Comment: Who will stop Romania’s new leaders if they want put a leash on justice?

The changes in Romania’s justice system will be one of the highly sensitive themes of the new governing coalition made of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Liberal Democratic Alliance (ALDE). Romania’s new leaders plan to keep the people happy with generous promises while they may try to put a leash on the anticorruption prosecutors and regain full power for themselves. Romania’s anticorruption quest in recent years, which scored its first major success in 2012, when former PSD Prime Minister Adrian Nastase was sent to jail for corruption, has seen dozens of ministers, MPs, local high officials, and business people sent to court and jailed for corruption, namely for mismanaging and stealing from the state’s wealth. Their efforts have made the political leaders aware that they had to give up the old way of doing business, centered on their own interests and not the country’s and the citizens’ well being, for a new one, based on higher transparency and responsible spending of public funds. Some politicians unwillingly accepted the new state of affairs dreaming of the day when they would again be able to take full power and manage the country without looking over their shoulders. That day may soon come. The governing program presented to the Parliament by the new PSD-ALDE cabinet led by Sorin Grindeanu says nothing about continuing the fight against corruption. Instead, it states that “justice must serve the citizen”, and that, starting 2017, “we aim to modernize the legislation for the judiciary, preventing excesses and abuses from this power of the state.” Furthermore, the newly appointed justice minister, Florin Iordache, has been one of PSD’s champions in the Parliament in trying to limit the powers of the prosecutors, according to the local media. Both PSD and ALDE have made it no secret in the electoral campaign that they wanted to put a stop to what they call the “abuses” by some of the state’s judiciary institutions. Their main target is the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), led by chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi. The institution has investigated and sent to court many politicians in the last three years, including former PSD leader and Prime Minister Victor Ponta. Current PSD president Liviu Dragnea got a two-year suspended sentence, in April 2016, for electoral fraud at the 2012 referendum to suspend former President Traian Basescu. The DNA prosecutors, who conducted that investigation, last year sent Dragnea to court in another case in which they charged him with abuse of power.