The president’s answers to journalists’ questions on Thursday leave an unpleasant, even a very unpleasant taste.
On the issue of the “system”, there is undoubtedly a deep accommodation of the head of state with the situation on the ground, some kind of halfhearted resignation rather than an ambitious strategy by the system itself.
“You can’t fight the System when you’re the head of the System,” said Nicușor Dan, words which will haunt him forever until the end of his mandate and beyond. It seems that Nicușor Dan is not the head of the system, but a mere wheel in the system.
Nicușor Dan did not go into details, or provide nuances, though this kind of statement begs clarifications.
Here are two questions for him:
- What led him to this conclusion?
- If when you became the head of the system you can’t fight it, then what do you do when you’re merely its target or toy?
On the issue of the failed attempt to co-opt extremists into the government (directly or indirectly), through former PM designate Adrian Veștea, the president gave few explanations and his reasoning was clumsy.
He left in the air the clarification of his role and that of his own advisers, he cowardly invoked the so-called constitutional role that would not have allowed him to interfere and, finally, he passed the ball to Veștea, probably considering that throwing everything on a dead horse would leave everyone with clean hands.
He then addressed the issue of the incompetent, corrupt and greedy justice system in a way that PSD has done so for decades, but not something you would have expected from a leader who promised to clean up this area.
Moreover, Nicușor Dan stridently hinted that the problem with justice was less related to justice and more related to the unreasonable expectations from public opinion and people who use the justice system
How else can you interpret it when the president says there is “a social aversion to magistrates”?
Nicușor Dan probably had in mind the months of debates on the reform of the special pensions of magistrates (a reform linked to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan not just to common sense), during which the greed and poor performance of magistrates, were harshly criticized by the public, some of the press and some politicians.
Anyone with a clear mind and sense of responsibility would consider public criticism of the justice system legitimate. I would add that Nicușor Dan’s words are suspiciously echo Lia Savonea’s statements and the communiqes coming out of the Supreme Council of Magistrates.
You can’t help wonder how Nicușor Dan reached this point so quickly and what other surprises does te president who has become unrecognizable have in store for us?
As for the blacklists that the Supreme Council of Magistrates issued, his attitude is unfathomable. Not only did he remain silent, but when he finally opened his mouth, he was markedly lenient with the magistrates and shocking in his attitude that he can’t do anything.
“Further, I have no institutional means to intervene in this matter,” said Nicușor Dan, suggesting that the presidential office is a straw one, and that the president of the country is a merely decorative position.
It’s as if the head of state was giving the green light to magistrates to be aggressive towards its critics in civil society, within the judiciary, in the media and across the political spectrum.
“I don’t have institutional means” – this is what a president who has not bothered to attend any Supreme Council of Magistrates meetings in more than a year says, although this is an institutional tool he has at his fingertips.
The power of words was another tool available to the head of state, yet Nicușor Dan did not use it, even though a president’s words carry the considerable weight of the highest office in the state.
Finally, what was clear from Nicușor Dan’s intervention on Thursday is that he really fears impeachment. And because this fear has such proportions, impeachment has become a a real concern for him.
“Impeachment is a very serious matter and we must not trivialize it,” he said. From his activity and statements on Thursday, you can deduce quite easily that Nicușor Dan is in Cotroceni not to force reforms, and also not to force suspension.
It is understandable to want a second term, it is understandable to want to finish at least the first one, but it is unacceptable that the head of state has started to sacrifice everything and everything on this altar – including democracy (see his passivity with magistrates’ blacklists, his attacks on the Liberals,, see the story with the votes of AUR and other extremists for the Veștea Government).
A president who seemed to say he’d been taken over by the system, who declared himself impotent in the face of magistrates, who admitted to the whole country his pathological fear of impeachment, this is the president we saw on Thursday. A president who no longer has anything in common with the candidate he had been, a president who it will be easier and easier for us to be able to do without.
Romanian president makes surprise late-night walkabout amid political crisis
