Corruption in Romania: Why a sneaky government decree triggered huge demonstrations

First, a little poetry.

You must come, O dread Impaler, confound them to your care.
Split them in two partitions, here the fools, the rascals there.

Yes, we are in the land of Vlad the Impaler, Romania's best-known literary export and the inspiration for Dracula.

But before that, and before he was immortalized by Romania's national poet Mihai Eminescu, Vlad was a ruler in northern Romania in the 15th century, and a scourge of the Ottoman Turks.

But fair — as some say today — with rivals, thieves and the corrupt. Thus the impaling.

A leader feared and respected, if not exactly loved.

In the immense Victory Square in Bucharest, among the tens of thousands who have gathered in recent weeks in the cold and snow to protest rampant government corruption, there were some waving placards and portraits of Vlad the Prince with the words, "Do you miss me?"

They do.

The crowds calling on Vlad have been venting their fury at massive corruption stretching over decades. They're demanding a new, clean government.

Meanwhile, the existing, not-so-clean group of ministers refuses to go, hoping the crowds' anger will burn itself out.

A dubious decree

The trigger for these massive demonstrations — the biggest since the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu's communist regime in 1989 — was a very dodgy decree rushed through parliament at midnight by the country's new government on Jan. 31.

The decree eliminated penalties for corruption and abuse of office as long as the amount pocketed by ministers, MPs, judges or civil servants didn't exceed $62,000 US (which is six times the annual income of the average Romanian).

Several leaders of the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD) would have directly benefited.

The crowds, alerted by social media, started gathering almost immediately and grew and grew. By the sixth day, an estimated 300,000 people filled the square with demands not only to rescind the decree but that the government resign.

People chanted "Hotii, hotii! ("Thieves, thieves!") and held up lighted mobile phones, creating a square of lights. Slogans and calls to revolt were projected on the buildings around the square. 

"You've succeeded, you've united us!" many yelled.

The demonstrations have continued into a fourth week now, with thousands gathering this past Sunday in Bucharest and other cities.

The protests have become known as the "Revolution of Light," echoing the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolutions in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014.

They, too, demanded an end to corruption and the governments that presided over it.

Even the European Union stepped into the fray in Romania (the country has been an EU member since 2007), threatening to cut back some of its funding if the decree wasn't dropped.

Less than a week after the midnight decree was rushed through, the government, in a humiliating climb-down, withdrew it.

The justice minister, offered up as the fall guy, was fired.

Using the Trump playbook

The demonstrations continued. But five days later, the majority government, elected with 45 per cent of the vote in December, easily defeated an opposition motion of non-confidence. Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu said his government had no intention of resigning.

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Instead, it introduced a bill to hold a referendum — on corruption. It passed unanimously. No date was fixed, and no wording announced.

This excursion into Romanian political surrealism continued in Brussels on Feb. 20. There, Grindeanu congratulated the demonstrators — the same people who had been calling for his resignation — on their newfound political activism.

Then, taking a leaf from the Trump White House playbook, he announced that the dodgy decree would simply be rewritten and submitted to parliament as a bill. There, presumably, the Social Democratic majority will vote it through.

Romanians have learned to live with endemic corruption, much as they have learned to live with the PSD, which has governed most of the time since the fall of Ceausescu.

"Our break with communism was incomplete," says Sebastien Borduja, one of the organizers of the demonstrations in the snow.

"Romania was the only country in Eastern Europe to vote the communists' successor party into power following the fall of the Iron Curtain."

Yes, the PSD is the stepchild of Ceausescu's brutal party. Many of its first-generation leaders were simply retooled communist apparatchiks. In the new regime, they traded in brute force for the chance to get rich, often illegally.

Consider that the previous two PSD prime ministers were charged with corruption, tax evasion and money laundering, as was present party leader Liviu Dragnea.

Dragnea and one of the prime ministers were convicted.

As a result of his conviction, Dragnea couldn't serve as prime minister after the party's win in December. The suspicion is that he was behind the decree, which would allow him to avoid a possible prison term.

Corruption warnings everywhere

Yet the PSD remains in power, in large part because, like the governments of Poland and Hungary, the party deftly employs populist rhetoric and gifts like increased pensions to keep voters happy.

A rapidly growing economy in this country of 20 million, fueled in part by remittances sent home by the three million Romanians working abroad, certainly helps.

Corruption, of course, isn't limited to the politicians. The first thing that greets you at the borders between Romania and Hungary or Moldova are posters crying, "Corruption! Report it," along with a telephone number.

There is a general belief that many of the border guards who meticulously check cars and passports are also meticulously taking their cut on illegally trafficked cigarettes, alcohol, cars and drugs.

Bribes are needed for documents, and often for hospital beds and services. 

Corruption can, at least, be turned to cultural advantage. It has become a favourite subject of the Romanian New Wave of films, two of which – The Graduation and Child's Pose – have won major awards at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals in the last four years.

Both tell of parents ensnared in bribery and corruption to try to protect their children.

But film awards are perhaps a consolation — the abscess remains.

The EU regularly monitors Romania, along with Bulgaria, for corruption. The report released on Feb. 22 was particularly damning about the decree and its aftermath.

"Such initiatives risk challenging the progress made over the past 10 years," it concluded.

Prime minister Grindeanu professed to be unconcerned. No one in business had complained to his cabinet about corruption, he said.

And so, millions of Romanians still yearn for the "dread impaler."