Radio România Internațional

Tag: controversy

  • Who is running for Romania’s presidency?

    Who is running for Romania’s presidency?

    The presidential election is now in a straight line. The most awaited election of all four organized this year in Romania will take place in two rounds: on November 24 and December 8. The Central Electoral Bureau (BEC), meeting on Sunday evening to analyze the last files submitted, rejected 10 candidacies and admitted the registration of another 9. Thus, in total, there are 16 admitted candidates in the race for Romania’s presidency. The final list of competitors will be announced on October 10, after other mandatory documents will be submitted, such as the affidavits regarding their status of workers or collaborators of the Securitate (Political Police of the former Communist regime), as well as the declarations of wealth and interests. The electoral campaign for the presidential election officially begins on October 25 and is about to be a fierce one, given the political stakes of the election.

     

    Unofficially, however, the campaign has already started for weeks, with each of the most famous aspirants to the presidential seat trying to maximize their pole position in the race. These are, in the order of submission of candidacies to the BEC, George Simion, from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), Elena Lasconi representing the Save Romania Union (USR) and Nicolae Ciucă, the leader of the National Liberal Party, followed by Kelemen Hunor, from the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, Mircea Geoană, an independent candidate and Marcel Ciolacu, the leader of the Social Democratic Party. A huge scandal broke out on Saturday evening, after the judges of the Constitutional Court (CCR) admitted, with a majority of votes, the objections to the registration of Diana Şoşoacă’s candidacy in the presidential race. The controversial MEP submitted a new candidacy file, but it was also rejected on Sunday, this time by the Central Electoral Bureau. The Constitutional Court’s decision to remove the S.O.S. president from the electoral race is final and unprecedented.

     

    Romania has deepened the differences between the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL), which are currently partners in the government. Diana Şoşoacă accused that her removal from the race would favor the AUR leader, George Simion, who would thus have better chances to enter the second round, and the social democrat Marcel Ciolacu, credited by the polls with the first chance, would have an easier fight against his opponent in the final round of the presidential election. The opinion was shared by PNL and USR, whose leaders – Nicolae Ciucă and Elena Lasconi – believe that PSD would have influenced the rejection of Mrs. Șoșoacă’s candidacy. The PSD rejected the accusations, and Marcel Ciolacu emphasized that the CCR must quickly publish their motivation, otherwise we can talk about a vulnerability of the democratic system in Romania. The Court’s decision may have constitutional coverage, but it certainly has anti-democratic effects, unhealthy for democracy, the independent Mircea Geoană also reacted. (LS)

  • Sovereign Investment Fund

    Sovereign Investment Fund

    On Wednesday Romania’s Chamber of Deputies, as a decision-making forum, adopted the draft law on setting up the Sovereign Development and Investment Fund. The fund is to receive from the state minority or majority stakes in 33 companies, as well as 9 billion lei in cash, the equivalent of some 2 billion Euros, to be disbursed in the next five years. The list of companies includes resounding names such as Electrica, RomGaz, Nuclear Electrica, OMV Petrom, Antibiotice, CFR- The Romanian Railway Company and Poşta Română- the Romanian Post.



    The Sovereign Fund’s activity and the way in which it fulfils its objectives will be assessed every year by the Finance Ministry, and the results will be forwarded to the Government. Representatives of the Social Democratic Party and of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, in the ruling coalition, have said the Fund gives Romania a chance to develop through investments. According to the Social-Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea the project is one of the pillars of the governing program, the more so as such Funds are functioning successfully the world over:


    Liviu Dragnea: “Similar investment funds are functioning in many countries in Europe, in many countries of the world, and they have helped those countries’ economies. It is a Fund which will contribute to developing Romania’s big infrastructure, to Romania’s re-industrialization process, it will help investments in agriculture, will generate many jobs and will contribute significantly to increasing the gross domestic product.”



    In another move, the right-of-centre opposition accuses it of undermining the national economy. An MP of the Save Romania Union, Cosette Chichirău, claims the Sovereign Development and Investment Fund does not have an economic but a political purpose:



    Cosette Chichirău: “You need liquidities right away to pay electoral handouts, but the budget does no longer allow you to do that. Consequently, you want to create an instrument to indebt yourselves, without including this debt into the public debt. You stretched your arm further than your sleeve will reach and now you have to sell profitable shares to pay for electoral insanity. The Romanian state is being stripped of all its possessions, in all domains.”



    A superstructure or a company above other companies, the Fund, in its first years, before getting consolidated, should not make so-called non-productive investments, even though useful, says economic analyst Constantin Rudniţchi. In other words, why should a hospital or a highway be built with money from the Fund and not from the state budget or with European funds?



    Constantin Rudniţchi: “The logic behind such a Fund is that it should make profitable investments, to bring in money. It becomes a strong Fund on the market, it is traded on solid international markets, thus attracting new investors, bringing much more capital to the Fund, from outside, that is not from the companies which are part of the Fund. It is this money that the Fund should invest, investments that are usually made with money from the budget.”



    Given that the right-of-centre opposition will contest the constitutionality of the draft law setting up the Sovereign Development and Investment Fund, the bill will be sent to president Klaus Iohannis for promulgation only after the Constitutional Court issues its verdict.

  • Protocol between SRI and General Prosecutors’ Office, in the spotlight

    Protocol between SRI and General Prosecutors’ Office, in the spotlight

    Claudiu Manda, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee overseeing the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) said last fall that 65 collaboration protocols between SRI and various state institutions were in force. One of them, namely the one signed with the General Prosecutors Office, was declassified and made public last Friday.



    The document was signed back in 2009 by the then Prosecutor General Laura Codruta Kovesi, who now heads the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, and George Maior, the SRI chief at the time. Based on this document, SRI granted assistance to prosecutors, with joint operative teams being set up in order to investigate certain misdeeds.



    The politicians in Power have hailed the declassification and have argued that this document allowed for some abnormal agreements. Calin Popescu Tariceanu, Speaker of the Senate and leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Romania (ALDE), in the ruling coalition, has said:



    Calin Popescu Tariceanu: “We will see in detail what these abnormal understandings are all about, as they have allowed the intelligence services to play the role of judicial police, something specific to the communist era and to the communist regimes that obviously had no consideration for justice.



    The right-of-centre parliamentary opposition said in turn that in keeping with the principle of transparency, making public the collaboration protocol is natural in a democratic state. Leader of the Save Romania Union (USR), Dan Barna:



    Dan Barna: “Ever since it entered Parliament, Save Romania Union has been promoting the transparency principle. So this decision of the National Intelligence Service, to make public a protocol that does not endanger national security in any way, is only natural in a democratic state, the kind of state that Romania tries to be.



    There are plenty of voices supporting the scenario of a ‘parallel state, where important institutions have allegedly committed abuse in the shadow of secret arrangements. Nevertheless, the chief of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, Laura Codruta Kovesi, says this theory is false, and the collaboration between the General Prosecutors Office and the Intelligence Service complies with the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure.



    Laura Codruta Kovesi: “What this protocol did was create a unitary procedure so that everybody worked in the same direction. The law was being applied in different ways, hence the need to harmonise procedures. This is the reason why other judicial institutions signed protocols with SRI as well, its not only the case of the Prosecutors Office.



    Fearing that by signing the protocol between the General Prosecutors Office and the Romanian Intelligence Service prosecutors and prosecutors offices have come to rely on the SRI in their investigations, the National Union of Romanian Judges and the Romanian Magistrates Association have asked the General Prosecutors Office and SRI to make public all protocols and cooperation agreements signed since 1990 to date. Moreover, they have also asked the Supreme Defence Council to make public all its decisions related to justice, made since 1990.


    (translated by: Elena Enache)

  • Salary Rise in the Romanian Healthcare System

    Salary Rise in the Romanian Healthcare System

    The situation of the Romanian healthcare system is among the few issues to spark off such passion in public debates. Patients and their relatives point a finger to the bad conditions in hospitals and to the incompetence, ill- meaning attitude or rudeness of the healthcare staff, from janitors to hospital directors. Doctors and nurses in their turn complain about the prolonged under-financing of the system, the lack of equipment and the small salaries.



    The Romanian government announced it would try to correct part of these abnormalities and decided to raise the salaries of almost 200 thousand people in the field by 25% as of October 1st. The measure will be adopted next week in a government session, said the Social Democrat prime minister Victor Ponta. He said other increases would follow so that by 2017 salaries will double. The measure, the PM added, is possible thanks to the money saved due to the introduction of the obligatory health cards this year.



    Also next week the government will send to Parliament a draft law that should state the conditions in which patients can offer doctors small “gifts which many simply call “bribe. The Justice Ministry will draft a bill that shall stipulate the conditions in which patients can give further contributions to those who treated them. Therefore receiving further contributions will not be illegal if they are not conditioned by the doctor or nurse, if they are granted after the completion of the medical act and if they are declared by the recipient for taxation purposes.



    The friendly measures taken by the government come against the backdrop of increasing discontent in the healthcare system. Thus over 16 thousand doctors have joined an initiative group set up on a social network where they talk about their small salaries and a possible all-out strike.



    The co-president of the National Liberal Party, in opposition, Alina Gorghiu, accuses the government of having gone on a populist move, which will make Romania hard to govern shortly. The claims for salary rises are justified but they cannot be met simultaneously because they will affect the financial stability of the country- the Liberal politician also added. She warned that increasing salaries in the healthcare system would trigger off similar claims by other categories of state employees.



    And she was right. The police trade union leaders have also asked for a 25% rise in their salaries. The education trade unions have hailed the measure to increase the medical staffs wage and have requested a similar pay rise for teachers. Trade unionists say that pay rises for certain categories to the detriment of other categories have already led to increased discontent among employees in the education system, which could cause protest actions, now, less than a month before the start of the new school year.

  • Controversies around religious education in Romanian schools

    Controversies around religious education in Romanian schools

    Taught in Romanian schools throughout the undergraduate years, religion as a school subject has come under criticism from both some of the parents and part of civil society, on grounds of the freedom of religious belief. There are parents who do not want their children to take religion classes because they belong to a different religion than that being taught in schools, or because they do not hold religious beliefs or simply because they think certain parts of the textbooks may have a negative impact on their children.



    Many parents, however, are not sure whether the law allows them to withdraw their children from religious education lessons or how this can be done. The Romanian Secular-Humanist Association has launched a campaign to clarify these aspects. Romanian law allows parents to withdraw children from the religious education classes. But do schools provide an alternative? Can these children take other classes instead, or at least spend that hour in a supervised environment? Here is the executive manager of the association, Monica Belitoiu, with some answers to these questions:



    “Many parents were surprised to find out that they may withdraw their children from religious education classes. Those who chose to do so were generally people who belonged to a different religion or who disagreed with how the subject was taught. At the start of every school year, we went to several schools and ran information campaigns about this particular law. Some school principals agree with us, others claim we don’t understand the law. There are also school principals who say they cannot allow children not to attend religion classes when they are scheduled in between other classes simply because there are no spare classrooms where these children can wait for their next class. Some parents have special arrangements with the school, and their children can spend this time either at the school library or in after-school.”



    Meanwhile, teachers and representatives of school inspectorates have recognised children’s right not to take religious education classes, although under the education law this is not an optional subject. Mihaela Ghitiu teaches religious education at the Ion Neculce National College in Bucharest:



    “Religious education is part of the compulsory subjects. What made people regard it as optional is the fact that children are allowed not to attend the classes if they belong to a different denomination. In such cases, they may attend other classes specific to their religion, where this is possible. The curriculum is specific to each denomination, there is a special curriculum for the Orthodox children, another for Catholics and so on. All these curricula are approved by the Education Ministry. If parents want their children not to study religion at all, they are free to do so, because the education law is in line with the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of religious beliefs.”



    Roman-Catholic or Muslim children in Romania may withdraw from the religious education classes if their school only provides classes for Orthodox children. They are free not to attend, but if they have no place to go they have to remain in the classroom. Religious education teacher Mihaela Ghitiu explains:



    “I have a Muslim student in my class and when we discuss a topic that is related to his religion, he is welcome to contribute. He hasn’t withdrawn from the class. But I don’t grade him, of course.”



    To avoid such situations, the Romanian Secular-Humanist Association suggests that religious education classes should not longer be scheduled in between other classes, but at the start or at the end of the school day. Children who do not take these classes would be able to come later or leave earlier from school, and the school would no longer be responsible for their supervision. Parent associations support this initiative. Here is Mihaela Guna, the president of the Federation of Parent Associations:



    “I think this is the fair thing to do, because some parents don’t withdraw their children from religious education classes only because their children would be unsupervised for an hour. So they let them take the class just to make sure the children stay in school. I believe it would be normal for children who do not wish to attend religious education classes to be able to take an optional course instead.”



    Instead of an optional class, the Secular-Humanist Association proposes the replacement of religion as a subject matter with the history of religions, which would teach children about the diversity of religious beliefs and denominations. Mihaela Guna supports this initiative because this would avoid teaching certain religious aspects which small children may find shocking:



    “I think it would be much more interesting to teach them the history of religions or other things instead of, for example, the ritual of washing the dead. I think children should learn more about religion in general and less about dogmatism. There are many children who are afraid that if they do not say or do certain things, God will punish them. I think we should look at religion in a different way.”



    Teacher Mihaela Ghitiu says some elements related to the history of religions are already being taught during religious education classes:



    “Religion proposes values and develops virtues and teaches children how to live in a community. However, it’s impossible to talk about virtues without talking about their opposites, about sins. The Romanian Secular-Humanist Association believes children should not be taught about punishments, about hell or death. But in traditional families, when grandparents died, children were brought to their deathbed to be given their last blessing. It was part of life. Parents can talk to their children about these things, in a delicate way, as these are things that they themselves will have to face in their own families.”



    The debate over religious education in Romanian schools has also reached Parliament, where a recent initiative provides for replacing religious class with ethic and civic culture classes.