|
|
|
|
Law and Nation in Post-Communist Romania
Institute on East Central Europe
March, 1997
The political transition in Romania from 1989 to 1996 was predictable and second only to that of former Yugoslavia in violence and suffering. Passive Western observers sought explanations for recent events in Romanian history and law-making in the emergence of nationalist movements. Moreover, the political instability of the past seven years had elements predictive of an overall pattern in the Balkans: indeed, major ethnic disputes of March 1990 in Hungarian-inhabited Transylvania anticipated by a few weeks the wave of ethnic conflicts in neighbouring Yugoslavia, and the ongoing students/ intellectuals' protest in Bucharest's University Square in March-June 1990 is similar to the students' strike in Belgrade, which is still ongoing at this writing. The new regime's quest for legitimacy was seconded by a breach with the communist legal heritage and by a reform of the courts. These efforts were not completely satisfactory by Western standards, and a more radical approach is expected from the government elected in 1996, which is dominated by the Democratic Convention.
Particularities of Romanian Communism
After a hard-line Stalinist period, Romania's Communist Party withdrew from its Soviet protector around 1964, on the occasion of Moscow's ideological conflicts with Beijing. The official dogma in Bucharest was the so-called creative development of Marxism in accordance with particular historical conditions. A latent nationalism emerged under these auspices, defining progress in socialist society as exclusively dependent on the survival of nationalist ideals. Socialist countries, the new ideologists said, combine social with national demands. 1 As philosopher Andrei Marga points out, it was a combination of a tautological, peculiar Marxism of protochronism 2 and noicism 3 (a cultural-philosophical discourse opposed to the dogmatic Ceausescu regime) that intellectually defined the advent of 1989 in Romania. 4 Not unlike other revolutions, the beginning of democratization was substantiated by philosophers, writers, and even journalists, as opposed to Romania's prominent legal scholars who had been thoroughly selected and censored so as to echo only the party policy and to perpetrate an atmosphere of terror and oppression.
1989-1990: the Highjacked Revolution
The transition towards democracy began slowly and painfully, with many drawbacks, on December 22, 1989, when Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu escaped by helicopter from hostile protesters in Bucharest and were apprehended almost by mistake the next day, in the culmination of eight days of chaos begun in Timisoara. Within hours of Ceausescu's escape, and according to an obviously pre-existing plan, the Council of the National Salvation Front (NSF) was formed and made its public appearance on national television, emphasizing the temporary nature of its authority and conspicuously, recurrently condemning the "tyrant." The most frequent public spokesman for the Council was Ion Iliescu, virtually unknown to the crowds, formerly a high official within the Romanian Communist Party and president-to-be of Romania. His future prime minister, Petre Roman, emerged as a somewhat more refined, handsome, and highly literate figure of the NSF. Their first concern was to do away with Ceausescu and his wife through a mockery of a trial designated to taint from the start any aspiration for justice or redemption of the judicial system in an emerging democracy.
The Trial of Nicolae Ceausescu
In terms of the violation of the right to a fair trial, the former dictator's summary trial and execution was outrageous even according to the same communist standards of justice that he himself had imposed in Romania, standards by which judges were known to give sentences on the basis of suggestions delivered over the phone by party officials. The death penalty would be subsequently abolished in an attempt to both consecrate the Ceausescus as Romania's last executed criminals and to extend some protection over the remaining communist nomenklatura leading the new government.
The trial of the Ceausescus lasted about an hour, as one can infer from a tape released on the night of their execution. It was closed to the public for reasons of "security" and it was not advertised in any way; in fact, the trial was kept secret until after the execution. It was to be the last assembly of an Extraordinary Military Tribunal, 5 supposedly having jurisdiction over Ceausescu as head of the armed forces. The jurisdictional argument, however, was not raised by the inefficient defense attorneys, but by rather Ceausescu himself, who invoked the Constitutional provision that the President may be held responsible only by the Great National Assembly.
The indictment consisted of five counts: genocide, subverting the power of the state through manipulation of the army, destruction of the national wealth through systematic demolition of towns and villages, subversion of the national economy, and attempted flight from the country for the purpose of retrieving a colossal fortune from unknown Swiss bank accounts. The prosecution sought the death penalty. This probably was not all that the Ceausescus could have conceivably been accused of: it was common knowledge that the evil was deeper. But common knowledge is irrelevant until proven as a matter of both law and fact, and there is no precedent in civil law for a judge taking judicial notice of such a complex set of facts, absent convincing evidence or stipulation by the parties.
The few meetings between defense attorneys and defendants lasted for several seconds each; in fact, the defense attorneys did a better job than did the prosecutors in demanding and obtaining the death penalty. No evidence was introduced, no witnesses testified. It seems the only testimony was, paradoxically, the prosecutor's affirmations that "they conspired to destroy the Romanian people." The only two interventions by defense attorneys during the trial consisted of merely suggesting that the Court question Ceausescu concerning whether he was aware that he was no longer President and, over their clients' loud protests, to ask Elena Ceausescu whether she was mentally ill. No proofs were offered or contested by any of the parties, yet within 40 minutes of questioning the charges were deemed proven, although the Ceausescus vigorously denied each allegation, when they bothered to answer the judge's questions at all. No appeal was sought by the defense; on the contrary, the defendants' attorneys hurried to proclaim them guilty and seek the appropriate punishment, but not as an act of revenge, "merely as punishment in accordance to the law." The defense proclaimed that everyone -- defendants, Romanians and the world -- are aware that the trial was lawful and that the tribunal was "perfectly legal." The trial ended with Ceausescu shouting "lies from beginning to end." Throughout the trial, he was looking at his watch as if he hardly expected the masquerade to finish.
Both Romanian and foreign legal experts and commentators agree in finding no trace of due process or democratic "will of the people" in the ad hoc military trial and in the rushed execution. Some of the most adequate words to describe the pain and frustration that many Romanians felt after the trial and execution were spoken by Paul Goma, a well-known Romanian writer and early opponent of the regime: those who hurried to kill the dictator "stole Ceausescu from those who suffered because of him" and by that mockery of a trial "they accomplished the extraordinary, unheard of, and undeserved feat of turning the Ceausescus into human beings." 6 While it is true that the execution silenced forever potentially dangerous secrets about Romania's past and future, the main negative impact was upon the already frail relations with the Western world, which pointed to the Ceausescus' trial as an ethno-psychological measure stemming from Romania's incapacity to synchronize its legal process with well-established Western standards of justice.
In an insightful, although somewhat poorly researched article, the distinguished Romanian-born judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Honorable Alex Kozinski, identified a complete lack of concern for an unbiased determination of guilt or innocence, and a marked disregard for the most basic elements of due process in this trial, raising disturbing questions about the National Salvation Front's actions and motives. The Government seemed to have legalized a lynch mob, notes Judge Kozinski, setting a poor example that ill served the cause of justice in that country. 7
Finally, the military judge who presided over the Ceausescu trial committed suicide and may very well have been among the posthumous victims of the dictator, together with the many undernourished, sick children and the elderly. Everyone knows, yet no one knows exactly, what Ceausescu's crimes were. There is evidence that he was not unaware of or immune to the mass suffering he inflicted upon his people, 8 as some of his remaining worshipers claim.
Under pressure, prominent Romanian legal personalities attempted to whitewash 1989's shameful violation of internationally recognized human rights. Ceausescu was posthumously retried and the outcome, to no one's surprise, was the same. The rehabilitation of due process came too late and the "official assassination" remained a shameful part of Romania's democratic history.
February 1990 -- the Students on Trial 9
Less publicized and less spectacular than the former president's trial and execution, but nevertheless interesting and exemplary of the new government's manipulation of judicial institutions, was the trial following the February 18, 1990, incident at the Government Palace. In a crescendo of discontent and after days of turmoil, various groups of people representative of different professions and graduate students had peacefully assembled on Victory Square in front of the Government Palace in an anti-NSF protest. A regular guard over watched the Palace. No signs of particular enforcement were obvious, although tanks were reportedly hidden behind the building in anticipation of the events, suggesting a plot initiated at the very top.
Suddenly, several hooligans broke the large glass windows on the ground floor. It was unclear whether they had hammers or bats. The crowd instinctively withdrew about 50 feet, disassociating itself from the provocateurs. The guards barely reacted: in fact, after a long spontaneous debate and taking the guard's lack of reaction for implicit consent, curious people timidly approached the building where nobody but the parliamentarians ever entered. Soon, hundreds and then thousands of people were peacefully touring the "forbidden" building when some parliamentarians needlessly panicked, fearing that they could end up like Ceausescu. In a country where nobody may possess assault weapons, a very outspoken member of the Parliament, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, wandered through the corridors with an automatic rifle in hand, to the consternation of all present.
Artists, musicians, journalists, and well-known public figures were all in the building at some point during the afternoon, and would admit it on the next day's news. Yet, of the thousands of people, only a dozen innocents, all high school or university students, were randomly arrested. Among them was an excellent student of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bucharest. 10 The arrestees were driven around the city for several hours in an armored carrier: nobody was informed of their whereabouts. Parents and friends uselessly inquired with the police, began a hunger strike in midtown Bucharest, and distributed pamphlets seeking information about the mysterious disappearance. The students were thought dead for four days, when their virtually secret trial suddenly commenced, where evidence in favor of the defendants was not allowed and the appointed defense attorneys saw their clients for practically the first time in court.
The media did not make it in time for the summary proceedings. In three to four hours the trial ended and the accused were all released on probation, yet no evidence other than the prosecutor's undocumented statement of the facts linked the youngsters to any act of violence. By more than coincidence, the defendants had political affiliations or sympathies opposed to the NSF. The mathematician was banned from future public assembly. A clear message was sent: the intelligentsia would be punished to set an example. This aberrant trial anticipated the June 1990 imprisonment of the Student League's leader, Marian Munteanu, and the government's endorsement of such measures constituted a severe breach of civil liberties.
Anti-intellectualism and the Miners
1990 was a year of violence on the streets of the Romanian capital, and it acquired a dramatic meaning when it became obvious that violence was always directed against opponents of the NSF ideology and of neo-communism in general. Moreover, the targets were invariably groups of intellectuals, the "new dissidents," as it appeared from the outburst of chaos in June 1990, upon the arrival of thousands of coal miners from a remote town in the Carpathian mountains.
On April 22 , 1990, the intersection of two busy streets in the heart of Bucharest was occupied by peaceful demonstrators who remained there for several weeks, with the intention of deterring Iliescu and other former communist leaders from running in the May 20 elections. The rallies in University Square become a social phenomenon of impressive proportions where many future political leaders gained popularity and defined their ideology. 11 It was then that the League of Students' charismatic leader, Munteanu, inflamed the crowds with his non-violent, almost mystical discourse of national identity and anti-communism. From the same balcony, Emil Constantinescu, president of the University, addressed the ever increasing population of self-titled golani (hoodlums) who demanded the NSF's withdrawal from the electoral campaign. The vote was cast in an atmosphere of tension, 12 reconsolidating a regime of egalitarian feelings and communist public relations. 13
|
P
ARTIES
|
CH. OF DEPUTIES
|
SENATE
|
|
NSF |
66.3 percent |
67.0 percent |
|
Liberals |
6.4 |
7.0 |
|
Peasants -Chr. Dem. |
2.5 |
2.5 |
|
Eco Movement |
2.6 |
2.4 |
|
Romanian National |
2.1 |
2.1 |
|
Agrarians |
1.8 |
1.5 |
|
Eco Party |
1.6 |
1.3 |
|
Social Democrats |
1.0 |
1.1 |
On June 13-15, the government enlisted the support of thousands of coal miners armed with hammers and bats, some visibly intoxicated, who descended upon the protesters and innocent bystanders to "protect Mister Iliescu" whose life, they were told, was threatened by Munteanu and his like. Munteanu ended up being beaten and thrown in jail, like others who only stood up for their freedom of conscience and of speech. It was the worst thing that could have happened to an emerging democracy; a few months later, the same coal miners brought to an end Petre Roman's career as prime minister. Roman soon started to describe Iliescu as a "nostalgic communist." 14 The new democracy was not based on the rule of law, but on violence and tribal disputes. Coherence and hope were still redeemable through a more articulate legal system that was expected to change radically with the upcoming enactment of a new constitution.
Nation and Constitution after 1990
As early as 1930, a distinguished Romanian law professor, George Meitani, stated the thesis that a nation is "a community of people of the same language, same origin, same customs, ideas, feelings, developed through century-old life together." In unitary states like Spain, France, Italy, and Romania, the nation is representative of the majority of the population -- but the population itself cannot be reduced to the mere concept of nation. The national character of the Romanian state had been defined in its Constitution as early as 1923 and through a pertinent remark by Leonte Moldovan during the debate over article one in the Chamber of Deputies: "the national character of our state is imposed by the overwhelming presence of a Romanian population." 15 The existence of a substantial Hungarian minority in Transylvania poses the problem of the adequate representation of their interests in the national state.
Consistence with the 1923 Constitution became necessary in the juridical vacuum after December 1989. The first document issued by the new government on December 22, 1989, entitled "Communiqué to the Country of the Council of the National Salvation Front," confirmed the end of the dictatorship. But due to the lack of juridical expertise of its drafters, it failed to define the new constitutional regime or form of government. Speculation that the monarchy, abolished in 1947, had been automatically reinstated were soon suppressed in subsequent disclaimers by the Front's leaders. Two constitutional theories emerged from the ambiguity of the NSF's Communiqué. The first asserted that the December events only partially abrogated the 1965 Constitution, maintaining those pro-visions that did not concern the former dictatorial structure. 16 This approach encountered justified objections from legal scholars because practically every sentence of the 1965 Constitution contained references to socialism and communism. The second thesis argued that the 1965 Constitution survived in the interim, but this fact endangered the constitu-tionality of any subsequent parliamentary activity, including the May 1990 elections to Parliament, as contravening the 1965 Constitution's principles. As an alternative, the constitutional vacuum was justified through the general legal principles of desuetude.
The abrogative effect of revolutions, in general, was used by Professor Tudor Draganu in early 1991 to support the first constitutional thesis. 17 The international recog-nition of Romania's new government echoed a long-established doctrine of Huerta-type acquisition of power in a state, which, although achieved through unconstitutional means, leads to validation by other states and international organizations. 18 Notwithstanding the international recognition of the new form of government, internal tension surrounding the constitutional issue lasted until the Constitutional Referendum of 1991. The apparently simple solution of reinstating the March 29, 1923 Constitution was undesirable to Iliescu's NSF because it would have reinstated the monarchy as well. The so-called historical parties, National Liberal and Christian-Democratic (the only parties to continue the pre-communist democratic tradition), expressed pro-monarchic feelings and were nostalgic for the past. Yet it was a recently emerged center-right party, "the Romanian House of Democratic Europe" that submitted the legal challenge of reinstating the 1923 Constitution to the former Supreme Court of Justice in 1991. The Court's decision was conveniently delayed until the 1991 Constitution was enacted and the Constitutional Court commenced its activity as the only forum for constitutional judicial review in the state.
In support of the 1923 Constitution, a historic argument was made that Romania's unlawful Deputies' Assembly of December 30, 1947, failed to comply with the constitutional requirements of number, representation, due process and voting and that therefore its proclamation of a new form of government (the Republic) after 45 minutes of debate was a fraud. "That was not a Deputies' Assembly, but a casual, unconstitutional meeting of a small number of deputies." 19 Article 17 of Decree No. 2218 of 1946 provided that the only authority competent to revise the Constitution would have been a "legislative assembly, elected for that purpose only." 20 The 1923 Constitution was never reinstated de facto, as the newly drafted 1991 Constitution was approved in a referendum on December 8, 1991, and finally adopted with a majority of 77.3 percent of the vote. Considering that more than a million registered voters did not participate, it can be inferred that more than 30 percent of the voters in some way rejected the new constitution. Yet, one should not conclude that the new Constitution was necessarily unpopular -- many of its opponents actually opposed the NSF-dominated government that upheld it, not its provisions.
Of all the morbid institutions inherited from the communists, Romania's Constitution was the most successfully replaced a in relatively brief time with a viable one, while other Central and Eastern European countries took substantially longer to implement new constitutions. However, disagreement over and criticism of some provisions were heard in arduous Senate debates and the Assembly's discussions proceeded with genuinely Balkan temper, from excited to dangerously violent, as they were broadcast on national television. To no one's surprise, the articles most fervently disputed by the opposition Senators were those susceptible to ambiguity and incompatibility with an otherwise democratic foundation of the state, the same articles often disapproved of by Western European scholars. Romania made a leap forward toward acceptance in some European organizations and in NATO through its new Constitution, yet ambiguity ill serves its commitment to democracy.
In support of the affirmation that the nation and the foundations of law are intertwined in Romanian history, it is interesting to note the recurrence of disapproving comments on the very first article of the Constitution, in which Romania is proclaimed "a national state, sovereign and independent, unitary and indivisible." Senator Zoltán Hosszu of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (HDUR) proposed deleting the term "national." Senator Hosszu supported his argument by interpreting "national" ad literam to mean "of Romanian nationality" and affirmed that "this cannot be true, since all of us know there are 14-15 different ethnic groups in Romania." 21 He was joined by other HDUR members, and the argument was raised again several months later by Senator Géza Stefan Szöcs of the same party, who alluded to possible intentions of the Republic of Moldavia to be reunited with Romania: "there are perhaps regions inhabited by a Romanian majority, but with substantial minorities, preoccupied by the idea of unification with Romania. This process may have been negatively influenced...[by the Assembly's vote for a "national state" definition], for some ethnic communities of about a million people would have accepted life in a multinational Romania, but will not accept Romania defined as a national state." 22 The proposed amendment did not pass by a large number of votes. A coherent defense of the "national state" definition is simply semantic: "national" and "nationalist" have related, yet not identical meanings. Senator Hosszu's fierce legislative battle to prevent the Constitution from feeding right-wing feelings was unfortunately of no effect during the years to come, and the complex phenomenon of right-wing party ideology in Romania remains of great concern to foreign observers. 23 Authors from countries with internal ethnic tensions proved the most exigent and perhaps the most accurate in addressing the undesirable Romanian nationalist awareness. 24
Article 13 of the Romanian Constitution establishes Romanian as the official language 25 and is unjustly perceived to be a shortcoming of the democratization process. Passionate arguments by Hungarian parliamentarians were rejected by a clear-cut vote. American researchers may encounter difficulties in understanding the necessity of an official language: the practical sense of American society never doubted the well-established function of the English language in schools, administration, or courts, and English is the language employed by American diplomats in international organizations, despite ever increasing Hispanic and Asian linguistic minorities. However, English is required for the oath of citizenship in America.
The Romanian Constitution requires the use of court interpreters to enable ethnic minorities' fair access to justice. However, the general provisions of the Constitution with respect to ethnic minorities, and of freedom of speech in general, 26 were not consistently applied after its enactment, and the Hungarian minority was definitely alienated after the election of right-wing Mayor Gheorghe Funar of the National Unity Party of Romania (NUPR) in Cluj, the former capital of the Transylvanian province and Romania's second-largest city, with a substantial Hungarian population.
Other provisions of the Constitution, through their vagueness, left room for a manipulative interpretation by the leading faction of the government. Some civil liberties, such as inviolability of domicile or access to information, can be constitutionally limited for reasons of "national security," and subsequently enacted laws may impose unspecified, discretionary restrictions on "rights or freedoms" in order to defend "national security." Symbols of foreign governments, such as flags or national anthems, are not permitted outside of official diplomatic ceremonies; the source of these restrictions originated in the the March 1990 violent street clashes in Tirgu Mures between Romanian and Hungarian nationalist groups. It was therefore difficult for the Hungarian Democratic Union to consider an alliance with Iliescu's NSF, while it is not entirely clear why such an alliance was not made with the Democratic Convention in the 1996 elections.
Still other provisions of the Constitution are ambiguous, if not mutually exclusive. Paragraph one of Article 30 says that "freedom to express thoughts, opinions and beliefs" in all manner of public communication is "inviolable." But, says Paragraph six, freedom of expression ends when the "dignity, honor, private life" of a person are prejudiced, a provision that actually belongs in the Penal Code, not in a Constitution. Furthermore, Paragraph seven points out another severe limitation of what is left of freedom of expression after the previous paragraph: it is unlawful to "defame the country and the nation." "Obscene acts contrary to good morals" are presumably unconstitutional as well. In the absence of a definition, a government can interpret practically any act as obscene, since there is no minimum standard required.
While censorship is forbidden (Article 30, Paragraph two), Article 31, Paragraph three could mean censorship in practice. It specifies: "The public and private means of mass communication (information) are obligated to ensure that public opinion is accurately informed." In a world of absolute truth, accuracy would be easily defined by absolute standards, but the only predictable effect of this paragraph is to empower the ruling party to conveniently establish the standard of accuracy -- as in the case of the national television during the three presidential campaigns. 27 The vagueness of these provisions is not intrinsically dangerous to democratization, to freedom of expression, and of the press; it is the rigid manner in which they are often applied by Romanian courts that represents a substantial drawback. It is remarkable that President Iliescu condoned the imprisonment of two journalists, Tana Ardeleanu and George Scutaru, who were investigating a story on the President's alleged affiliation with the KGB, after allowing himself enraged public outbursts against a journalist during the 1992 presidential campaign during which Iliescu took the undesired media representative by the lapels and yelled "you animal!" at him in front of a consternated crowd.
Although the Romanian Constitution lacks precision in the above analyzed points, the overall performance of the new Romanian legal system is impressive for such a short period of time. Very modern legislation on environmental issues, on copyrights, and even on securities was passed during the first years after the revolution, usually modeled after Western European law. These are some of the prerequisites for integration in Euro-Atlantic organizations, although deficient infrastructure and low per capita income keep Romania from making the short list for the European Union.
Contrary to what is thought by casual observers, communist Romania has always had environmental laws and regulations. A number of laws and decrees in accordance with European standards were drafted after 1956. They include Decree No. 687/1956 regarding the protection of plants and forests; Law No. 9/1973 regarding protection of the environment; Decree No. 414/1979 regarding the limits of admissible values for the main polluters in industrial waters, and Decree No. 37/1980 regarding the pollution of navigable waters. 28 To these was added an Ordinance by the recently created Ministry of Waters, Forests and Environmental Protection. 29
In pursuit of international recognition and compatibility with its Western trade partners, Romania has signed bilateral treaties for the avoidance of double taxation with most of the developed countries. The Iliescu regime must be credited for its ratification of several conventions and treaties as well as for Romania's inclusion in the Council of Europe. An understandable haste to gain international visibility was considered sufficient to excuse shortcomings of the Constitution, but such calculation is mistaken. Romania has not been truly democratic for the first seven years of its post-communist reconstruction. A true and complete democratization of the country must begin with a fair treatment of all citizens and their constitutional rights and liberties, and must work its way through an accurate international projection of these democratic achievements.
Great Expectations - the November 1996 Election Results
After an electoral campaign with all attributes of a bullfight, the former leading party, the Romanian Social-Democratic Party (RSDP), has clamorously lost the battle for both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, while its spiritual leader (Romanian presidents are not supposed to be simultaneously the leaders of any party), Iliescu, went for a second round against Emil Constantinescu. The distribution of preferences was not homogenous, with the least developed areas of the country voting for Iliescu's party, while the capital and the more progressive west and northwest of the country supported the radical change. Transylvania expressed somewhat peculiar preferences due to its ethnic structure: the HDUR and the NUPR polarized the electorate.
Iliescu's presidential career appeared doomed when his right to candidacy was challenged in the Constitutional Court, as the Constitution provides for at most two terms for each president. Although the debate over whether to count his first two-year mandate within the meaning of the Constitution was solved in his favor by the Constitutional Court, the polemic may have contributed to shaking Iliescu's protective image. The 1995 adhesion of Iliescu's RSDP to the Socialist International divulged its true, neo-communist orien-tation. While the fairness of the past two democratic elections had been fiercely contested by the opposition, the RSDP immediately acknowledged the overall victory of the Roma-nian Democratic Convention (RDC). Foreign observers were satisfied with the electoral process. A most emotional and memorable event was the election night of November 17/18, 1996, when Constantinescu's victory marked a complete breach with the past.
Unlike England, France and the United States, Eastern Europe has no republican history. In Romania, the Republic was a communist institution of Russian import. The presidency did not exist until the early 1970s. It is therefore imperative that the president's political dimension rehabilitate the equilibrium between a millennial tradition of individual rulers and the evolution of Romanian society towards a modern, intrinsically democratic future. The media and the parliament are traditionally mere projections of the current President's ideology, either adhering to or denigrating the president's program. Constructive criticism is now gradually accepted by Romanian politicians, but is essentially alien to their spirit of passionate political extremes.
| RDC |
53 |
37.06 percent |
|
RSDP |
41 |
28.67 percent |
|
Social Democratic Union (SDU) |
23 |
16.08 percent |
|
HDUR |
11 |
7.69 percent |
|
Greater Romania Party (GRP) |
8 |
5.59 percent |
|
NUPR |
7 |
4.90 percent |
|
TOTAL |
143 |
100.00 percent |
| RDC |
122 |
35.57 percent |
|
RDSP |
91 |
26.53 percent |
|
SDU |
53 |
15.45 percent |
|
HDUR |
25 |
7.29 percent |
|
GRP |
19 |
5.54 percent |
|
NUPR |
18 |
5.25 percent |
|
OTHER MINORITIES |
15 |
4.37 percent |
|
TOTAL |
343 |
100.00 percent |
Two personalities of the revolutionary days in December 1989, Iliescu and Roman, perpetuated their leadership through the second- and third-placed parties of the new govern-ment (RSDP and SDU), while Constantinescu consolidated 13 parties and political organi-zations in the victorious Democratic Convention. From a legal perspective, his victory will mean the passage of pending legislation that will allow foreign investors to own land (a major impediment in attracting foreign investments to heal the debilitated economy) and also to export at least part of the profit realized on Romanian territory. The new govern-ment's agenda gives priority to privatization, followed by the solution of conflicts between lower and superior courts on the issue of restitution or compensation for property confiscated by the communists. The appointment of Valeriu Stoica as minister of justice is a confident move towards the eradication of a communist mentality in the judiciary.
Conclusion
Viewed in retrospect, the seven years of transition in Romania differed somewhat from transition in other Central and Eastern European countries: over-achievements in some legal aspects of democratization were counterbalanced by government-elicited infringements of civil rights and liberties through episodes of violence and judicial abuses. The most significant legal events of the period were contradictory, ranging from outrageously run political trials to the enactment of an overall well-balanced Constitution and otherwise substantial depolitization of Courts. Under the auspices of the Romanian Democratic Convention, the stabilization and restructuring of the Romanian economy will probably occur in symbiosis with the completion of legal system reform. Romania needs some new laws, but it primarily needs political legitimacy, administrative expertise, and institutional cohesion and decentralization to apply statutes in a coherent manner. The results of the November 1996 election are predictive of more efficient progress. The time has come for the government to abandon past demagogy and reach for Europe.
Footnotes
Note 1: Socialism stiintific (Bucharest: Editura Didactica si Pedagogica, 1985), 286. Back.
Note 2: For an introduction to a Romanian version of protochronism, see Edgar Papu, Din clasicii nostri. Contributii la ideea unui protochronism romanesc (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1977). Back.
Note 3: For an overview of Noica's philosophy, see Constantin Noica, Spiritul romanesc in cumpatul vremii. Sase maladii ale spiritului contemporan (Bucharest: Litera, 1978); see also Noica, De dignitate Europae (Bucharest: Editura Didactica si Pedagogica, 1988); Gabriel Liiceanu, Jurnalul de la Paltinis (Bucharest: Editura Didactica si Pedagogica, 1983). Back.
Note 4: Andrei Marga, Philosophy in the Eastern Transition (Cluj: Biblioteca Apostrof, 1995), 207-216. Back.
Note 5: In Romania, political prisoners were tried by military courts, irrespective of their military status. Back.
Note 6: Lumea Libera, June 16, 1990. Back.
Note 7: See Alex Kozinski, "Death, Lies & Videotape: The Ceausescu Show Trial and the Future of Romania," ABA Journal 77 (January 1991). Back.
Note 8: An April 1987 conversation with Romania's most controversial public figure and intimate of the Ceausescus, the poet Adrian Paunescu, a 1996 candidate for the presidency, revealed the dictator as a "suffering, caring human being," fully aware of the state of the nation. Back.
Note 9: The events presented herein were witnessed by the author and/or compiled from direct sources. Back.
Note 10: The author was involved in the campaign demanding the release of information about his whereabouts and served as a liaison with the foreign media on the day of the trial. Back.
Note 11: For conflicting views on the protest, see the dailies Azi, Dimineata, Romania libera and Dreptatea, April 23 to July 1, 1990; and "O perspectiva sociologica asupra fenomenului Piata Uni-versitatii si a evenimentelor din 13-15 iunie 1990," Sociologia romaneasca 5-6 (1990), 483-494. Back.
Note 12: See the following table for the structure of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Back.
Note 13: See, generally, Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 14: Michael Shafir, "`War of the Roses' in Romania's National Salvation Front," RFE-RL Research Report, January 24, 1992, 3. Back.
Note 15: Cf. Constitutiunea Romaniei din 1923 adnotata cu dezbateri parlamentare si jurisprudente (Bucharest: A. Lascarov-Moldovanu si Sergiu G. Ionescu, 1925), 11. Back.
Note 16: For the full text of the "Communique" with annotations, see Revista de istorie militara, no. 1 (1990), 18. Back.
Note 17: Romania libera, March 14, 1991. Back.
Note 18: H. Lauterpacht, "Recognition of Governments, II," in Essays on International Law from the Columbia Law Review (New York [s.n.] 1965), 305. For instance, the visit of French President Francois Mitterand in April 1991 was the first by a Western head of state since the fall of Ceausescu and was seen by the new Romanian Government as a sign of acceptance. Radio Bucharest, April 18, 1991. It was perceived this way by the opposition as well, who organized demonstrations against Mitterand's presence. See Reuter, April 18, 1991. Back.
Note 19: Eleodor Focsaneanu, "O descoperire istorica: Legea prin care s-a proclamat republica este un fals," Romania libera, October 15, 1991. Back.
Note 20: Article 17 of the 1946 Decree No. 2218. Back.
Note 21: Monitorul Oficial al Romaniei, second year, no. 2, part II, Parliamentary Debates of Friday, March 1, 1991, 2. Back.
Note 22: Monitorul Oficial al Romaniei, second year, no. 23, part II, Parliamentary Debates of Thursday, September 12, 1991, 28. Back.
Note 23: An introduction to the right-wing politics is provided by Shafir in "The Revival of the Political Right in Post-Communist Romania," in Democracy and Right-Wing Politics in Eastern Europe, (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993), 153-174; see also Gabriel Andreescu, Patru ani de Revolutie (Bucharest: Editura Litera, 1994). Back.
Note 24: See Struggling for Ethnic Identity: Ethnic Hungarians in Post-Ceausescu Romania (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993); Shafir, "Romania," RFE/RL Research Report, April 22, 1994, 79-89; see also: Mary Ellen Fischer, "Romania: The Anguish of Post-Communist Politics," in Fischer, ed., Establishing Democracies (New York: Westview Press, 1996), 188-212. Back.
Note 25: Monitorul Oficial al Romaniei, second year, no. 2, part II, Parliamentary Debates of Friday, March 1, 1991, 14. Back.
Note 26: For an analysis of statutory provisions impairing the freedom of speech, see Peter Gross, Mass Media in Revolution and National Development -- The Romanian Laboratory (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1996). Back.
Note 27: Cf. Dan Preisz, "Curtea Constitutionala: Puterea lupta pentru controlul total al Televiziunii," Romania libera, May 16, 1994, 3. Cf. also Petre Mihai Bacanu, "Majoritatea populatiei Romaniei nu are increder in Televiziune," Romania libera, March 3, 1993, 3. Back.
Note 28: For a demystification of Romanian past and present investment-hostile legislation, see Mark A. Meyer, "Negotiating Solutions to Environmental Risks," East/West Executive Guide, September 1, 1996; see also Meyer, "Investing in Real Estate Joint Ventures," East/West Executive Guide, August 1, 1996. Back.
Note 29: Ordinance No. 462 of August 10, 1993 established conditions for atmospheric protection and methods to measure atmospheric pollution by stationary sources. Back.
Email this citation