Political Parties and the Anti-Corruption Campaign

Romanias largest parties announce harsher penalties for all corrupt members.

Bogdan Matei, 23.03.2015, 13:31

Seriously compromised by huge corruption scandals and nepotism and perceived by the general public and the media as incompetent and unwilling to engage in effective communication with the voters, Romanian politicians are doing their best to improve their public image. With 2015 not being an election year, this would be a perfect time for parties to undergo a thorough reform ahead of next year’s local and parliamentary elections.

The leaders of the Social Democratic Party, the largest and most influential party in the left-of-centre government, convened last week, for the first time since their representative Prime Minister Victor Ponta lost the presidential elections, to impose sanctions on the party’s corrupt members. The Social Democratic leaders decided at the meeting that, party members against whom criminal proceedings are initiated will lose their position within the Government and the Parliament’s leading posts, while those in temporary police custody will automatically lose their political position within the party.

PM Victor Ponta has admitted that his party’s main weakness is precisely corruption.

Victor Ponta: “Let’s prove people that we got their message. The Social Democratic Party is the best party in power, but as long as we keep being accused of breaking integrity laws and of refusing to expose the members who are corrupt or suspected of corruption, we cannot win people’s trust and respect.”

In their turn, the leaders of the National Liberal Party, the most important party in the centre-right opposition, have announced they have been working on a new party statute, to include drastic sanctions against lawbreakers. The new regulation stipulates that convicted Liberals will be expelled from the party while those held in temporary police custody will be suspended from all public positions. The Liberals’ co-president Alina Gorghiu:

Alina Gorghiu: “This party integrity principle will apply to all members, irrespective of their public position.”

Alina Gorghiu has also said that a set of integrity criteria will be drawn up in two or three weeks at the most. These decisions by Romania’s largest parties come after tens of government ministers, MPs, county council presidents and mayors, most of them Social Democrats and Liberals, have been prosecuted and sentenced for corruption offences. In the local administration, almost half of the counties and most of the big cities have been left without the county council presidents and the mayors elected in 2012. As for the central administration, Romania has, as the media put it, one acting Government and two or three governments behind bars.