Freedom in the world saw a decline in 2018 for the 13th
consecutive year, warns the well-known Freedom House organisation in its latest
report. A research institute based in Washington, founded in 1941, financed by
the US government and whose main goal is to promote liberal democracy around
the world, Freedom House monitors and assesses on an annual basis the state of
essential liberties in 193 different countries and 15 territories across the
globe. The decline in freedom has spanned all regions of the world, from long-standing
democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China
and Russia. The Freedom House experts say the decline is not as big compared
with the period at end of the 20th century prior to the collapse of
the communist dictatorships in Europe and of the right-wing dictatorships in
Latin America, but the tendency is significant and generates risks.
The Scandinavian democracies continue to top the Freedom House
chart. Finland, Norway and Sweden have a maximum of 100 points, a score
indicating a political system with the highest degree of freedom. Although they
do not have the maximum score, the list of free countries predictably includes
traditional pillars of post-war democracy like the United States, Canada,
France, the UK, Germany and Italy. The list of partly free countries includes
Serbia and the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova
(with a majority Romanian-speaking population). A worrying fact is that this
list also features Hungary, a country that is a member of the European Union
and NATO, and where Freedom House has identified one of the biggest declines in
freedom under Viktor Orban’s right-wing nationalist regime. Many countries are
not considered free, including essential geopolitical actors such as Russia,
China and Saudi Arabia. As far as Romania is concerned, it lies in the green
area of the map drawn up by Freedom House, being considered a free country from
the point of view of political and civic rights.
The Romanian democracy has 81 points out of 100. Commentators have
noted that the American experts from Freedom House thus rank Romania better
than Romanians themselves do. In the never-ending political conflict in
Bucharest, the majority formed by the leftist Social Democratic Party and the
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats keep denouncing what they call the parallel
state, which allegedly contains media conglomerates, special services, prosecutors
and judges that deliver prison sentences on order to politicians who are not to
their liking and thus ruining their careers. In response, the right-wing
opposition, the media and civil society accuse the government of seeking to
place magistrates under political control, hindering the fight against
corruption and transforming the Gendermerie into a kind of Praetorian Guard
employed to stifle, only too eagerly, anti-governmental protests.
