Romania might be the first country in the world to legalize corruption.
Yes, you heard that right...
In January 2017, the Romanian parliament passed
an ordinance which allowed politicians to accept bribes of almost $50,000 USD.
Without any kind of legal repercussions whatsoever.
As you can imagine, this infamous ordinance
triggered one of the biggest demonstrations the country has seen for 20 years.
The protests led to the government suspending
the law temporarily.
But even after this, protests continued.
Romanians are rather used to living in Europe’s
most corrupt country.
And this ignominious decree was the final straw that broke the camel’s back…
But the question now is…
How did they get to this point?
What’s going on in a country that could make its government pass this kind of law
without feeling any sort of shame?
Well, today we are going to answer this question.
But before we do that, let´s take a look back at history.
THE EUROPEAN NORTH KOREA
You can´t understand Romanian history without knowing about Nicolae Ceausescu: The European
Kim Jong Un.
Now, other neighbouring countries like Hungary or Bulgaria have suffered communist dictatorships
too.
But the story of Romania is quite special.
Since Ceausescu came to power in 1974, his
country has been isolated from the rest - even from the Soviet Union itself.
Soon, even food started to become scarce.
While citizens had their meals rationed by the state, Ceausescu spent money building
pharaoh-style palaces.
For instance, here is the Parliament of Bucharest, built in 1983 and named the biggest administrative
building in the entire world.
This is especially amazing if we take to account that the Romanian population is no bigger
than 22 million inhabitants.
During the construction, more than 20,000 people were employed and, around 3,000 died
of exhaustion.
But not only that!
Ceausescu forced all his citizens to participate in parades and massive shows to praising his
own image.
Just like his North Korean comrades, Ceausescu was a master in the art of political repression.
During the 80s, an estimate of 1 in every 30 Romanians belonged to the political police.
It could be your neighbour, or your hairdresser, or anyone really...
Meaning anytime you said something bad about the leader you could end up spending the rest
of your days in jail, or simply just disappearing.
Nonetheless, despite all of this, being a
dictator is not a safe job.
This footage is from Ceausescu's last speech, which took place on December 21st 1989.
Look at his facial expression and how it does starts to tremble.
It was at this moment that the audience started to boo him.
This is how the biggest protest in Romanian
history started.
Thousands of citizens stepped out on the streets waving national flags with the communist symbol
out.
Three days later, on Christmas Day of that year, Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, along
with his wife, by his own party colleagues.
His last words were “History will revenge me”.
And now you might wonder…
well, what happened next?
The truth is, in such an oppressive regime as Ceausescu's, there were no opposition leaders
whatsoever.
Just to make a comparison, in Poland, when the communist regime fell, there were powerful
leaders like Les Walesa, who had much popular support and helped write a brand new constitution
for the country.
Nonetheless, who do you think succeeded Ceausescu in Romania?
Well, that would be his own party comrades.
More exactly, the man you see on the screen now, his name is ION ILIESCU
As you can imagine, this government was not willing to give up the luxury they had during
Ceausescu's times.
So, as always happens in cases like this, the Romanian regime changed… but just a
little!
Of course, the new constitution allowed other parties to run for elections, and the old
communist party changed its name to the Social Democratic Party, but the high ranking officials
that ruled the country during the dictatorship kept their power during the 1990s and the
2000s.
So, as you know, if power corrupts, absolute
power corrupts absolutely.
For a better understanding: In 1995, 50% of the Polish economy was already in private
hands.
But in Romania, this figure was only 35%.
So, let’s have a look at an example…
Take two car manufacturers.
Czechoslovakia had a state owned factory, ŠKODA that was privatized in 1992 by sharing
the ownership among the workers.
It’s Romanian counterpart, DACIA, was not privatized until 1997.
And instead of doing it by sharing it, it was simply sold to RENAULT GROUP.
In other words, during the 90s and the 2000s,
the ruling elite in Romania did whatever they could in order to keep control of the economy
and the country.
It was only though these actions that they were able to keep a hold on their power.
But wait just a second!
Because corruption was present at lower levels as well...
In a country that had been so used to scarcity, it was impossible to get anything without
a little bribe.
Want to go to the doctor?
Bring a box of cigarettes with you.
What to have electricity at home?
A whisky bottle and everything is done!
And that is how a country corruption a way of life.
And now you might wonder…
Is it really possible for a country to work this way?
And the answer is… well...
no.
Romanians saw how other former communist republics such as the Czech Republic or Poland started
enjoying a Western standard of living while they kept surviving on less than 400 USD a
month.
This is why, in the middle of 2000, Romania
requested to become a member of European Union so they could get access to some of those
sweet sweet EU funds.
And Brussels said “OK, dude, I’ll I let you in, but with one condition...” and that
condition was…
THE NATIONAL ANTICORRUPTION DIRECTORATE
In the year 2002, the Romanian Government founded an agency to chase corruption - the
“National Anti Corruption Directorate”.
For it’s first years, this agency was directed by prosecutors connected to party leaders.
So this was the Romanian way of saying “Hey Brussels!
Look how great were doing!
We’re cleaning up all this corruption!”
But then again, nothing changed…
That was until the year 2013.
That year is when a women came to lead the directorate.
A woman ready to face everything and everyone, and her name is LAURA CODRUTA KOVESI.
Romanians seem to have been impressed by the activities of DNA: according to one recent
poll, 60% of people said they trusted the agency, while only 11% said they trusted parliament.
In just 2 years, Kovesi has jailed more than
1100 politicians accused of corruption.
During this time years, Romanians have discovered all the dirty things their ruling class were
hiding.
And there are no little things!
According to an estimate, corruption accounts for 15% of Romanian GDP.
Virtually, all the public sales had some kind of bribe involved.
Even the Microsoft licenses that the civil servants use had a cost of over $3 million
which were used to pay bribes to different Government officials.
Then there was the case of a judge who was
paid around $700,000 in order to declare someone innocent who was actually guilty.
And look, the list, it just goes on on on.
But since the year 2013, all of these criminals
have been filling up Romanian jails… to the point that some of the prisons have no
space anymore.
But not only that...
Romanian society itself has started to realize how damaging corruption is.
But the real turning point came a little bit
later with this news…
“Romanian nightclub fire leaves 27 dead”
This news triggered a wave of protest all across Romania.
Apparently, this fire could have been avoided if the club would have met safety regulations.
But since the owner had bribed the local authorities, he could open the club while breaking the
rules.
This is how a platform came to be, called CORUPTIA UČIDE, or “CORRUPTION KILLS”.
Through social media, Romanians started to organize themselves in protest groups against
corruption.
Oh, but wait just a moment, because the best
is yet to come...
THE BIGGEST DEMONSTRATIONS IN ROMANIAN HISTORY
On January 18th, 2017, at 10PM, the Social Democratic Government and its Prime Minister,
Sorin GRINDEANU, passed an emergency bill.
And yes, they did it at night, when everyone was about to go to bed.
So, what did that decree say?
Well, it said that politicians who accepted
bribes for less than 44,000 Euros did not have to face jail time or pay any fines...
nothing.
It was absolutely fine with the law to be bribed up to that amount.
And they discussed this law while debating the national budget as normal, so no one would
notice the change.
So now you might be wondering, who can possible
dare to pass such a bold law?
I mean…
what could possibly be the official reason behind the decriminalization of bribery?
Well… this was the reason given by the Romanian Prime Minister, SORIN GRINDEANU.
“he wants to pass the ordinances into law to ease overcrowding in prisons.”
Yes… this was the actual reason given by the current Romanian Government.
Boom, just like that.
According to estimates, this ordinance would free over 3000 corrupt politicians.
Yes, while it is true that Romanian jails are overcrowded, in a country where money
is drained from the system by bribery, it should not be too difficult to find funds
for new prisons.
Also, the fact that the majority of the jailed politicians belonged to the government party
makes it even more suspicious…
Well half a million Romanians thought so too,
and took to the streets of Bucharest minutes after the decree was passed.
Through the previously established, “Corruption Kills” platform, citizens learned about
this news instantly.
And boy didn’t they like it...
And that is how the biggest protest in Romanian history started.
The protest kept going for days.
Not only in Bucharest, but in most Romanian cities…
The first victim of this unrest was the Justice
Minister, who was forced to resign on February 9th 2017.
As we mentioned the protests led to the government retiring this new law, although they have
already admitted that this is just temporary.
Further, the brand new Justice Minister, TUDOREL TOADER has a clear mission: to justify the
firing of the general prosecutor, LAURA CODRUTA KOVESI, the woman who jailed over 1000 politicians.
The government claim that her agency is running a witch hunt.
But, they still haven’t found a legal way to fire her… yet.
“After evaluating all the constitutionality, legality, and opportunity factors, I determined
that, at the moment, it’s not advisable to start the institutional mechanism to revoke
the general prosecutor and the DNA chief prosecutor,”
At the same time, Grindeanu´s government is confronted by two different sides.
On the one hand, civil society is surveying his movements.
On the other hand, the European Union is demanding that he stop obstructing the anti-corruption
prosecutor.
And of course, all of the political elite, inheritors of Ceausescu's regime, are turning
to classic conspiracy theories to protect themselves…
According to them, George SOROS and the ROTHSCHILD family would are behind the protesters.
And they say, of course, that corruption is not actually a big deal in Romania at all.
Well, with or without conspiracies, we are
still talking about an existential crisis in Europe’s third poorest country.
So now the question is: Do you think Romania
should jail all their corrupted politicians?
Or do you think that, instead, Grindeanu is actually doing something right by decriminalizing
bribery?
You can leave your answer on the comment section below!
And in case you want to hear about another
story of a citizen revolution, you might want to check out this other video where we tell
you about the Umbrella Revolution in HONG KONG.
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RECONSIDER MEDIA.COM, who provided the voice in this video that isn’t mine!
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