If you throw a bone to a pack of dogs and they will tear each other apart to grab it. Try to retrieve it and they will tear you apart.
It is difficult to find a more fitting image to describe the latest positions taken by the magistrates representatives to those who criticize their greed, lack of solidarity, their basic attack on decency and the strains they cause on the country’s budget, or the promotion of aberrant privileges such as you can no longer find anywhere else in the civilized world.
Last week, the ‘circus’ was maintained by the High Court of Cassation and Justice, chief judge, the controversial Lia Savonea (link at the end).
This week began with a “dog” escalation of the circus – the heads of the courts of appeal “came together” to build a wall around the High Court/Savonea – but also in a shocking gesture of malice, contempt and lack of proportions on the part of the Superior Council of Magistrates
The latter, itself with a tattered reputation gained over time, filed a criminal complaint against a deputy prime minister for expressing an opinion and more than that, an opinion expressed in the most civilized way. An uncomfortable opinion, it’s true, but perfectly legitimate, civilized and very to the point.
Oana Gheorghiu was handed over by the Magistrates Council to her fellow prosecutors as if she was the most wretched and dangerous specimen in Romanian society.
In the above case, the Magistrates Council is asking the prosecutor’s office to carry out “investigations under the aspect of committing the crime of incitement to violence, hatred or discrimination provided by the provisions of art. 369 of the Criminal Code”.
The “smart guys” in Justice, behold, aren’t playing around – art. 369 of the Criminal Code provides for prison sentences (from 6 months to 3 years) or a fine.
These esteemed people have either lost their direction, or they have lost their patience!
But one thing is certain: given their malignant level of stubbornness, from the perspective of a plaintiff that is on trial by these judges, you wonder whether the magistrates who have ‘jumped’ on this are actually capable using reason, proportional measures and the professional knowledge accumulated during the years of study.
Then, you also wonder if that’s not what their “negotiation” strategy really boils down to: punch in mouth, keep quiet, in short, intimidation.
If they are sending a high-level government official to prosecutors, and coincidentally one who has an absolutely extraordinary track record in her career as a civic activist, then what does the risk look like for the rest of the ordinary mortals who do not share the greed and arguments full of logical, ethical and moral flaws of their ‘lordships,’ the magistrates?
Finally, there is an astonishing irony of fate: precisely the person attacked today, with such in such a ferocious and disgraceful way, by a profession that is paid handsomely and undeservedly (especially if we judge the overall results of the Romanian justice) has in the past been treated in exactly the same way, only then by politicians.
Coincidentally, she was treated like this by politicians from the same Social Democratic Party with whom the anti-reform wing of magistrates has always felt suspiciously at home with.
A few years ago, Oana Gheorghiu and her colleague, Carmen Uscatu, from the Give Life association who built a hospital for children with cancer by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Romanians and thousands of companies, were shamefully criticized by Gabriela Firea, former Social Democratic mayor of Bucharest, and Sorina Pintea, the former Social Democratic Minister of Health (later sentenced to prison for corruption) They actually planned to nationalize the money raised for the children ‘s hospital – tens of millions of dollars.
Instead of raising a statue to them, some “honest” people constantly tried to tear them down. Yesterday, some anti-reform politicians from the Social Democratic Party. And today, some anti-reform magistrates (with the continued broad support of the same party – because, of course, some things never seem to change).
The magistrates who support Savonea will not be known for their solidarity and decency, neither will the chief judges who sit in the appeal courts who leapt to support her, of the chief magistrates who knock on the door of a deputy prime minister, for expressing an opinion, and, in general, of those magistrates who loudly protest that their privileges which should not have existed from the start are being cut off. They don’t deserve them anyway.
But what about logic and arithmetic, two basic elements that those that deliver justice say they learned since the first year of college and should have consolidated in their professional lives?
When Deputy Prime Minister Oana Gheorghiu introduced the metaphor of the sick child this probably drove them out of their minds precisely because it revealed their pettiness, said something logical and arithmetically sound: in a budget that does not have enough for everyone, if you give extra to someone, you take from someone else.
And that’s right: when they pumped their privileges by the ton in court, Romanian magistrates practically legislated their own ‘fattening’ at the expense of other categories of their fellow human beings.
There is nothing about principles in the discussion about the judiciary’s special pensions, as the magistrates falsely claim, but rather it is about the lack, as far as they are concerned, of some minimum principles.
Some eat with three hands, others don’t eat at all – the magistrates don’t mind. And those who do not agree with the way the pie is shared, well, let them go to jail!
Are all magistrates in Romania cut from the same cloth? If they are not, now is the time for them to put their hands up!
- PS: Interestingly, in the Magistrates Council’s approach against Deputy Prime Minister Oana Gheorghiu, that in order to counter the contestation of their own inflated pensions, they immediately filed a criminal complaint for “the crime of incitement to violence, hatred or discrimination”. On the other hand, for almost two decades, there has been legislation in Romania aimed at countering and punishing crimes such as anti-Semitism, the promotion of criminal ideologies, such as legionarism, incitement to hatred of various kinds, praising for people convicted of crimes against humanity or genocide. Over the course of almost 20 years, the legislation has even been improved. But in practice… Well, the practice is a disgrace. The Romanian justice system, the one that feels like a state within a state and is always plagued by a terrible hunger for money and privileges, has a shameful record and has been repeatedly criticized internally and internationally. A shameful record and also a dangerous one, because a year ago at this time, on the occasion of the first round of the presidential elections, by chance we found out for ourselves how dearly it could have cost us, as a nation, the long period in which the Romanian justice left individuals and cells that promoted the most odious ideas to their own devices, resentments and doctrines.
