Transatlantic Politics

The Polish Kaczynski twins strike again: in their ruthless hunt for collaborators with the former Communist regime, the latest potential victim caused an uproar throughout the rest of the world -  Bronislaw Geremek, one of the most preeminent member and supporter of the Solidarnosc movement that confronted the Communist regime in Poland. The Polish government has announced that it might withdraw the European Parliamentary mandate to Mr. Geremek because he refused to sign a statement regarding the status of his relations with the former Communist Secret Police, as required by the amended Law of Lustration in Poland. Geremek is currently a member of the European Parliament, representing his country within the Union legislative body, in the ALDE group. He was the head of Polish diplomacy from 1997 till 2000. Not to mention he is also a distinguished scholar, acclaimed for his interpretation on European Civilization and for his works on Medieval European period.

Therefore, the source of "evil" is Mr. Geremek's refuse to fill in a declaration regarding possible relations or cooperation with the former Communist Secret Police in Poland, as required from public persons, politicians or outstanding members of intellectual milieu. Mr. Geremek's "NO" to filling in the declaration might bring him an automatic ban from having access to representation or political public functions for more than 10 years, according to the law, on Polish and EU territory.  The provision is included in the new Lustration Law, modified by the present conservative power, after its adoption in 1997 during the mandate of president Kwasniewski. Yet, the highly controversial piece of legislation is currently the object of a constitutional ruling from  the  Supreme Constitutional Court. The judicial instance will soon deliver its reading of the law and will state if the withdrawal procedure for Mr. Geremek's mandate is legal and constitutional.

Nevertheless, the signals Poland receives from high officials of EU or European countries are not encouraging. The timing is not excellent either. The announcement of the mandate issue for Bronislaw Geremek comes only short after the European Parliament has pushed the Polish government for reconsidering the opportunity of a legislation draft banning public debate in Polish schools over homosexuality. Hans-Gert Pottering, EP President has declared his support for Mr. Geremek's staying in office as MEP.

"Mr Geremek is a political personality of the highest esteem who has always stood up for democracy in his country and for European unification. We will examine all legal possibilities that he can continue his work", states a press release from Pottering's office, dated 25th of April.

Graham Watson, the ALDE group president has called Poland's move regarding Mr. Geremek "a witch hunt". In a comment published in Le Monde, Friday, 26th, Mr. Geremek explains his reasons for refusing to sign such a document:

 "I had to sign several times a declaration stating that I have not collaborated with secret services. I did it in 2004, when I run for European elections. Yet, in March 2007, I have been asked again to sign such a document, under pressure of being denied my European parliamentary mandate, according to the new lustration law. It is true that such request is both humiliating and groundless, yet this is not why I decided to refuse to comply with such demand. Through this refusal, I am trying to express my attitude towards this new law. I find it unacceptable in a democratic Europe. This law will force through lustration procedures 400.000 to 700.000 individuals. A special institution, dubbed “The Institute for National Remembrance” has become the depositary of police archives and has obtained the right to pass judgments without the Justice having anything to say in this. Journalists, as well as teachers are subject to that procedure. I think that The Lustration Law in its current form violates moral rules and threatens the freedom of expression, media independence and university autonomy. It lays the ground for a form of ‘Ministry of Truth’ and of ‘Thought Police’. It disarms the citizen when confronted with calumnious campaigns, weakening the legal protection of his rights”.

The way lustration process took place in Central Europe, bearing in mind the case of the Czech Republic, Germany or Hungary, has proved there is no unique remedy for clearing the society of its residual heritage and unclear connections with the Communist period. There is one certainty: this process makes a lot of victims and their explanations for their deeds demands a patient reconsidering after the heat of headlines has passed away.

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A comment I published in EUObserver: 

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - Of all the central and eastern European countries to have joined the EU, Romania appears to still have the strongest ties with its communist past.
If transition went smoothly in countries like Slovenia, now a proud eurozone member and next year's holder of the EU presidency, Romania is again dominated by old-guard politicians from the former communist party, doing their best to scrap or water down the reforms started in the past two years.
With a suspended president and all reformist ministers kicked out of office this month, the situation surpasses even the worst-case scenarios predicted just after Bucharest joined the EU on 1 January.

The new political configuration around liberal prime minister Calin Tariceanu is using and abusing every possible democratic tool for its undemocratic goals: delaying the European elections for fear of facing the voters, an impeachment procedure against president Traian Basescu based on no constitutional grounds and a cabinet reshuffle to get rid of performing ministers thought to be "too close to the President".

The majority of MPs voted last week to suspend president Basescu from his duties, despite the Constitutional Court's ruling that he had not overstepped his constitutional rights. But since the court's verdict was just an "advisory" one, the parliament could go ahead with the impeachment procedure.

The socialist old-guard politician Nicolae Vacaroiu, the speaker of the senate, has taken over the duties of interim president for one month.

A referendum on the impeachment is due on 20 May and is likely to produce a reconfirmation of Mr Basescu - who is still the most popular Romanian politician - as president.

But the socialist plan does not stop here, as they are also plotting a modification of the constitution in order to weaken the presidency's attributions, adding an amendment so that a suspended president can never be allowed to run again.

Reversible reforms
For the newly installed "Black Coalition" – the one Romanian voters never approved – the stakes are great. The four "Black Coalition" parties – Liberals, Socialists, the ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and the small Conservative Party of former communist secret police agent and media owner Dan Voiculescu - are trying to defend the very privileges and impunity they have been used to so far.

The European Commission seems to have predicted something like this when it constantly called for "continued reforms that are irreversible."

Four months after Romanian accession, it is clear that not even the post-accession monitoring mechanisms imposed by Brussels and the threat of safeguard clauses are real means of pressure for the Romanian politicians.

A proof: the new justice minister Tudor Chiuariu who tries to distance himself as much as possible from his reformist and EU-acclaimed predecessor Monica Macovei. When talking about his priorities, Mr Chiuariu bluntly said that "I care about the needs of the citizens, not about pleasing Brussels and getting nice phrases in the monitoring reports."

Of course, the young and very politically-motivated minister failed to explain in what way the two are in contradiction.

Without the bold reforms and anticorruption measures implemented by Ms Macovei, who was sacked this month, Romania probably wouldn't have made it into the EU on 1st January. But the new justice minister underlined he doesn't want to become a "Robin Hood" after what he called a "Joan d'Arc."

Romania's return to kleptocracy
The EU's cautious and often too diplomatic approach could prove wrong in this case and perpetuate a modus operandi that will ultimately backlash at Brussels itself.

Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso last week expressed his wish that the crisis be solved "by the Romanian institutions in full respect of the democratic and constitutional principles as soon as possible".

Not wanting to take sides, Mr Barroso reminded both the premier and the president of Romania's commitment to fight corruption and to reform the judiciary.

But promises from the acting interim president, the "Black Coalition" and the new justice minister resemble too much what the socialists were so proficient in doing when negotiating Romanian membership with the EU commission in 2000-2004: shallow promises, institutions that worked perfectly on paper and no real reform.

The rule of law and the end of the impunity era that seemed to take a hold in Romania the past three years proved to be a short lived effort championed by a handful of reformists, who now have been cast away.

Romania's return to kleptocracy will be devastating for its citizens and business environment.

But ultimately, Romania's backlash will prove that EU's "soft powers" are sometimes too soft. This is particularly so when facing old guard communists with decades of experience in cooking the books, corruption and promises that are never fulfilled.

See also: Ukraine and Romania (2): rotten oranges

              Ukraine and Romania: countering the orange revolution
 

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The Iranian Cultural Center in Sarajevo is a busy place. As I wrote the other day, the story in Bosnia is far from over. Among many other problems, Iran's continued presence in the region is a destabilizing influence that may undermine both local politics and European security.

When the Bosnian conflict heated up in the early 1990s, a geopolitical vacuum formed as the EU and US rushed to bury their heads in the sand. While the international community debated the merits of intervention, Bosnian Muslims faced a well armed and organized Serbian militia — a disadvantage further exacerbated by the UN arms embargo. But other countries were in the market for friends and were happy to pay in guns. Iran in particular was more than willing to help the Bosnians even the odds.

Iran's arm shipments first arrived in Croatia, which was also outmatched by Serbian hardware. For instance, in 1992, the CIA reported a Iranian Air 747 at the Zagreb airport, which was loaded with small arms, ammunition, anti-tank weapons and other military supplies. After the truce between Croatia and Bosnia, Iran used Croatia as a middleman to pass weapons on to the ABiH — with Zagreb skimming 30% to 50% in the process.

A number of countries were uncomfortable with situation, perhaps most importantly Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had been applying pressure on the Clinton administration to both intervene on the Muslims behalf and squeeze Tehran out of the region.

On the domestic front, Congress was not happy that the Clinton administration had allowed Iran to play a free hand. The House of Representatives International Relations Committee hearing on the matter kicked off with Chairman Gilman asking the Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, to "…please explain to the committee why the administration did not inform the American people, the Congress, even our allies of its decision to permit Iran, the world's leading terrorist state, a rogue state, to ship arms to Bosnia and thus gain a major foothold in the Balkans."

The combination of the foreign and domestic pressure eventually led the US to supply weapons directly to Bosnia through nighttime air-drops. The wisdom of this approach was questionable because it didn't address the Bosnians lack of military organization and merely fueled weapons trafficking after the conflict. Furthermore, the US supplied arms had negligible impact on the war's outcome and were too late to abrogate Iranian influence.

In the end, the reaction to Bosnia was an absolute transatlantic foreign policy debacle, that by some miracle, did not end in total disaster — though not for lack of trying.

*A lot of the background info in this post comes from Cees Wiebes book, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992-1995 .

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The oranges of November 2004 are becoming rotten. The "orange revolution" in Ukraine and the "orange elections" in Romania are ending in very similar ways: an anti-reformist majority in the Parliament is backing the Premier and trying to impeach the President, blocking early elections and any further efforts to shake up the judicial system, to fight corruption and to further democratize the country.  The Constitutional Court in both countries is very busy these weeks, trying to determine if the two Presidents are overstepping their constitutional rights. In Romania, the Parliament is going ahead with an impeachment procedure despite the Court's advisory ruling that there are no legal grounds for it. (UPDATE: The President has been suspended today from his duties. There are two options: either he steps down and in 3 months Romania will have early elections, or there will be a referendum on his dismissal. The opposition is already trying to modify the law in order to forbid him to run again. Over 5000 people gathered in the University Square in Bucharest stating their support and asking Basescu not to step down.)

In Ukraine, the President's decision to dissolve the Parliament and call for early elections is being contested in Court, although it is a presidential right.

Behind the "democratic" facade, there are very similar hidden agendas. In both countries, the "orange" shakeup started in 2004 has disturbed the oligarchs' privileges and impunity and has engaged too firmly both countries in a pro-NATO and pro-Washington foreign policy. Much to Russia's disdain. Kremlin's leverage on Ukraine is much more powerful - just a twist on the gas-faucet and the "orange" government crumbled. Yushchenko had to hire his former rival and pro-Kremlin politician Yanukovich as a Prime-Minister. Under the promise that Ukraine will keep its pro-EU, pro-NATO path.

Political promises, later forgotten. Same thing happened in Romania. Once EU accession was a closed deal, the reformists were kicked out of office in a "cabinet reshuffle". The current ultra-minority government has the broad backing of the Socialist opposition, whose interests evolve around protecting their "stars" on trial for corruption. The new Romanian Justice Minister understood the message. According to him, the main priority is to have a "dialog with the Parliament" and to do the reform "for and with the magistrates". "I'm not interested in obtaining nice lines in the EU Commission's reports, I care about the citizen's interests", the Justice Minister said, alluding to his predecessor, Monica Macovei, who was broadly acclaimed in the EU for her success in shaking up the judiciary.

What's EU's position on the recent slides in both countries? Neutrality, of course. Upsetting the Kremlin is the worse "faux pas" in its foreign policy. Not surprisingly, Mr. Yushchenko's didn't receive the desired support during his visit to Brussels today:

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso says Brussels will not take sides in Ukraine's political crisis and urges both parties to seek compromise.Barroso was speaking after meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in Brussels. Barroso says he urged the Ukrainian president to find a compromise in his power struggle with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and "to pursue efforts to find with all key parties a viable solution to the situation in full respect [for] the principles of democracy and the rule of law."

 Meanwhile, Ukraine's pro-Russian Prime-Minister was lobbying his cause in Strasbourg, in front of Europe's human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe. Ironically, the Council who is supposed to pressure governments to respect human rights in dealing with its own citizens was last year headed by…Russia.

  Speaking the same day at the Strasbourg headquarters of the Council of Europe, prime minister Yanukovych said the call for May elections could "have negative consequences for president Yushchenko, including impeachment."

A similar struggle on EU grounds took place after the Romanian Prime-Minister met with EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini. President Basescu promptly reacted, stating that the PM was trying to "discredit" him in front of the Brussels officials:

“The Prime Minister’s attempt to discredit the Romanian president while meeting the European Commissioner for Justice, Franco Frattini, in Zagreb, is a prove of political irresponsibility”, said Basescu, adding that Tariceanu had a major role to play in generating the current political tensions. 

UPDATE: The leaders of the conservative European Popular Party Joseph Daul and Wilfried Martens expressed their concern today regarding the situation in Romania and their support for president Basescu:

 ´´It is regrettable that a country like Romania, which just recently joined the European Union, has gone to this situation of institutional crisis. President Basescu has made an important contribution to Romania’s path in the last two years, thus facilitating its accession to the European Union. The slogan during preparation for accession was: ”Romania is the solution, not the problem of the EU”. At the moment, the procedure of  impeachment of a President in an EU country, against the decision of the Constitutional Court, creates rather then solves problems.
We hope that the political situation in Romania will not further degenerate. We expect that Romania should be an added value to the EU, namely with its active involvement in the European major projects, and in the Black Sea region. Further developments of the political crisis in Romania could endanger the attainment of these goals.´´

(see also Ukraine and Romania: Countering the orange revolution)

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Last month, the EU announced a major troop reduction for the Bosnian peacekeeping force and extended the Office of the High Representative (OHR) until June 2008. But despite the extension of the OHR, the EU seems increasingly squeamish about exercising its authority, favoring instead less invasive forms of soft power.

Former High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, responded to the recent political anemia with a cautionary message. Though Ashdown supports the troop reduction — a return to large scale conflict is unlikely — he is critical of Brussels' weak resolve:

Below the level of state institutions, the bureaucratic monster created by the Dayton Agreement to govern a country of 3.5 million people still exists. The U.S.-led attempt to reform this dysfunctional muddle of interlocking bureaucracies failed last year, chiefly because the European Union was not prepared to make constitutional reform a condition for EU membership.

Western policymakers are still too often bewitched by the fantasies of the early post-cold war.

In the early 1990s, communism imploded and liberal democracy was pronounced the victorious ideology (e.g. Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man). The future looked bright. Moscow was just a quaint Eastern European backwater sitting on a pile of nukes and nothing stood in the way democracy and stable government sweeping the globe. All we have to do is let them vote, right?

Of course, we have learned — most painfully in Iraq — that democracy does not appear at the wave of a magic wand. Democracy depends on institutions, and building them from scratch takes time — gobs of it. But contrary to the cynics, the task is not beyond the reach of the undeveloped world. It's not that nation-building is impossible, its just that we rarely have the attention span or conviction to see it through. It should be no surprise that Bosnia has not developed in leaps and bounds in a decade, on the contrary, it would be more shocking if a country marred by centuries of conflict and misgovernment morphed into a western democracy as soon as we built them a post office.

It may be counterintuitive to idealists, but the road to a stable democracy may be anything but democratic. Watching fledgling African democracies repeatedly cannibalize themselves should have taught us that much.

In Bosnia's case, the EU just doesn't have the guts to go Hobbesian, even though a lapse in order could have dire consequences. Ashdown writes:

Bosnia is held on the road to reform by the magnetic pull of the European Union and NATO and the tough push of the power of sanctions vested in the High Representative by the Dayton Agreement. In the last year, the pull of the EU has visibly weakened as European capitals have become more skeptical about further enlargement. The push of threatened sanctions has all but vanished. In consequence, local politicians have felt free to return to old habits rather than grasp new opportunities. The forces of radical Islam are showing renewed interest in the country, having been comprehensively rebuffed by the determined moderation of Bosnian Muslims in the past.

There are still opportunities to be had, however. Even when the OHR expires in 2008, the EU will not lose all of its coercive power. There are plenty of carrots along the road to EU membership (A very, very long road for Bosnia), but there is little precedent to expect that they will be used wisely. During the accession processes in Romania and Bulgaria, the EU wielded great influence over government reform; post-accession, Brussels' leverage all but vanished. Doling out too many carrots too quickly will only encourage backsliding. The EU has the power to foment meaningful change now, but they have to resolve to use it.

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