Romania’s social Democrats are a phenomenon: so many political scandals can harm your does not – because they are successful! For imitation in Europe, they are not suitable, says Norbert Mappes-Niediek.
Like their colleagues around the world, Romania’s government tips every morning the distinctive present, most sentences from the world press. So much Staggering as Donald Trump and the Venezuelan autocrat Maduro get in these weeks, however, at best, to read about.
Alone, it trickles down to you like a downpour on a wax cloth. With a poker face, the head of the ruling social democratic party, Liviu Dragnea, the General indignation. That he was personally convicted for electoral fraud and for incitement to abuse of office, has cost him the prospect of the Post of heads of government. But not the Power. That all In the country and abroad perceive of him, Dragnea, chosen by and dependent Minister-President Viorica Dăncilă as his puppet, brings the man at the top nor from the rest, as the constant attacks of the President Klaus iohannis to do. After the impressive electoral victory of his social democratic party Dragnea sawed persistently and in the end successfully to the chair of the courageous Head of the Anti-corruption authority.
The Power of the barons
Since then, his party is seeking your corrupt notables with interventions, questionable amnesties and to take appointments of Judges out of the firing line of the judiciary. A passage runs in front of the police. To Try to disguise his intent, somehow, Dragnea a little energy. What’s the point? It comes to corruption, lose his party a long time reputation. Adrian Năstase, former party leader and Prime Minister, landed in jail. Everyone knows that the “barons”, such as the social democratic party is called the nobility in the province like the East and the South of the country firmly in its grip. The week-long protests of hundreds of thousands of Romanians, two years ago, Dragnea and his party sat as well as the complaints and admonitions from Brussels and even the recently growing number of prominent defections enter party. Many Enjoyed the impertinence of their party leaders, now goes to far.
Liviu Dragnea, the Democrat some other social: Who steps out of line, flies.
Stupid only: Dragnea and his party have success. No country in the Region has recovered from the financial crisis ten years ago, as quickly and as thoroughly as Romania. Wages are rising, unemployment is low, thanks in part to the ongoing emigration. A middle class has emerged. The roads are better, as well as the railway. The school system and even the Brain-drain of hard-pressed health care have again taken hold.
Gone, but not forgotten are the times, as with the austerity of the regiment in the year 2010, tens of thousands of state employees lost, the VAT over night rose all around five percent, as dozens of hospitals were closed, Doctors have to cut their already modest salaries by a quarter in crowds left the country. With neo-liberal radical cures, as in the time of former President Traian Băsescu no flowers in Romania, pot win; let alone a choice. In Romania’s social Democrats to govern even socialist. The trade unions were still disempowered in silence.
A lot of members, good election results, tightly organized
The party ruled with a heavy Hand and is also governed itself; anyone who violated the loyalty of the flies. With their domination structure of Romania differs social democracy of its sister parties in the Rest of Europe fundamentally. But also with your success. With more than half a Million members is among all of the parties of the so-called transition countries by far the largest. Their election results, the last of which 46 percent are unprecedented in Europe.
In Romania, non-Hiking social Democrats in the direction of right-wing populism, as it is about their Slovak Comrades have done. In their ranks are not only corrupt barons, but also many Dedicated, the project the country is really something marching. In the parliamentary group, a number of believe seats available worthy of real civil rights and minority interests. Applications and concepts are simply not the thing of the Romanian PSD. It is a power machine.
The PSD is firmly seated in the saddle of Power, however, the protest potential is growing
Beliefs, values, and views are not your Business; for a pluralistic System, the party is not made. You can to the left, you can the right. The keyboard of the nationalism, this is not worse than Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in neighbouring Hungary; only she has no need to do so extensively. If it is opportune, mobilized, but without the Abrasive against the Hungarian minority in the country, against the German-born President, or against the supposedly arrogant “Brussels bureaucrats”.
PSD: For imitation in Europe is not suitable
To explain the mixture of self-sufficiency and indifference from the story. The KP, from which it is derived, was not to the right or to the left. It was just the Power. Still, the “National salvation front”, which Romania ruled after the fall of the Ceausescu regime, can be understood as a kind of avant-garde of the people, which should unite all contradictions. Nobody found something, if the leaders of the old regime after 1990 suddenly, even as the fascists turned out to be. At least as a coalition partner, they were still good enough. With communism, finally, was in Romania, a right-wing, nationalistic and socially conservative face and never a utopian, has set the party never apart.
Outside of Romania the recipe for success of the PSD is not applicable. Teachable the party is not only right, not even the weak sister parties in Western Europe, where identity is increasingly lost. But if you don’t want to take the success of the Romanian Enjoyed damage, will have to say Europe’s social Democrats anyway, what’s the matter. In the past, it was not explain, for example, for the SPD easily, and why you refused for decades any cooperation with the left party and its predecessor PDS, while she was at the same time, to sit with each of the shame and remorse unangekränkelten Enjoyed from Romania or Bulgaria in the European Parliament, even in a group. Angela Merkel may be able to a Viktor Orbán, make, Andrea Nahles, a Liviu Dragnea certainly not.
Norbert Mappes-Niediek lives in Graz, Austria and Southeast Europe correspondent for many German-language Newspapers.