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Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Iliescu to go on the frontline again

Ion Iliescu (currently, president of Romania) has been granted the right to participate in the elections law for the 2004-2008 period. Even if he won't be eligible for Presidency, he will be able to run for parliament on the list of the ruling PSD (Social democratic Party).

This is expected to boost the PSD in their election race in 2004.

This is even more outrageous as the president signed this law on friday himself. So ... its like he voted himself.

Even more, the current constitution clearly says that "the president must be non-partisan, cannot be a party member or hold any other post until he ends his term". But with this move (and with a lot of other recent press-releases he made lately) he is clearly a PSD partisan.

I believe this is meant to create a huge rift in the race for elections and I am amazed of how easily this kind of actions can take place in Romania. One year ago, when the new constitution was proposed, several other moves like this were registered.

As you can remember, thounsands of people were almost obliged to vote for the constitution, even though it was clear that they didn't wanted to. They were stopped on the streets and asked to vote or to sign for the constitution, a lot of votes were falsified, and so on.

Again, I was amazed then by how easily these kind of actions can take place (in a coutry that calls itself democratic) and by how indifferent the international organizations can be when faced with this kind of situations.

While a clear manipulation takes place and while everybody can see that democracy is just a concept in Romania, the IMF, the World Bank and the EU officials talk only about the great progress Romania makes, about our chances to join in 2007 and so on.

I believe joining the EU should be done only when we can compare ourselves to the other members. I don't believe a country where the people can be fooled day-by-day by the politicians, where the civil society is ignored and where the economy is said to be "market economy" while everybody can see it is merely an "10-years-distance-from-a-market-economy" should join the EU. It will just make all the differences act against us.

Posted by Mihai : 9/28/2004 04:09:00 pm