Transatlantic Politics

From this week's Economist:

FOR those hoping for political calm in Romania and Bulgaria, the European Union's newest members, last weekend was a reasonably good one. The Romanian president, Traian Basescu, won 74% in a referendum on his impeachment on May 19th, wrongfooting the minority Liberal-led government that suspended him. The prime minister, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, now concedes that the vote was a “waste of energy and money”. What happens next depends largely on the Socialists, heirs of Romania's Communist Party. With 150 deputies, they are the largest party in parliament. The ruling coalition of Liberals and the Hungarian minority musters only 109. The best outcome would be an early election, perhaps to coincide with a European one this autumn. This is backed by Mr Basescu's Democrats, flushed with their referendum victory. One deal has the Socialists backing an early poll and dumping their more egregiously corrupt members in return for a big role in a post-election government. Failing that, the Socialists might team up with the battered Liberals, in return for Mr Tariceanu's job. In theory, the Liberals could also continue with their minority government until the scheduled election in autumn 2008. But their plunging popularity suggests this would be unwise. On current form, they could even miss the 5% threshold for parliamentary seats.

And on the President's slur against a journalist:

Amid his enemies' confusion, Mr Basescu should be preparing for a glorious return to the Cotroceni Palace. But his triumph was marred by scandal. On the day of the referendum, Mr Basescu was hassled in a supermarket by Andreea Pana, a journalist who tried to film an interview on her mobile phone. Mr Basescu lost his temper, insulted her and grabbed the phone, telling her she could have it back on Monday. Unaware that it was still recording, he complained to his wife in the car about the “aggressive, stinking gypsy”. Ms Pana, as it happens, is not Roma (gypsy) by ethnicity. But the incident reveals Mr Basescu's common touch (sometimes a strength) and his short-tempered manner (definitely a weakness). Many liberal-minded Romanians, including those who support his policies, condemned him; he has apologised. The scandal will dent his image among foreign admirers.

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"YES" (DA) was the Romanian Orange elections slogan in 2004. Now President Basescu’s supporters have to say "NO" (Nu).

For the first time, Romanians voted today in a referendum whether to impeach the president on  alleged anti-constitutional gestures or not. 75% of the voters backed Basescu. Although the turnout was not as great as expected - 48% - the results show a clear option: NO to the impeachment procedure, seen as a reaction of a corrupt and antireformist parliamentary majority to the president's bold moves against corruption and push for openness and reforms.

The new government under the same Premier who used to be Basescu's ally in the DA-Alliance is now his fiercest fiend. Calin Popescu Tariceanu chose to back down on the reforms pushed forward before Romania's accession to the European Union, in January this year. He and the members of  the new minority government, backed by the socialist (post-communist) opposition are championing in doublespeak, a skill trained by Romanian politicians in over 45 years of communism.

 “We will continue and accelerate the fight against corruption,” promised the new justice minister, Tudor Chiuariu, when he took office one month ago. But his first move was to request the dismissal of a top anticorruption prosecutor who was investigating senior members and supporters of the ruling coalition. The reasoning was that these probes were proving fruitless. “A prosecutor should by evaluated by the number of cases he has won. Until now, there have been no verdicts, which mean the cases are not solid enough,” the minister argued. He omitted to mention the fact that prosecutors didn't get the chance yet to present the probes in a trial of high level corruption, due to the delays and procedural loopholes that allow the defendant to postpone the actual trial.

Still, a good sign was the reaction of  several prosecutors and magistrates who openly protested against Chiuariu's measure. A German expert named this "the Macovei effect" - named after Chiuariu's predecessor, Monica Macovei, broadly appreciated by the EU and US for shaking up the judiciary and granting independence to the magistrates. Due to the "Macovei effect", Romania has now a critical magistracy, aware and openly opposing to any brutal interventions like the Chiuariu incident. The same day Chiuariu asked the interim president - an old-guard communist, Nicolae Vacaroiu - to approve the dismissal of the anti-corruption prosecutor, the Parliament passed a law establishing a new control body to verify the assets and conflicts of interests of politicians and civil servants.

That was a key condition for EU membership; failure to get it going would have triggered a "safeguard clause" from Brussels. But the newborn “Integrity Agency” has a major weakness: it is not an independent body, but subordinated to the very same parliament it is supposed to investigate.

Nonetheless Tariceanu  hailed the new body as a great success, proving that Chiuariu's negotiating skills as opposed to his predecessor's uncompromising style. Still, media and foreign observers concentrated their attention on Chiuariu's move regarding the anti-corruption prosecutor. Especially since he was investigating some cases regarding current government members or allies from the Socialist Party.

A strong signal came on Wednesday, when 9 foreign diplomats participated to the hearings of the High Council of Magistracy, where the fate of the anticorruption prosecutor was to be decided. "The European Commission and the EU Member States follow closely the reform of the justice system and the fight against corruption in Romania. That it is why they attended today's meeting of the High Council of Magistracy, which was a public one", stated the EU Representation in Bucharest. Opposition spokesman Cristian Diaconescu said "It is an unprecedented embarrasment. Romania has become a country with limited sovereignty, under a stronger monitoring than Kosovo."

The Council ruled to postpone the decision and requested an evaluation over the activity of the prosecutor. Chiuariu backed down and said he will respect the Council's decision, one way or the other.

Romanians can only hope that with Basescu's return to the presidential palace, the push for a reform of the political class will grow stronger. The first signs seem to appear: the Socialist opposition leader Mircea Geoana spoke about the need for MPs being elected directly and for a much stronger parliamentary discipline and transparency. Even the Premier admitted that "the public agenda is totally different than the politicians seem to be aware of" and that "this month with a suspended president was a waste of time and money". If this is "the beginning of a beautiful friendship" remains to be seen. Campaigning will continue in the next two years, as Romania will elect its 35 members of the European Parliament in autumn this year, followed by local and regional elections next spring and by parliamentary elections in the fall of 2008. The next presidential elections are due in autumn 2009. Foreign observers expected early parliamentary elections after today's referendum. "It will be a great political loss for the ones who voted to impeach the president. In Germany, we would expect early elections, since the people vetoed the Parliament's decision", said Holger Dix, the representative in Bucharest of the German conservative foundation "Konrad Adenauer." But Romania is not Germany…

[I contributed to the today's cover story in The Economist]

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Iran opposition group PMOI that supported the kidnappings of US diplomats in 1979 is suing the EU for €1 million in damages and to clear its name of being stuck on Brussels' terrorist register.

Lawyers for the PMOI on Wednesday filed the law suit at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, saying the EU is breaking its own laws by not following a verdict by the Court of First Instance last December, which annulled the EU's earlier decision to list the group. Any officially-designated "terrorist" organisations have their financial assets frozen and are forbidden from fundraising in Europe, writes EUObserver.

The PMOI started out in 1965 as a Marxist-Islamist anti-corruption movement in Iran but fled after suffering purges that saw over 150,000 members slaughtered by the post-cultural revolution Islamic regime. The Mujahidin organised cross-border raids against Iran from bases in Iraq in the 1990s but says it renounced the use of arms in 2001, with a 2003 US army report saying the Iraq PMOI wing no longer has any guns. In the past few years PMOI and its sister group, the NRCI, has positioned itself as the democratic opposition in Iran and attracted backers including retired US generals, members of the UK House of Lords, former EU judges and MEPs. The movement accuses the UK and France of putting it on the EU terrorist register in order to have cards to play in the Iran nuclear diplomacy game. 

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The 5th Republic has a new leader: Nicolas Sarkozy. Voted by an overwhelming majority, during Sunday elections, Sarko is now the heading the destiny of France, with 53,06% of the total votes. And he’s about to do it the RIGHT way. Last night, during the popular rally in the Place de la Concorde, he declared: “I will grant everyone equal chance. But they should be worth having it, by working hard”. The main newspapers of the Hexagon commented thoroughly today the implications of Sarkosy’s coming to power in such a particular country as France. Jean d’Ormesson, a distinguished French writer, also member of the Académie Française, dedicated an entire page in Le Figaro, to Sarkozy’s profile:

“What is he actually doing? He reinstates the lost dignity of the right. Ever since Vichy, the right has been the living image of the unhappy conscience. It creeps in the shadows, it hides and it is ashamed of itself and of what it stands for. The brilliance is left, the good conscience is left. An icon of a Socialism that has not fathered him, but that he nevertheless represents, Mitterand has ended up in pursuing, in all impunity, right spanning policies: well, he could do it because he was a leftist. Voted by the right, Chirac was constrained to embark upon policies rather of a radical-socialist origin than Gaullist approaches. Sarkozy is explicitly on the right, in a healthy and provocative way”

Many experts and commentators have insisted on the very technical aspect of the campaign. And some, as is the case of Claude Karnoouh, in an interview he gave me yesterday, has even called this race “the race of two future prime-ministers, and not presidents”. That is because traditionally, in France, the president establishes the general framework of foreign policy and is the Commander in Chief of the French Army. Yet, both Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy have insisted on domestic issues, as the welfare system, the reforms, the economy, the work period in one week (35 hours). Sarkozy was regarded as the one who has more concrete solutions for France’s problems, while Segolene was granted the label of the supporter for distributive democracy.

As Sarkozy addressed the crowds last night, he was surrounded by his antourage, by his family. One of them is particularly important. It’s François Fillon, Sarkozy’s main political advisor who is highly regarded as de Villepin’s successor at Matignon Palace, as future prime minister of France. Quoted by Le Figaro today, while he answered a question for the French TV channel TF1, he declared that the future government “will personify the openness”.After 10 days of relaxation in the Greek Islands, Sarkosy will be sworn in on the 16th of May. Legislative elections wil take place on the 10th and on the 17th of June, and UMP is expected to take the lead, followed closely by PS and the UFD, on the third position (as showed by today’s Le Figaro estimates). Le Parisien notes that in New York Sarkozy already has been nicknamed “The American” (page 13, printed edition). George W. Bush and Angela Merkel passed their greetings last night to the newly elected French President.

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53% - Nicolas Sarkozy

47% - Segolene Royal

The exit polls are clear: France's new president is the center-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Good news for the economy, immigration policies and France-US relations. Bad news for Turkey, as Sarkozy is a fierce opponent to its future EU membership. He might soften his stance though, especially since Turkey is not due to join before 2014 anyway.

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