The fall of the Bolojan Government is a living example of how a relatively simple state of affairs – the fear of a clan of hyenas of running out of food- can create a serious problem- an attack on the country’s economic stability and its future democracy, plus potentially endangering Romania’s strategic orientation.
Because, where the overthrow of Ilie Bolojan’s government was the easy part, putting something reasonable in its place seems an almost impossible task.
It should also be noted that we wouldn’t have reached this situation, at least not this quickly, without the essential contribution of the head of state, who instead of shooing away the hyenas in time, simply gave them ample space for action.
Nicușor Dan has cunningly camouflaged his flagrant complicity under the pompous label of so-called equidistance.
The serious problem thus created by the simple state of affairs, in which President Dan was at least complicit, lies in the fact that:
- Creating a majority government with populist party, AUR, together with other extremists and opportunists in Parliament plus PSD, presents a systemic risk for Romania. Given how fragile our democracy is and how fragile the country’s institutional architecture is, we could find ourselves in a situation where once extremists get a finger on the government, they grab the whole hand.
- On the other hand, if you want to not open the door to extremists, you should convince the Liberals, Bolojan and USR to masochistically accept returning to government under the conditions imposed by the bully PSD.
Nicușor Dan has so far given three assurances: that he does not want AUR in the government, he does not want a minority government and he will deliver a pro-Western government.
Implicitly, this would mean that Nicusor Dan opts for point 2, although it contains contradictions, and the positions of the Liberals and USR after the vote make it even more unlikely than it had been a few hours before.
Corroborating, what Nicușor Dan said about the future post-motion with PNL and USR’s decision to go into opposition, means that the head of state will not be able to keep his word. Because he either he accepts a minority government (led by PSD or PNL-USR), or it accepts a government with AUR, and such a government can no longer be considered pro-Western (although even with the PSD in government, there are doubts it would truly be a pro-Western government).
Any of these options are precarious, in terms of economic stability, the state of democracy, Romania’s pro-Western orientation.
Whichever way you look at it, the PSD’s primal fear that they can no longer leech off the state as they have done, the supreme goal of the extremists (a rerun of December 2024 presidential elections) and the complicity of President Dan with these two groups have placed Romania in an infinitely worse situation than it was before the vote.
This is the solution offered by Romania’s mathematician president!
The only way to mitigate the harmful impact of the crisis is to manage it in such a way that some opportunities open up.
These would be:
- Ilie Bolojan moves intelligently and quickly to strengthen his profile as a politician of substance, capable of sparking true reforms which haven’t been possible until now. His speech in parliament was a big sign that he can, and that he’s more than just an ambitious and relatively efficient manager.
- PNL and USR should not be afraid of going into opposition. And during consultations with the president, they should not be intimidated by cynical appeals for stability and, should be clear that they will enter opposition if the head of state insists on supporting the PSD supporter as much as he’s done so far.
- If there is an anti-Bolojan coup in the Liberals, Ilie Bolojan should break up the party. Romania had nothing to gain when the Liberals were the junior partner of the PSD or ex-President Klaus Iohannis, and they had everything to lose.
- Nicușor Dan should dramatically change his way of being president and start to act according to the mandate he received from those who voted for him: with moral clarity and using the huge potential for action that the position of president confers on him. Of course, he can no longer make up for the last six months, but it’s still worth a try.
- For example, he could make the PSD pay for the crisis created. It is not only unacceptable, but it is even dangerous that, following the negotiations with the president, the PSD receives but doesn’t pay its dues. How should the president proceed? Well, it’s his job to rack his brains, because he is paid for it and, above all, that’s what he was elected to do.
As I recently wrote, the current crisis, created by the PSD and massively fueled by AUR and Nicușor Dan, is not moral not just political.
It’s hard for me to identify another crisis with the same level of moral clarity post-1989; in which moral clarity has been impossible to ignore, as it is now; in which moral clarity was a matter of life and death, from the perspective of Romania’s chances of continuing Euro-Atlantic integration and on a pro-Western path domestically.
- PS: After the way the anti-Bolojan motion came about and especially the thirst with which the parliamentarians voted (281 – a record) for the dismissal of Prime Minister Bolojan, you are left with a sour taste: a politician was thrown in the trash, not only after he had done what almost no one else had in the service of the country, but also after he had been brought to Bucharest at a time when the “garbage collectors” were desperate to find someone infinitely more credible than them and brave enough to take on the thankless task of collecting the mess left by others.
- A country that continues to reward valuable people like this cannot hope to go very far.
