Democratic Delusions
    Ten Myths Accepted by the Romanian Democratic Opposition
    Lavinia Stan
    
    Democratic opposition parties prefer to blame the government rather than admit their own mistakes.
    
    LAVINIA STAN is director of the Center for Post-Communist Studies, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia.
    Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 50, no. 6, November/December 2003, pp. 51–60. © 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1075–8216 / 2003 $9.50 + 0.00.
    
    INCE the collapse of the Ceauºescu regime in December 1989, the Romanian democratic opposition has been struggling to establish itself as a credible alternative to the National Salvation Front, the successor to the Romanian Communist Party (RCP). In trying to make itself into a political force, the opposition has faced huge obstacles. Romania under Ceauºescu was one of the strictest and most dictatorial regimes in Eastern Europe. Dissent was prohibited, freedom of association was severely restricted, and non-state organizations were not allowed. Any group or individual seen as a possible alternative to the Communist Party or a rival to the president was silenced, harassed, intimidated, and eventually marginalized or driven into exile. The Securitate, Romania’s secret police, strictly monitored activities with political potential and kept the opposition from coalescing into a larger, better organized, and more vocal force like Poland’s Solidarity or the Czech Charter 77 movement. The Securitate also blocked opposition efforts to develop ties to the broader society. In consequence of all this, Romania was dominated by a political culture of state paternalism, corruption, passive obedience, and suspicion and distrust that did not bode well for the building of a democratic system. Almost no one understood the role that could be played by a political opposition, because the RCP had been the sole officially registered party for forty-five years. The first months of post-communist rule greatly compounded these problems. While the National Salvation Front (NSF) moved quickly to assert control over the political process, opposition groups had little money and few members able to formulate a campaign strategy,
    Stan Democratic Delusions 51
    
    S
    
    draft a political program, and analyze the political changes that were taking place so rapidly. Under the communists, university political science and public administration programs had been reduced to mere propaganda tools, so when opposition parties were finally allowed to function, there were no trained individuals able to apply the relevant experiences of other post-authoritarian and democratizing countries. The only people with political and managerial experience were former communist apparatchiks, and they overwhelmingly chose to support the Salvation Front and its satellites, leaving the opposition parties without qualified candidates. Instead, the opposition turned to individuals who had distinguished themselves by opposing the communists either before communism took hold of the country in 1945 or sometimes in the years afterward. The pre-1945 group was by far the largest, and it was dominated by elderly people clinging to the image of a utopian pre-communist Romania that they hoped to restore. Among them were the Christian Democrats Corneliu Coposu and Ion Diaconescu, and the Liberal Mircea Ionescu-Quintus. Despite these inauspicious beginnings, the Romanian democratic opposition did score some early successes. In the 1992 parliamentary elections the Democratic Convention, which included the major pro-democratic parties, won 20 percent of the vote and became the “official” opposition, having secured the second-largest number of parliamentary seats after the National Salvation Front. Opposition candidates also won mayoral elections in several major cities, especially in Transylvania, an advantage they kept throughout the 1990s. From 1996 to 2000, the Convention and the Social Democratic Union held a parliamentary majority and formed the government, while their presidential candidate, Emil Constantinescu, became the head of state. During those four years, however, the Party of Social Democracy (as the NSF renamed itself in 1992) still had more parliamentary seats than any other standalone party. By the 2000 general elections, the democratic parties had exhausted their political capital and credibility. Instead of a genuine desire to solve the country’s manifold problems, they had become infamous for corruption, mismanagement, secrecy, and cronyism. Only two of these groups, the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, were returned to parliament in 2000. In the years since, the nationalist Greater Romania Party has held the banner of “official opposition,” while the Social Democrats (the latest name for the Party of Social Democracy/NSF) have forged an alliance with the party
    52 Problems of Post-Communism
    
    of the Transylvanian Hungarians, the Democratic Union of Magyars in Romania, in an effort to secure a majority in parliament.1 The limited imprint of the pro-democratic forces on post-communist Romania can be explained by the legacy of the Ceauºescu era, Romania’s violent exit from communism, the lack of elite turnover, and the country’s non-democratic political culture. But to date, with the notable exception of Vladimir Tismaneanu, Western observers of Romanian politics have largely ignored the mental constructs, assumptions, and presumptions—the myths—perpetuated by the rank-andfile members of these parties.2 Such myths are critical, for they undermine the ability of the democratic forces to make a mark. Unfortunately, many democrats have been deluding themselves about the factors behind their electoral and policy failures. None of the myths considered below is unknown to anyone who reads Romanian newspapers, for they have all been identified, discussed, and condemned by journalists from Bucharest, Cluj, and Iaºi.
    
    The Parties
    Before presenting these mental constructs, it is important to remember that the Romanian democratic opposition includes a diverse collection of parties united by their distaste for the Social Democrats and their desire to see the country’s nascent democracy consolidated. Since the collapse of communism, all of Romania’s democratic parties without exception have succumbed to every one of the myths discussed below, but because the pro-democratic camp is so diverse, they have not necessarily accepted the myths in the same way or degree and at the same time. There are many self-avowedly pro-democratic parties officially registered in Bucharest, but only three have survived long enough to win representation in parliament in at least two election cycles. Two of these, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrat–Peasant Party, are “historical” parties—post-communist incarnations of the parties that dominated Romania’s inter-war politics. Both were among the first parties to register officially after December 1989. They ran separately in the 1990 elections, as part of the Democratic Convention in 1992 and 1996, and separately again in 2000. The Liberals have never garnered more than 10 percent of the vote in any post-communist local or general election, and the Christian Democrats barely took 5 percent when they ran alone in 1990. In 2000, against running alone, the Christian Democrats failed to win any seats
    
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    Table 1
    
    Romania’s Post-Communist Governments
    Prime minister Petre Roman Theodor Stolojan Nicolae Vacaroiu Victor Ciorbea Radu Vasile Mugur Isarescu Adrian Nastase Party affiliation National Salvation Front None Social Democratic Party National Peasant Party/Christian Democratic Party National Peasant Party/Christian Democratic Party None Social Democratic Party Term December 26, 1989–October 1, 1991 October 1, 1991–November 4, 1992 November 4, 1992–December 12, 1996 December 12, 1996–March 30, 1998 April 2, 1998–December 14, 1999 December 22, 1999–December 28, 2000 December 28, 2000–present
    
    Source: Zárate’s Political Collections, www.terra.es/personal2/monolith/romania.htm.
    
    in parliament for the first time in a decade. The Democratic Party broke away from the NSF in the early 1990s and has generally supported more rapid economic and political reform than its parent party. Like the Liberals, the Democrats polled about 10 percent nationally in 2000. However, in 1996, as part of the Social Democrat Union, they took about 20 percent and became a key junior partner in the Social Democratic Union. Of these three parties, only the Democrats have not hemorrhaged members. Having themselves broken off from the NSF, the Democrats were well equipped to come up with a concrete solution for preventing membership loss. Although some of their members went over to the Humanist Party, including the entire Constan˜a city chapter, led by Stelian Dutu, in the summer of 2000, such losses were minimal compared to those of the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, which have been plagued by factionalism. Numerous similarly named groups have claimed to represent the Liberal and Christian Democrat traditions in post-communist Romania. In addition to the National Liberal Party, Radu Campeanu’s Liberal Party–Democratic Convention and the Liberal Party–93 espouse a liberal political philosophy. Christian Democracy and the peasant and populist traditions are central elements in the political platforms of the National Christian Democrat Peasant Party, which formed the government during the 1996–2000 period, as well as the National Peasant Party, the National Christian Democratic Party, the National Christian Democrat Alliance, the Popular Party of Romania, and the Christian Popular Party. Given so many rival claimants to the same ideological mantle, it is no wonder that the Romanian political scene is often misunderstood (see Table 1).
    
    Myth 1: Our Leader Is Our Party
    Romania’s opposition parties behave like cliques. They promote the interests of their leaders, and not of the
    
    wider membership, because leader and party are seen as synonymous. The leader, so it is believed, drives the party, single-handedly wins power for it, and accurately represents the interests and views of the entire membership. The parties, of course, are institutions whose leaders are able to pursue political careers and hold public office. Thus the party organization is able to confer benefits on those who want to move up the political ladder. Party leadership is a critical rung. Once someone becomes a party leader, usually party president or vice-president, he (never she) can either keep that post or pursue an even higher office. Demotion means a “loss of face”—an immense insult that can only be redressed by promptly leaving the party to set up a rival party.3 Party leaders guilty of incompetence, mismanagement, or nepotism are often “kicked upstairs” to a post with a grander-sounding title but no real decision-making power. When the Christian Democrat Party reshuffled its ranks in early 2001, it created the post of “honorary president” for its former chief, Ion Diaconescu. All too often, party members take it for granted that their leaders have risen because of tangible, objective qualifications: outstanding personal merits, unflinching dedication to the party, excellent performance in office. In reality, however, leadership positions are not changed on a regular schedule, and are neither won nor lost in open competition based on the personal skills and qualifications of the candidate. Party leadership rosters are the result of backroom negotiations and short-term deals. More often than not, leaders remain in their posts because there are no viable alternatives. The myth erects an unbridgeable distance not only between the leaders and the rank-and-file but also between state officials and the populace at large. The two groups do not mingle as they do in Western democracies. For example, in late December 2002, when CNN reported that President George W. Bush had visited a food bank to help prepare food packages for needy famiStan Democratic Delusions 53
    
    lies, Romanians saw Bush’s “photo-op” as a selfish, cynical attempt to ingratiate himself with social sectors traditionally inclined to support the Democrats. Romanian politicians would not be tempted to make a public appearance of this kind, because they carefully avoid any activity that might smudge their fragile veneer of authority. Party leaders are indifferent to the views of ordinary members and violate even the minimal conventions of social etiquette. They have provided the leadership posts they occupy with the accoutrements of power and privilege: cars and drivers, teams of secretaries, councilors, and advisers, expensive cellular phones, hefty salaries topped by generous bonuses, irrespective of the meager state budget. Most of them would find it unthinkable to use public transportation.4 This myth has produced factionalism and inefficiency within the democratic parties. Leaders who have proved time and time again to be inept negotiators uninterested in the party’s political future have received undeserved second or third chances at the expense of other members whose careers have been put on hold by denying them promotion. Consequently, the leadership ranks of democratic parties have swollen to numbers that sometimes exceed those of the Social Democrats, whose membership is larger than that of all three opposition parties taken together. For example, after losing their parliamentary seats in 2000 and the defection of a reformist wing led by Vasile Lupu, the Christian Democrats created new leadership slots until there were ninety people on the Standing Delegation and fifteen on the National Leadership Committee. The myth also goes hand-in-hand with the view that the leader makes all the decisions on issues related to party life, a belief easily observable during visits to party headquarters. The leader personally approves most party documents, including the bylaws, political platform, and electoral lists, receives foreign delegations and represents the party at international meetings, allocates party funds, settles disputes between party members and between national and local party structures, and appears on television to present the party’s position on key issues. The party’s other leaders have limited autonomy in the areas they supervise, but nothing important is decided without the party president. Every visitor, whether a disgruntled member of a remote local organization or a journalist, insists on speaking only with the party president, regardless of what the issue for discussion may be. This demand on the leader’s time may interfere with his ability to carry out other duties, but it reflects the widespread belief that anything agreed upon
    54 Problems of Post-Communism
    
    with a second-level official may later be revoked unilaterally by the president. Why so much power is concentrated in the hands of a single person or a small group of trusted friends is not immediately apparent. Perhaps it is a legacy of the twenty-five years of rule by President Nicolae Ceauºescu and his family. Or perhaps it is because lowerlevel party figures are reluctant to make decisions on their own responsibility and thus force the leader to act.
    
    Myth 2: Party Organization Is Unnecessary
    While Western political parties—and the Romanian Social Democrats—see organization as critical, Romanian opposition parties ignore this issue. Few of the country’s democratic parties effectively link elected officeholders to the electorate, treat government as accountable to the public, and aggregate and articulate the interests of their members. It is difficult to ascertain whether this is because of poor organization or because the lack of clear-cut party platforms renders organization wholly irrelevant. The opposition parties are unstructured, ad hoc organizations. With the exception of the Democratic Party, they are reluctant to disclose membership figures. Party officials claim that this lack of transparency is motivated by a desire to keep vital information out of the hands of political opponents, but the real reason is that they do not know the figures. Instead of keeping track of new members and defections, parties prefer to talk of total numbers of “sympathizers,” which includes everyone who cast a vote for the party in the last general election. All the parties claim that their total membership is far larger than the number of paid members because poverty keeps many people from paying their dues. Party statistics, even when available, rarely go beyond national totals to convey anything meaningful about the party’s members (e.g., nationality, gender, residence, income, education level, age) and their involvement in party life (seniority, voting trends), the party’s organizational structure (strength and relative standing of local chapters, available funds per member, etc.), and the effectiveness of the party’s parliamentary delegation (number of bills initiated by deputies and senators, number of corruption scandals involving party leaders, or number of electoral promises the party fulfilled over a given period of time). The parties have no strategy for strengthening their local chapters, which are treated simply as vote-delivery systems for the individuals they promote to county or national leadership positions. There is no well-defined system of rewards and punishments, and no out-
    
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    reach policy for attracting key social groups, such as trade unionists, new entrepreneurs, women, youth, or intellectuals. Instead, county party bosses control local politics, just as national-level leaders dominate national politics. Party leadership positions are much coveted and bitterly disputed because of the authority and prestige they carry. As a result, party meetings tend to be unruly, marked by constant bickering and feuds between incumbents and aspirants. This is not to say that the leader always reigns supreme and that contenders are unable to undermine the reputation and political standing of incumbents. Leaders always have to deal with competitors and disgruntled factions. Sometimes they lose the battle and the confidence of the party rank-andfile, as did the Democrat Petre Roman when confronted by Traian Basescu, the Liberal Valeriu Stoica, and the Christian Democrat Andrei Marga. Inadequate organization also explains the generally disappointing performance of opposition parliamentarians. Parties have no clear guidelines and strategies for enforcing discipline—and do not even provide their legislators with the logistical support needed to introduce legislation. Opposition MPs do not have budgets, staff, or even office space at their disposal, and they find it difficult to stay connected to their constituents. Members of parliament are weak political actors, unable to challenge effectively the chamber’s chair or their own party leaders, as committee assignments and support services are channeled through party caucuses. Not surprisingly, MPs have few qualms about switching to a party that offers a better deal.
    
    Adrian Nastase, left, sits in the parliament in Bucharest, afer he was appointed as Romania’s prime minister, December 28, 2000. (AP Photo/ Eugeniu Salabasev)
    
    Myth 3: Strong Parties Are Run from the Top
    Romania’s democratic parties are highly centralized. Local structures at the county, city, and village levels are subordinated to the leadership in Bucharest. Until very recently, party leaders were elected by the Bucharest-based Standing Delegation rather than by the entire party congress, a procedure that denied local structures a voice in selecting the top leadership. Bucharest is where important decisions are made, funds and resources are allocated, perks and privileges are disbursed, and political careers can be pursued. In all three opposition parties, the national leadership towers over the rank-and-file and sees no need to justify its programmatic decisions to the constituents it claims to represent. Communication between leaders and ordinary members is so lax that the members often learn about official policy positions only from the local newspaper.5 Centralism ensures that decisions made by the center are transmitted to and enforced at the local level.
    
    The communication channels linking national and subnational structures run only one way and are used more to issue orders to lower levels than to obtain feedback or facilitate honest discussion. With rare exceptions, regional differences on issues are considered irrelevant for policy proposals and public discourse. Although most of the parties are committed to decentralization, they have made no efforts in this direction. The struggle between local bodies seeking more autonomy and a central leadership stubbornly trying to maintain its supremacy is most evident in the compilation of electoral lists. Until 2000, national leaders routinely ignored nominations submitted by local chapters. In the run-up to the last general elections, however, local party organizations insisted on their own candidates being included. Deputies ensconced in Bucharest were unconcerned with local issues, they complained, rarely visited the hinterland, and dismissed citizen demands as “too narrow” compared to the problems facing the country as a whole. Christian Democrats from Arad said that their deputy, Ion Ratiu, rarely bothered to visit the county. Democrats in Constan˜a insisted that Bogdan Niculescu-Duvaz be denied re-election, and Liberal national leaders were admonished by the Arges county party youth organization for their refusal to promote local leaders. The outcome of these efforts to decentralize list drafting met with mixed results, for the national leaders of every party tenaciously hung onto their influence.6
    Stan Democratic Delusions 55
    
    Myth 4: Alliances Are the Key to Political Survival
    Romanian parties are so obsessed with alliances that mergers and breakups are probably their most striking feature. They know that they can’t beat the Social Democrats on their own. Since no opposition party is large enough and strong enough to win a majority in parliament, party leaders devote a great deal of time and effort to finding allies. This strategy worked in 1996, when the Democratic Convention won control of parliament and the presidency. Four years later, the hope of repeating this victory inspired the Christian Democrats and many other small parties to join the Democratic Convention–2000. In addition to elections, formal and informal alliances are built in parliament to support or oppose specific legislation. Since compromise is not valued, however, and parties lack internal cohesion, such alliances tend to be fragile. Individual party leaders often renege on formal agreements and turn on their erstwhile partners. Alliances worked out through prolonged negotiations may be abandoned for trivial reasons. Partnerships at the national level may be ignored at the local level. Although the three pro-democratic parties participated in the government from 1996 to 2000, each stabbed its partners in the back and discarded the alliance agreement as nonbinding at the slightest whiff of voter discontent. The Democrats vehemently opposed Christian Democrat prime ministers Victor Ciorbea and Radu Vasile until both were fired. The Liberals in the Transylvanian counties sided with the nationalists against the Hungarian community even though the leaders of the national party had agreed to cooperate with the Democratic Union of Magyars. In the past three years, Christian Democrat county councilors in Constan˜a have sided with the Humanist Party, junior partner of the ruling Social Democrats, against the Liberals and the Democrats. Paradoxically, some national-level alliances have held at the local level. While national leaders typically fail to consult local party leaders on strategy, local leaders prefer to leave central alliances unimplemented rather than openly criticize them and run the risk of censure. Romania’s counties are strikingly different in terms of socio-economic, ethnic, and political make-up, but there is little, if any, discussion of how proposed alliances would benefit regional party structures. Self-interested local party barons, eager to retain their influence at all costs, have also ditched national-level alliances and made pacts with the Social Democrats, nationalists, or any group will56 Problems of Post-Communism
    
    ing to give them a county council vice-presidency or a lucrative contract with the mayor’s office, or to approve pork-barrel legislation. The democratic opposition’s recent efforts to coalesce into a single bloc in advance of the 2004 elections demonstrate how precarious and unpredictable interparty alliances can be. In late 2002, several self-avowed democratic luminaries proposed setting up Popular Action, a populist electoral bloc styled after Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Press reports suggested that the idea had originated with the Italian prime minister himself. However, rumors that Popular Action was covertly headed by Emil Constantinescu, a former president whom the opposition unanimously blamed for its resounding defeat in 2000, compromised the enterprise and its chances of survival. While the tiny out-of-parliament Union of Democratic Forces announced some progress in its negotiations with the Liberals, the Liberals denied that any meetings had taken place. The Christian Democrat leader, Victor Ciorbea, expelled all the members of his party who favored the alliance. In the end, most of the opposition parties acknowledged the need to unite, but each had strong objections to the Popular Alliance, its newly appointed leaders, its name, its center-right populist platform, or the parties invited to join.7
    
    Myth 5: Political Success Is All About Jobs
    Romania’s opposition parties see politics as an officeseeking process rather than a way to achieve policy goals. When the Democratic Convention and the Social Democratic Union won the right to form a government in late 1996, they devoted themselves to patronage issues related to the allocation of state offices to coalition members. Elaborate bargaining produced complicated political algorithms and endless lists of individuals deemed worthy of filling lucrative official posts. Party sympathizers, colleagues, clients, and relatives lined up to become ministers, prefects, ambassadors, CEOs of state-owned enterprises and monopolies, banks, public universities and schools, customs agents, nuclear power regulators, and telecom tycoons. According to one Christian Democrat national leader interviewed in early 1999, the Convention spent more time and effort on giving out jobs than on drafting a national budget. This obsession with spoils prevented the democratic parties from doing anything about Romania’s socio-economic problems. The government was brought to a standstill, and the economy went from bad to worse. Once in power, the democratic parties took their time about introducing legislation and enacting meaningful
    
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    policies, convinced that the public would continue to support them as long as cabinet members paid lip service to a reformist agenda. The ambitious “Contract with Romania,” which called for rapid privatization of stateowned enterprises, anti-corruption campaigns, and social programs to alleviate poverty, remained unfulfilled. Intra-coalition bickering erupted as each party competed for the best jobs. Appointments to key posts were based on loyalty to party leaders rather than managerial and organizational skills or training, and with no consideration of the synergy among different jobs. Thus, an engineer became minister of agriculture, and a psychologist was appointed head of the Department of Local Public Administration. The country needed officials with expertise who could make decisions, but most of these officeholders had to learn on the job.
    
    Myth 6: The Social Democrats Are the Enemy
    As in other East European countries, the democratic opposition parties in Romania are obsessed with identifying every socialist policy mistake and broken electoral promise. Parties periodically appoint shadow governments to monitor the performance of the ruling Social Democratic Party. They conduct roundtables, seminars, and press conferences to criticize the government. They design policy strategies to address the country’s urgent problems, carefully analyze government declarations, and publicize corruption scandals.8 All this activity is dutifully presented on the regularly updated Web sites of the democratic opposition parties.9 Democratic leaders like Petre Roman and Andrei Marga were compromised by accusations that they had caved in to the Social Democrats and covertly negotiated with government representatives. Few, if any, of these allegations were ever proved. The Social Democratic Party is still the most important political player in post-communist Romania. Despite its numerous reconfigurations and the 1992 exodus of its reformist wing to form the Democratic Party, the SDP is bound to remain a strong political force akin to Argentina’s Peronistas or Mexico’s old Institutional Revolutionary Party. Even without Ion Iliescu and Adrian Nastase at its head, the SDP remains united because of its ability to dispense patronage.10 Meanwhile, the opposition, focused on the Social Democrats, ignores other problems. The greatest danger to Romania is posed not by the Social Democrats, who have tried to rule within the constraints of a limited democracy, but by the rise of the xenophobic and nationalistic Greater Romania Party and its leader,
    
    Corneliu Vadim Tudor. In 1992 the Greater Romania Party received only 3.9 percent of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies, but in 1996, together with the Party of Romanian National Unity, it won 10.5 percent. By 2000, disappointment with the Social Democrats and the democratic parties and their presidential candidates prompted Romanian voters to look for an alternative. Many settled on Tudor despite—or because of—his virulent anti-Semitism. Tudor won enough votes in the presidential election to force Social Democrat Ion Iliescu into a run-off. Iliescu ultimately won, after some of his most outspoken political enemies encouraged the electorate to vote against nationalism. But in the parliamentary elections that year, the Greater Romania Party won 26.4 percent of the national vote, thus becoming the official opposition. The threat of nationalism cannot be underestimated. Romania suffered inter-ethnic clashes as early as March 1990, months before civil war erupted in Yugoslavia. A disturbing feature of the Romanian post-communist party system is the consistent presence of nationalist and xenophobic parties that reject the democratic principle of accepting ethnic minorities as full members of the political community. Outbreaks of violence between members of the Romanian majority and members of the Hungarian and Gypsy minorities have subsided since the Tîrgu-Mureº and Hadareni attacks, and many extremist parties fell into oblivion during the last decade (e.g., the Transylvania-based Party of Romanian National Unity and the Movement for Romania, whose main support was in the southern regions), but nationalist sentiment and intolerance toward other ethnic groups still run higher in Romania than in most of its neighbors. The weakness of the opposition and the lack of real alternatives to the Social Democrats can only boost the nationalists’ chances to gain political power.
    
    Myth 7: We’re Doing Better Than the Social Democrats
    The democratic parties believe that their mistakes are insignificant compared to those registered by the Social Democrats, and that a media smear campaign has downplayed their many accomplishments. While it is true that the Social Democrats, by their sheer numbers, have exerted an incomparable hold on Romanian politics both in and out of government, this mindset has prevented the democratic opposition from correctly evaluating its strengths, weaknesses, and real chances for long-term electoral success. These parties seem unwilling to admit that glossing over their own mistakes while finger-pointing at the government is not a realisStan Democratic Delusions 57
    
    tic strategy. The fact that the Social Democrat government lacks transparency, disregards public opinion, and tolerates corruption does not give the opposition a free hand to follow its lead. The perennial problems facing all post-communist Romanian political forces are corruption and clientage. Democratic parties believe that the corruption scandals involving their members are nothing compared to those involving the Social Democrats, and on the outside chance that some of the democrats also have dirty hands, that any spoils they obtained were much smaller than those secured by leaders of the ruling party. Although all seven post-communist cabinets were pledged to bring to justice any politicians engaging in embezzlement, racketeering, cronyism, or nepotism, every anti-corruption campaign has been unsuccessful. Neither the Social Democrats nor the democratic forces have managed to translate their promises into practice. Several small corruption cases have been uncovered, but none of the top party leaders indicted by the press was charged. Most Social Democrat anti-corruption campaigns became vendettas against political adversaries, and meanwhile the opposition’s persistent support of its own leaders tainted by corruption and clientage has greatly damaged its popular standing. The Christian Democrats, in particular, have been severely punished by public opinion for their stubborn denial of any wrongdoing, even in the face of a plethora of news reports and police investigations detailing shady privatization deals benefiting the party and its top members. Local press outlets accused Democrat Traian Basescu and Liberal Dinu Patriciu of masterminding the embezzlement of large sums of money and using their political influence to obtain lucrative contracts. Before casting aspersions, the opposition parties have to clarify their own position and accept that the law must be universally enforced.
    
    derstanding the opposition’s noble ideals, and even foreign observers for not giving these political forces the credit they deserve.
    
    Myth 9: Image Is Everything
    The democrats prize a good public image far more than clear programmatic goals or efficient governmental performance. As a result, the opposition parties have generated a certain ideological confusion about their basic principles. The Liberal Party exhibits strong oligarchic tendencies inherited from its inter-war predecessor. According to its platform, the Democratic Party is a center-left formation that promotes Social Democracy, but over the years, some of its policies have called for living standards to be sacrificed to facilitate rapid economic transformation. The newspaper Adevarul questioned the National Christian Democrat Peasant Party’s claim to be a national party promoting the interests of the peasantry, arguing that the party was not “national” because “after years of looking after its leaders’ personal interests it could not claim to speak in the name of the people,” and it was not “peasant” because “no peasant has voted for the party since 1989.” Nor was it a Christian Democratic Party, the newspaper reckoned, since it did not observe the Christian virtues of morality, humility, and remorse, ignored the law when it could, and failed to apply democratic principles to its own activities.11 Indeed, the party had never bothered to explain how and why a Western political doctrine widely seen as a Roman Catholic and Protestant invention was applicable to Romania, a country where 80 percent of the population observe the Orthodox faith. Ideological confusion has allowed dissatisfied party members to jump ship to other formations, sometimes antithetical in aims. This myth also fuels the idea that what parties do does not matter, so long as they maintain a good public image. Thus they run costly public relations campaigns in which political posturing takes precedence over political action and popular will, a view that has cost democratic opposition parties dearly. When democratic forces finally took control of the government in late 1996, Prime Minister Ciorbea and his cabinet spent several months blaming their predecessors and assuring the public of their commitment to reform. Staying in the public eye has become the paramount objective of Romanian opposition parties, a goal to be reached at any cost. For parties outside Parliament, this goal is hard to reach. Press editorials repeatedly stress the importance of image, but politicians should be careful not to wholeheartedly welcome the mass media into politics. While
    
    Myth 8: Self-Criticism Is Harmful
    The opposition eschews criticism of its record on grounds that fault-finding will only strengthen the Social Democrats. For fear of helping the government, opposition leaders often prefer to have no frank discussion about and evaluation of their activities. Opposition parties have yet to admit to their own mistakes. All of them claim that their loss of popular confidence and poor electoral showings are the result of factors beyond their control. If anyone is to blame, it is invariably an outsider: the ruling Social Democrats for not supporting legislative initiatives proposed by the opposition, the press for not accurately reporting the accomplishments of the democratic parties, the public for not un58 Problems of Post-Communism
    
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    Romania is a complex society, newspaper, television, and radio coverage are not the only ways for a party to become known to its electorate, and even the best public image can be unconvincing if decisive political action is not undertaken on a regular basis.
    
    Myth 10: We Know What the People Need
    Romanian intellectuals generally believe that the electorate is politically naive and governance should be left to professionals. According to this myth, Romania does not have the political culture needed to make democracy and capitalism work, because the decades of communist rule wiped out all traces of civic spirit and communal life. Quite a few politicians and journalists would insist that Romanians have no political culture at all, and that their lack of political sophistication makes them unlikely to appreciate the subtle ideological differences between the country’s parties. Furthermore, the masses cannot possibly understand the significance of an opposition and the urgency of resolute reforms requiring a short-term sacrifice of living standards to make progress toward genuine democracy and a free market. To support this view, politicians invariably cite opinion polls suggesting that few voters understand what democracy and capitalism really entail, and that even fewer can give a clear and concise definition of these terms. Accountability is therefore not strictly necessary, since even when the intricacies of the political system and the reasons behind political actions are explained, the people fail to grasp their importance. According to an extreme variation of this myth, the uneducated electorate should be restricted to casting a vote every four years, unavoidable if the pretense of democracy and the unbroken legitimacy of the political class are to be maintained. This view informs the attitude not only of the political parties but also of the Group for Social Dialogue, many of whose members have acted over the years as advisers to Liberal and Christian Democrat leaders. Established in the aftermath of the December 1989 revolution, the Group attracted prominent intellectuals, their younger disciples, and a number of anti-communist dissidents who claimed to be the sole representatives of Romania’s nascent civil society. The Group and the Humanitas publishing house have circulated articles and books advocating the rule of philosopher-kings—that is, people who have the intellectual and political standing to make the “correct” choices on behalf of the Romanian public. This view combines the disdain of pre-communist political elites for the masses with the intellectualist “salvation through culture” position of the philosopher Constantin Noica, whose proponents pre-
    
    ferred to ignore communist political realities in the hope of pursuing politically neutral highbrow culture. The classic example of the intellectuals’ unwillingness to accept popular electoral choices are the editorials in the Group’s weekly newspaper, 22, following the 1990 elections, which bore such titles as “The Blind Man’s Sunday” to explain the victory of the leftist National Salvation Front over the democratic opposition.
    
    Conclusion
    None of these myths alone can explain the failure of the Romanian democratic opposition, but taken together they move us one step closer to understanding why that country was the last in the region to see the transfer of power from the Communist Party to the opposition, and why, after only four years in government, the democratic bloc lost most of its credibility and popular appeal. Many would hasten to point out that these myths have also been embraced by the Social Democrats and the nationalists. Both of these political formations are centralized under the command of all-powerful leaders like Adrian Nastase and Corneliu Vadim Tudor, regard public image as more important than political action, have a number of prominent leaders embroiled in notorious corruption scandals, and tend to indiscriminately blame their political enemies and the press for their own failures. However, these parties also enjoy advantages that make their shortcomings less malignant. The Social Democrats have inherited a strong party organization, whose backbone continues to be the old communist cells established in every locality, every workplace, and every public institution. Both parties have clear ideological platforms formulated in simple terms that appeal to a variety of social segments. With general elections scheduled for late 2004, it is imperative that the democratic opposition engage in an honest analysis of its own strengths and weaknesses if its return to government is to become reality.
    
    Notes
    1. In 2000, the Social Democrats won 46.4 percent of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies, while the Democratic Union of Magyars in Romania garnered 8.6 percent. The Liberals and the Democrats each won around 9.6 percent of the vote. See www.election.ro. 2. Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 3. See the cases of Victor Ciorbea and Radu Vasile, who both promptly abandoned the Christian Democrats after being fired as prime minister in 1998 and 1999, respectively. After losing the Democratic Party presidency to Traian Basescu, Petre Roman threatened to leave the party but changed his mind after extensive negotiations. 4. Since 1989 leadership positions have increased greatly, making many
    
    Stan Democratic Delusions 59
    
    Romanians presidents, vice presidents, directors, or top managers of firms. The 2000 classification of professions in Romania published by the Ministry of Labor was vehemently criticized by the local press for including too many leadership positions in the state-owned enterprises, which account for half of the national GDP. See Cotidianul (December 28, 2002). 5. Efforts were made to create regular newsletters reporting on party life but funding remains insufficient. The newsletters that have been published tend to be heavily biased regarding party organization and activity, and because their circulation is limited they reach only a fraction of the party membership. 6. The conflict between Niculescu-Duvaz and the Constanta chapter was settled in favor of the former. Ironically, dissension within the Constanta chapter of the Democrat Party resurfaced in December 2002, when Niculescu-Duvaz again tried to have his name included first on electoral lists. The local leader claimed that Niculescu-Duvaz had not paid his dues for years, had not participated in local party activities, and had not promoted the interests of the county during his two terms in parliament. See Cuget Liber (December 11, 2002). 7. See reports in Adevarul (December 5, 2002), Cotidianul (December 7, 2002), and Monitorul (December 7, 2002).
    
    8. Evenimentul Zilei (October 29, 2001). 9. The Democratic Party’s Web site is at www.pd.ro, the Christian Democratic Party’s at www.pntcd.ro, and the Liberal Party’s at www.pnl.ro. 10. The National Salvation Front won 66.3 percent of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies in 1990. After the departure of its reformist wing, the newly renamed Democratic National Salvation Front secured 27.7 percent of the vote for the lower chamber in 1992. Now known as the Party of Social Democracy in Romania, it garnered around 28.7 percent of the vote in 1996 and some 46.4 percent in 2000. See the Chamber of Deputies Web site at www.cdep.ro. 11. Adevarul (January 23, 2001).
    
    To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; outside the United States, call 717-632-3535.
    
    60
    
    Problems of Post-Communism
    
    November/December 2003

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