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Romania

Could Romania’s corruption-tainted Ponta be gone for good?

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When a country’s prime minister is targeted in a corruption inquiry, you’d expect him to protest vigorously, using every political and governmental lever to bolster his support.Romania Flag Icon

Faced with his own troubles and an investigation by Romania’s National Anti-Corruption Directorate (known by its Romanian acronym DNA), prime minister Victor Ponta has apparently done the opposite — citing the need for recovery from a knee surgery, Romania’s prime minister notified the country that he would be stepping down on an interim basis of up to 45 days. For now, deputy prime minister Gabriel Oprea is now the acting prime minister while Ponta remains in Istanbul recuperating.

It’s an odd decision, though, and Ponta’s decision to leave the country within days of corruption charges could embolden his political enemies, though his center-left Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, Social Democratic Party) and its allies have a strong majority in Romania’s parliament.

The National Anti-Corruption Directorate alleges that while working as a lawyer in 2007, Ponta (pictured above) received €40,000 for legal work that he didn’t perform from another attorney — who Ponta later appointed to his cabinet. For now, Ponta’s parliamentary majority refuses to lift his immunity, and his allies are even threatening to weaken the anti-graft laws under which the DNA has stepped up its scrutiny of the entirety of Romania’s political elite. The country consistently ranks among the most corrupt countries in the European Union alongside Bulgaria, both of which joined the European Union in 2007. Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis, a political rival who faced off against Ponta in last year’s presidential election, has already called on Ponta to step down. That’s unlikely — and fresh parliamentary elections in Romania aren’t due until 2016.

The chief prosecutor of the DNA, Laura Codruța Kövesi, has empowered the role of an institution that was founded only in 2002 — under her watch, the office won a conviction against Adrian Năstase, Romania’s prime minister between 2000 and 2004, on corruption charges, among many others.

Nevertheless, it’s odd that Ponta essentially sneaked out of the country for knee surgery on June 14, and it’s odd that Ponta sought to relinquish control as prime minister.  Continue reading Could Romania’s corruption-tainted Ponta be gone for good? →

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Iohannis upsets Ponta in Romanian presidential election

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It’s becoming a more German Europe in more ways that one.Romania Flag Icon

In a stunning upset victory, Sibiu mayor Klaus Iohannis, an ethnic German, defeated prime minister Victor Ponta, in Sunday’s Romanian presidential election, challenging confident predictions that Ponta would easily take the presidency.

Ponta’s center-left Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, Social Democratic Party), dominated both the December 2013 national parliamentary elections and the May 2014 European parliamentary elections, and Ponta entered the runoff as the prohibitive favorite after a resounding victory in the October 2 first round, when he took 40.44% of the vote to just 30.37% for Iohannis, the new leader of the center-right Partidul Național Liberal (PNL, National Liberal Party).

But Ponta’s 10-point lead disguised the fact that he fell 10% short of an absolute majority and, as voters’ minds focused on the runoff, Iohannis gained from a surge in turnout — from around 53% in the first round to over 64% in the runoff.

That’s despite the endorsement that Ponta won from third-place challenger, Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, a former PNL leader and the country’s prime minister between 2004 and 2008, who founded the Partidul Liberal Reformator (PLR, Liberal Reformist Party) in July, helped boost Iohannis to an unexpectedly wide margin of victory — 54.50% to just 45.49% for Ponta.

Iohannis, a physics teacher by training, has served as mayor of Sibiu, a city in Transylvania, since 2000, and he led the relatively small Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din România (FDGR, Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania) from 2002 to 2013. As outgoing incumbent Traian Băsescu receded from the spotlight after a decade as president, Iohannis assumed the leadership of the PNL, the larger of Romania’s two major opposition parties, though Iohannis also had the support of Băsescu’s Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PD-L, Democratic Liberal Party).

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Though the PNL joined forces with Ponta (pictured above) in 2011 to form the Social Liberal Union, it left the coalition in February 2014 to enter opposition, eyeing an alliance with the PD-L. When the PNL suffered disappointing losses in the May European elections, however, its leader Crin Antonescu stepped down, paving the way for Iohannis to reboot the party and become the joint PNL/PD-L presidential candidate.

Though ethnic Germans settled much of Transylvania, including the city of Sibiu, two waves of German exodus, first after World War II and again after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, have left few German-speaking enclaves in Romania. Today, just over 4% of Romanians are ethnically German. Continue reading Iohannis upsets Ponta in Romanian presidential election →

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Ponta set to consolidate power in Romanian in Sunday’s elections

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It’s all but certain that Romania’s prime minister, Victor Ponta, will emerge from Romania’s Nov. 9 parliamentary elections as not only the winner, but with an extraordinary mandate to govern in his own right. 

Ponta (pictured above) became prime minister earlier this year in May after the government of Emil Boc fell over protests against the austerity measures that Boc’s government had implemented, in large part dictated as a condition of loans from the International Monetary Fund that have buoyed Romania’s budget since 2009.

Shortly after taking office, however, Ponta start acting in ways that have caused alarm throughout the European Union — Ponta called a constitutionally suspect referendum on July 30 to remove Romania’s president, Traian Băsescu, for overstepping his authority, despite a ruling to the contrary from Romania’s Constitutional Court.  That referendum failed because only 46.23% of voters turned out for the referendum (lower than the 50% threshold required), but Ponta and Băsescu have been locked in political warfare ever since, and will likely continue to do so until Băsescu’s term ends in 2014, although it seems very likely that Ponta and his allies could try to impeach Băsescu after Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Ponta’s referendum against Băsescu was only one of several constitutionally suspect actions in the first months of his tenure as prime minister.  Ponta made blatant attempts to put allies in charge of Romanian public television, attempted to push through a new first-past-the-post electoral law (that was ultimately rejected by Romania’s constitutional court), stacked the leadership of Romania’s parliament with his allies, and has been accused of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis.

Given that Romania, Europe’s ninth most-populous country with 21 million people, has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 2004 and a full European Union member since 2007, U.S. and European policymakers are anxious that Ponta will attempt to steamroll the Romanian judiciary and/or Băsescu.  The political turmoil in Romania has already caused EU officials to delay Romania’s entry into the border-free Schengen Area,  the free-travel zone that covers much of Europe.

It seems even more unlikely that the election will settle the feud between Ponta and Băsescu, who seems set to do everything he can within his role as Romania’s head of state to frustrate Ponta.  It’s possible that Băsescu could even refuse to nominate Ponta as prime minister following Sunday’s election, which would result in a constitutional crisis and, potentially, new elections.

The election comes at a time when outside investors are losing patience with Romania’s increasingly negative political climate, and, in particular, the IMF will increasingly pressure Romania’s government for concessions before early next year, when its current €5 billion funding package expires.

The latest polls all show a remarkably consistent lead for Ponta’s Uniunea Social Liberală (USL, Social Liberal Union), a patchwork alliance of various parties that formed just in 2011, primarily Ponta’s own Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, Social Democratic Party), the one-time center-right Partidul Naţional Liberal (PNL, National Liberal Party) and others.

Together, the USL as an alliance holds at least 161 seats (the PSD with 92 seats, the PNL with 57) in the 315-member Chamber of Deputies (Camera Deputaţilor), the lower house of Romania’s parliament (Parlamentul României), going into Sunday’s elections, and look very much likely to extend that lead.

Currently, the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, with 98 seats, is the Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PDL, Democratic Liberal Party), Băsescu’s party, which had governed after its victory in 2008 parliamentary elections until Boc’s government fell earlier this year.  The PDL, which is running under a center-right patchwork alliance, the Alianţa România Dreaptă (ARD, Right Romania Alliance), that formed only in September 2012 as an alliance among the PDL and two smaller parties, the National Peasant Christian-Democratic Party and Civic Force.

The ARD / PDL, however, remains deeply unpopular in a country that saw just 1% GDP growth in 2010, contracted by 0.4% in 2011, and has pushed through three years of harsh austerity measures.

In the 137-member Senate (Senat), the Romanian parliament’s upper chamber, Ponta’s PSD holds 40 seats and his allied PNL holds 27 seats, with just 35 for the PDL.

One recent poll, however, gave Ponta’s USL fully 62% of the vote to just 17% for the ARD, the second choice of Romanian likely voters.

Continue reading Ponta set to consolidate power in Romanian in Sunday’s elections →

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Ponta takes Romania to ‘cusp of dictatorship’ as Sunday’s presidential referendum approaches

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Hungary’s Viktor Orbán seems to be in good company these days.

As it turns out, he’s no longer the only Eastern European leader who gives pause to European Union leaders worried about a backslide to democracy.

Since becoming prime minister of Romania in May of this year, Victor Ponta (pictured above) has taken an unorthodox approach to respecting Romania’s constitutional framework.  Ponta’s biggest gamble so far comes to a climax this weekend — on Sunday, Romania will hold a referendum on whether to remove Romania’s president, Traian Băsescu.  Ponta and his political allies argue that Băsescu overstepped his authority, and have moved to have him suspended from office pending the referendum.  Romania’s Constitutional Court has ruled otherwise, but the referendum is still going forward.

Accordingly, if over 50% of eligible voters turn out, and a majority vote to remove Băsescu, it could trigger even more worries about a quasi-constitutional coup d’état.  The European Union earlier this month issued a stinging report about Romania’s new government since Ponta’s ascension as prime minister, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso minced no words about his concern:

“Challenging judicial decisions, undermining the Constitutional Court, overturning established procedures and removing key checks and balances have called into question the government’s commitment to respect the rule of law,” Barroso said. “Party political strife cannot justify overriding core democratic principles. Politicians must not try to intimidate judges ahead of decisions or attack judges when they take decisions they do not like.”

Romania, a country of 19 million people centered on the eastern edge of the EU, joined the EU only in 2007 after emerging in 1989 from a Communist dictatorship under longtime strongman Nicolae Ceauşescu — EU leaders are currently assessing whether to permit Romania to join the Schengen Area — Europe’s free-travel zone which has no internal border controls.

Like most countries in Europe, Romania’s political climate has been altered by difficult budget choices in light of the sovereign debt crisis across the EU.  The country is dependent upon loans granted initially in 2009 from the International Monetary Fund in exchange for commitments to bring down Romania’s annual budget deficit from a high of nearly 7% in 2009.  Despite rapid growth throughout the 2000s, Romania’s economy contracted by almost 10% in 2009 and 2010, and grew at only an anemic 1.5% in 2011.

Emil Boc, whose Christian democratic/conservative Partidul Democrat-Liberal (PD-L, the Democratic Liberal Party, and which is also Băsescu’s party) won the greatest number of seats in the 2008 Romanian legislative election, governed until February 2012 and attempted to enact austerity measures in order to bring Romania’s budget under firmer control.

When Boc’s government fell, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu of the free-market liberal Partidul Naţional Liberal (PNL, the National Liberal Party), attempted to build a new government, with the support of the social democratic Partidul Social Democrat (PSD, the Social Democratic Party), the third of Romania’s three major parties.*  Although Ungureanu attempted to continue economic reforms, his government fell on a no-confidence vote on May 7, when the PSD’s Ponta replaced him.

Since then, it’s been an incredible two months for Ponta, whose government has attracted concern with staggering speed. Continue reading Ponta takes Romania to ‘cusp of dictatorship’ as Sunday’s presidential referendum approaches →