still be heard from people demonstrating in Europe. In Romania, a member of the European Union since 2007, people are still searching for democratic values that have been buried under the despotic regime of the country’s controversial president, Traian Basescu. Exactly one year ahead of the next Romanian presidential elections, Basescu is regaining his autocratic rule that was weakened by the last year’s referendum in which 87% voted in favour of his impeachment. Engaged in an internal war against the new government and the political majority, Basescu is now setting his sights outside Romania – maybe in Europe, maybe even across the Atlantic Ocean. There are rumours he will try to secure his political future with the help of his old connections who had helped him remain in power one year ago despite the result of the referendum. It is maybe the strangest story of a comeback in Europe and one that is more likely in a country like Belarus (Europe’s last remaining unreconstructed Communist dictatorship) than in a European Union Member State. Only a tyrant can so openly defy the people’s will (7.4m of 8.4m Romanians voted for his impeachment) and return to office. This is how Basescu managed to return to the Presidential Palace following his three-week suspension from the parliament. Building an autocratic regime It was not by chance that Basescu managed to regain power after his own people told him to leave. It was a carefully constructed, self-serving system that saved him. Basescu’s regime is characterised by a network of institutions, which are all under his personal command. By appointing his loyal supporters in key positions and by keeping those who show gratitude, Basescu has even managed to take total control of Romania’s secret services and to pursue his own prerogatives as president over the Supreme Council of National Defence. Using information provided directly by the secret services and its good monitoring system, it is said that Basescu has managed to yield subversive pressure on most of the heads of the key state institutions. Step by step, through more appointments and mandates, he has managed to prolong his personal control and extend it further over the heads of the chief prosecutors as well as the leadership of the Supreme Court of Justice, the Superior Council of Magistracy, the Constitutional Court of Romania and the National Agency for Integrity, to name but a few. Using all these influential institutions, including the National Agency for Fiscal Administration and the Audio Video Commission, throughout his nine years in office, Basescu has succeeded in compromising and eliminating his political rivals, his ex-allies, the voices of the trade union movement and of the civil society. He has also openly attacked the country’s free press institutions. Essentially, there were two constitutional infringements that led to the parliament’s decision to suspend Basescu - not once, but twice, and to eventually call a referendum. But what happened last summer was a typical case of voluntary servitude of the state institutions towards one single person – the president. The sweeping majority vote for the impeachment of the suspended Basescu was quite simply rendered null and void by the Constitutional Court - one of the institutions that is under his direct control. Basescu also rallied the support of his allies across the Atlantic. The United States Ambassador in Bucharest, Mark Gitenstein, for instance, is viewed as an unequivocal supporter of Basescu. In an unprecedented intervention from an American diplomat in the past decade, Ambassador Gitenstein spoke out against the referendum. He said he is “deeply concerned about any attempt to threaten the independence of democratic institutions”. It should also be noted that U.S. Ambassador Gitenstein, strangely enough, also serves on the board of Romania’s Property Fund. As regards the emissaries sent from Washington to publicly support Basescu, they readily and without any hesitation embraced the wildly inflated figures presented in relation to an imaginary election fraud. They presented these alleged figures as facts even though it has been one year since the referendum and no one has been able to find any hard evidence of some two million votes against Basescu’s impeachment. This can only be described as a deliberate attempt on the part of Washington and Brussels to misinform the public. A scandalous theory was even invented as regards the intention of the new government to… arrest some of the judges of the Constitutional Court. The truth was either hidden from the European political elite or the reality distorted: Basescu and his few supporters communicated to Brussels and Washington false information that Romania’s Constitution makes no mention to any impeachment procedure, accrediting their thesis of a coup d’etat. What is more, confusion was deliberately maintained as regards the independence of the members of the Constitutional Court, who are in fact political appointees. Last year, thousands of Romanians took to the streets calling for “Freedom, Freedom” - 23 years after the collapse of the communist regime. Many of them feel that Basescu’s Romania is more and more similar to Nicolae Ceausescu’s Socialist Republic of Romania, according to opinion polls and reports in the local media. One official statistic speaks volumes about Romania’s current regime and it is one that should worry everyone. According to official figures, there were more than 3,000 orders (in just one year) for phone tapping in Romania on the grounds of national security. Also in Romania, the press is considered a “vulnerability” for the national security of the country, as written in the national strategy document. After nine years of Basescu’s mandate, many people are whispering instead of talking. They fear their phone is being tapped and that one single word or phrase might become evidence in a criminal case built exclusively on compilations and incomplete wiretapping. This is a conclusion that can be drawn from the independent reports on the judicial system of Romania that shows most of the cases against political and business leaders were built exclusively on phone tapping, without any other evidence. Meanwhile, the preventive detention for more than one year before a court hearing has become a common method and one that reminds Romanians of the oppressive regime of Stalin. But beyond their growing feelings of fear and anxiety, Romanians also feel frustrated and betrayed as expressed by their vote last year in the referendum - a vote that was ignored. As president, Basescu’s attempts to remain in power have created a paradox: the vote of more than seven million people didn’t count as much as the choice of those who were absent. This result will probably affect the future elections and, furthermore, the democracy of Romania. Actually, this is the dream of any autocrat leader: to replace the people’s will with his own and to disenchant citizens who start to believe there is no point in manifesting their opinions since their vote won’t count and their opinion doesn’t matter and their freedom doesn’t really exist. Monopoly over the external messages Ahead of the referendum, the media delivering the messages from Romania to the other European Union members and the United States were controlled by people close to the Basescu. In fact, countless pro-Basescu messengers were banging on the door of members of the European Parliament and governments and institutions outside the country. Critics say this was an attempt to disseminate only the “appropriate” information approved by the president and his regime. They came in the form of cultural institutions – mainly designed to promote the Romanian culture to the world – or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) close to the presidential regime (like Freedom House Romania). Their aim was to give higher credibility to the so-called information about the coup d’état that was supposedly organised by Romania’s parliament, the government and by the 90% majority of Romanians. All these efforts to deliver fake information to the rest of the EU and to the United States was aimed at obtaining an external support for the suspended president and compensating for the lack of internal support. Who’s got the future? In 13 months, Romania will likely have a new president since Basescu cannot run for a third term in office. But he hasn’t given up. Basescu recently launched a hilarious idea that he could prolong his constitutional term with at least two more months. His way of thinking combined with his methods used until now and with the network of institutions under his command makes us all believe that anything can happen. Event the worst-case scenario: to exchange his presidential chair for an official chairman position within a European or NATO. neurope.eu/article/basescu-last-autocrat-europe
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 07:35:03 +0000
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