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Corruption scandals hit the headlines, but not the guilty
EVERY man has his price; a minister’s is just higher. Fixing a public tender in Romania may require a few euros. And some sausages.
The government, using an emergency decree that avoids a parliamentary vote, has dissolved an advisory commission on lifting suspects’ immunity. New amendments to the penal code prescribe jail sentences of up to seven years for journalists who publish material showing officials involved in bribe-taking, and also reduce the penalties for actual wrong-doing by raising the financial threshold for corruption charges. As for existing cases, including one involving a former prime minister, Adrian Nastase (who insists he is innocent), most are bogged down in procedural delays.
It was worries over high-level corruption and an ineffective judiciary that preoccupied the European Union in the period before Romania and Bulgaria joined, which they did in January. But since Romania squeezed in, its politicians and top officials have been busily trying to reclaim the privileges and immunities they were forced to give up during the accession negotiations.
Public outrage against corruption is still high, yet the bleak perception is that it flourishes. In the latest survey by Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog, Romania is rated the most corrupt country in the EU. Public opinion has yet to make itself felt on the issue. Optimists hope that a bad government will eventually exhaust voters’ patience. Pessimists fear that the sight of a shamelessly corrupt new member may discredit the very notion of the EU’s enlargement.
ROME — A woman who was raped and beaten near a Gypsy camp allegedly by a Romanian died Thursday night, state radio reported
“Horror in Rome” read the front-page headline Thursday in Il Messaggeroa daily newspaper in the city. “End of tolerance,”..
A series of violent crimes in the capital has been blamed on Romanians in recent months. Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore was hospitalized over the summer after he was punched in the jaw by one of two muggers in an upscale neighborhood.
In August, three Romanians allegedly mugged a cyclist along the Tiber River. The cyclist died in early October after weeks in a coma.
… I’m too sad and ashamed to even comment. But yes, the two articles are linked: the behavior of some Romanian citizens abroad (in Romania, too) is in many ways a consequence of the lack of respect the Romanian authorities have for the Law, for decades. And no, they will not be punished in elections, because there is no real choice: all Romanian parties, all institutions are corrupted. Since 1989 Romanians are voting against one party, the one they see the most corrupt, not for another party, because it’s not what they want, it just seems, at the elections time, ‘less corrupt’ than the other. But every time is even worse.
Sometimes I feel there is no way out.