The governmental crisis in Romania: a structural perspective

Over the last few years, Romania has faced a unique political problem, which has monopolized the public debate and forced the functioning of the state apparatus to grind to a halt time and again. This seemingly insurmountable issue is the conflict “between the Victoria and Cotroceni palaces”, i.e. the wrangling amid the two branches of the executive. This concealed the true discord amidst the prerogatives of the Legislative and the Executive. The following short essay will attempt to rise over the details of the conflict itself and descend towards its roots, showing it as being a problem of structures, rather then people.

If we abide by the axiom that politicians in general have a proclivity towards power and will attempt by any and all means, mostly within the existing legal framework, to acquire it, we have the first building block for our explanation. The equation of a functioning political structure will then include the congruence between the activity of politicians and their groupings, and the existing political and legal framework. A closer look at the legal framework of Romania, will reveal a number of interesting peculiarities. Not insisting on boring legal jargon, one of the main problems of Romania’s fundamental law, the Constitution, is its ambiguous wording on a number of issues. The matters, which gave birth to the present divorce between the parliament and the office of the President, lie in the faulty definition of their prerogatives. There is a huge grey area, in the issues of appointment and control over the government, and the Constitution leaves plenty of room for legal speculation and diverging lines of interpretation. This is all fine when, as between 2003-2004, the president and the parliament are of the same political lineage. But when the composition of the legislative differs from the presidential preference, and we add one Traian Basescu, an ambitious politician, permanent, protracted political trench- warfare is almost inevitable. Therefore, I submit to you that Romania’s political collapse is due to a structural cause, not to lack of political culture.

Romania’s Constitution is a document fraught with errors of formulation, and due for immediate revision. It renders the country neither in the area of parliamentary republics (such as Germany, Italy, Hungary etc.), nor semi-presidential (France) or presidential ones (USA). Romania is placed somewhere in the obscure zone between the latter two. It seems that even after 300 years we haven’t learned much from the English system of checks and balances.The world financial crisis has acted as a catalyst for this fundamental weakness of the institutional system, and has led to a state of administrative collapse. Yet the political class, and indeed, the press, the would-be representative of an inexistent civil society, concentrate on the coming presidential elections as a solution. I am no political analyst, but I would wager to say that this will not dispel the political storm clouds. The parliament still has budgetary control over this branch of the executive, and the present state of fragmentation of political options will not lead to a far dissimilar configuration of the seats in the legislative chambers. The true solution to this problem would be the abrogation of the present form of the Constitution and the adoption of one that would consecrate a parliamentary republic. I must admit that this is my personal option, but any other clearly demarcated democratic institutional format would be preferable to the present one.