Government party's game of electoral seduction ends as hard attack starts in parliament for Great Liberation

The big economic lie of Romania’s governing coalition is over. The main governing party, the Social Democrats (PSD) has dropped plans to increase pensions and salaries and switched to the invention of new taxes. PSD leader Liviu Dragnea no longer wants to buy the goodwill of the Romanians through populist measures, as he did at the beginning of the year, to anesthetize their critical sense of the destruction of Justice. All that interests him now is his personal situation. Right now, as we speak, Dragnea and his men are attacking the Justice system in the Parliament – the only thing that interests him now. They have also set a public deadline: by the end of the year, the laws of justice must be massacred. This is Plan B.

For Liviu Dragnea, this is the last chance to solve his personal problems (a fictitious employment case in which he is a suspect and the Belina case related to an abusive transfer of land from state property to private property of local authorities in South Romania). Under the pressure of time, the PSD president understood that there is no point in continuing with the electoral charity for which the Government said has no money anyway. The head of the PSD seems completely disinterested at this time in the governing program. He only cares about him to the extent that he can politically use him to punish Prime Minister Tudose, whom he will probably blame for not respecting the Party Bible.

Dragnea has the total support of the leaders of PSD, ALDE and UDMR parties. He has tacit support from some liberal leaders who are also interested in weakening the laws and institutions that tangle them terribly. He understood that the Government would not help him in the war with Justice. Former PM Grindeanu has not helped him, nor does current Prime Minister Tudose, who is cynically delaying the submission to Parliament of the amendments to the laws of Justice, as he also failed to send to the Constitutional Court a complaint Dragnea wanted included in the Belina file.

So Dragnea switched to the implementation of Plan B, with the help of the institution he still controls, the Parliament. Senate speaker and ALDE leader Tariceanu has already publicly announced that their purpose is to pass the changes to the laws of Justice in this parliamentary session. Everything is transparent. There are three actors in this plan, two of whom respond to the incentive of Liviu Dragnea and his political allies: the Parliament and the Constitutional Court. The third is Klaus Iohannis, but he has only two instruments – attacking the laws at the Constitutional Court (with expected results) and returning the law to Parliament once. The possible resistance of the president to Liviu Dragnea will be crushed within a maximum of two months.

How will Liviu Dragnea operate Plan B? He has several plans working on at the same time. The first is the commission to reconcile the legislation with the decisions of the Constitutional Court, a committee led by MP Florin Iordache, who served as Justice minister and was forced to resign when hundreds of thousands of people protested in the street against plans to change judiciary laws he had come up with early this year. The works have already begun and a tough attack is announced. The second plan – the project of current Justice minister Tudorel Toader, who just announced that he no longer awaits a key Venice Commission opinion on draft changes to the laws (to be delivered in December, too late for Liviu Dragnea) and would send the draft legislation to Parliament, where it will be assumed by coalition lawmakers PSD -ALDE.

Once entered into Parliament, the two projects will advance rapidly. December is a reasonable deadline for adopting the legal changes that will bring Justice to the dark era of the Social Democratic government who ruled before Romania joined the European Union.

This explains why Liviu Dragnea killed the pension law in a second. He simply does not care about election promises. Cynicism is total for the 5.2 million retirees who were expecting day-to-day promises for one year. I can only imagine the disappointment of the elderly who voted with the PSD in the hope that their pensions will increase in 2018. To note the quasi-total silence of close TV stations of the PSD , who pretended that this subject did not exist. Also to note Liviu Dragnea’s behavior towards Lia Olguta Vasilescu, whom was put in an tough situation: after explaining for a year how they will increase the pensions, now she is forced to swallow her words.

This also explains the renunciation of zero tax for salaries below 2,000 lei, and also the false salary increase, the transfer of social contributions, the increase of the solidarity tax. Liviu Dragnea no longer needs to cosmetize the economic reality. He just has all the energy focused on the Justice file. He will let Prime Minister Tudose take what measures he knows best; through the government’s loyal ministers, he will fault the PM from time to time to make his life difficult, but he is not priority zero.

Now, the energy of the PSD and ALDE leaders is totally invested in the plan in Parliament. If it will not work out for them – and at this moment I do not see how it won’t work out for them – they will have time next year to settle their problems with both Tudose and the government.

Besides, the Great Liberation has already started. Just today 529 detainees were released from jails, and another 3,349 are preparing for release under a law passed by the Romanian Parliament. In December, the politicians will also be released from all worries.