Filat should sue

At a press conference this morning, Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin made the following accusations:

1. That the PLDM's 2009 election campaigns were funded by Romanian 'petro-liberal' Dinu Patriciu
2. That Filat has been involved in cigarette-smuggling in the past
3. That Filat has recently arranged the smuggling of ten truckloads of cigarettes to pay back the money borrowed from Patriciu

Not a shred of evidence was offered by the former President.  Indeed, in respect of the second allegation, Filat was in the 1990s acquitted at trial on cigarette-smuggling charges.  The case was investigated and he was found to be innocent.

Voronin needs to produce evidence.  If not, it is high time that Vlad Filat shut him up permanently via a defamation suit seeking moral damages.

The democratic 'usurpation' of power

Well, I got my referendum!  Actually I got two of them, but we'll come to that later.

The AIE party leaders announced yesterday that a referendum on a new constitution will be held by June 16.  The fact that a new document is being proposed, rather than the existing one amended, apparently takes the Constitutional Court out of the picture - their approval is only required for amendments.  Given that 5 out of the six judges are still wearing the gold watches Voronin gave them, that's probably not a bad thing.

The leaders also announced that the new constitution would be framed in such a way as to remove the necessity to hold anticipated elections following December's failure to elect a president.  The other three leaders appear to have accepted Ghimpu's view that this is the best way to proceed.

I'm not so sure.  The absence of anticipated elections opens up the AIE to charges from the Communists and their hangers-on that the AIE is usurping power and is breaching the provisions of the (current) constitution.  I think I would have preferred a situation in which a new constitution was introduced and then elections were held fairly promptly once it had been bedded down, say in spring 2011.  This approach would largely disarm the communists, as well as producing a parliament in which that benighted party had a much smaller role to play.

Communist leaders and other left wing / pro-Russia groups have been quite hysterical all day long, calling the AIE a 'junta' that has 'usurped power' and undertaken an 'anti-constitutional coup d'etat'.  They are also quoting a long list of the AIE's supposed sins, ranging from 'destroying the principle of the separation of powers' (the sacking of Muruianu as CSM president) to 'handing over territory to another state' (the Palanca debacle that was initiated by the Communists themselves).  The Party plans to initiate a referendum of its own - a vote of no-confidence in the AIE.

The bottom line for me, however, is that the current constitution (introduced by parliament) has very little democratic credibility.  It has never been voted for by the people, so who cares if it is replaced?  The new constitution will, for the first time in Moldova's history, be 'of the people', and as such it should be far more credible.

Finally, the argument that holding a referendum is undemocratic or unconstitutional is absurd.  Referenda are the highest form of democracy and should be used more often for issues of the highest importance.  The current constitution actually says that the will of the people, expressed through a referendum carries supreme legal power in the state, i.e. a referendum decision has the power to override regulations, laws, judicial rulings and even the constitution itself.

The Fear of God

Yesterday afternoon, Prime Minister Vlad Filat hosted a meeting with Moldova's two orthodox archbishops, their eminences Vladmir (of the Russian Church) and Petru (of the Romanian Church).  The purpose of the meeting, as it turns out, was to discuss the teaching of religion in schools, an idea that Filat has mentioned on a number of previous occasions.

Politically it's a smart move.  Most of Moldova's population is orthodox and is uncomfortable with the split of the church into pro-Moscow and pro-Bucharest sections.  They will applaud the sight of the two metropolitans meeting together in a common cause and this will reflect well on Filat.

Also, Filat is probably trying to ease Vladimir out of the influence of Russia and the communist party.  Working together on a religious education project may be a way to temper the (Russian) church's rather obvious links to the PCRM and the Russian government.

Constitutionally I don't see an issue with religious education (RE) so long as

1. Atheist or agnostic parents are allowed to opt their children out into other courses (e.g. Philosophy) that would be run at the same time as the RE, and
2. The RE progamme doesn't unfairly favour a particular faith or confession.  Filat should work hard to ensure that Protestants, Catholics & Muslims etc are included, notwithstanding their relatively small numbers in Moldova.
3. The education focuses more on those things that various religions and confessions have in common than on their differences.

Morally, it's a good thing to do.  One of the consequences of the decline of religious faith in the West is that people have lost their fear of God.  Maybe they don't believe that he exists.  Maybe they believe that he exists, but not in the Abrahamic sense, complete with concepts of sin and judgement.  The bottom line is that most folks these days don't think they will be hit by a lightening bolt if they steal, defraud, have an affair etc.  A century ago, they did.

I'm not about to make a judgement on the rights or wrongs of religious faith, however I will make one observation:  the fear of God was a control that kept some people honest when all else failed.  This is especially so in the case of invisible, white collar, 'victimless' crimes such as corruption, fraud and embezzlement where other controls (e.g. peer pressure) were powerless.  People would refrain from committing these crimes due to the fear of an all-seeing God.

Now that fear is gone, and we're worse off for it.  Think of the massive frauds have we seen over the last decade - Barings, Enron, Worldcom, SocGen, Madoff to name just the biggest ones.  Think also of the increases in corruption levels worldwide recorded by Transparency International.

Religious education in Moldova will at the very least re-instill the fear of God into a section of Moldova's children.  It will also, one hopes, give them a basic sense of right and wrong, and of duty to their country and their neighbours.

PS:  One amusing aside from yesterday's meeting was Unimedia's publication of photos showing the cars driven by the two clerics.  Both drove BMWs.  Petru's was a bit of a banger and had standard Chisinau registration plates.  Vladimir's was a shiny new model bearing official Moldovan government plates (a clear breach of the constitutional separation of church and state).  An apt visual characterisation of the relative positions of the Romanian and Russian churches in Moldova.

Muruianu sentenced to a tickle under the armpits

Days after meting out 'justice' to the seven-minute-wonder-judge, Dorin Popovici, our beloved Superior Magistrates Council (CSM) has just given a 'severe reprimand' to its former president, Ion Muruianu.  this was in relation to his comments that some journalists are rabid dogs and a danger to society.

As with Popovici, the disciplinary action in Muruianu's case is bordering on laughable (although it's not funny at all).  Muruianu's comments about rabid journalists display a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a democracy.

Furthermore, Muruianu also fails to understand the need to protect human rights, blaming the media for the losses of cases at the ECHR rather than the corrupted and incompetent Moldovan judiciary.  Muruianu himself is personally responsible for the loss of eight cases at the ECHR, i.e. on eight separate occasions the European Court has ruled that Ion Muruianu has breached the human rights of defendants through his judicial rulings.

It is absolutely astonishing that the CSM thinks that Muruianu and Popovici are fit to serve as judges.  Through these decisions the CSM has shown that it is failing as the body responsible for governance of the judicial system.  It is incapable of cleaning up Moldovan justice.

The problem is, if the CSM will not do it, someone has to.  This is tricky - if the Government or Parliament sticks their beaks in, there will be howls from the left that the constitutional separation of powers is being undermined.

One possible solution, however, would be a constitutional amendment temporarily placing the judiciary under European supervision.  After the garbage is removed and the judiciary has rebuilt its values system and adherence to the law and the constitution, the supervision could be removed.

It's not ideal, but probably the best option in the circumstances.

Try Again, CSM

Dorin Popovici, the 'judge from hell', has just been given a 'severe reprimand' by the disciplinary committee of the Superior Council of Magistrates.

For those of you who don't know the case, this is the judge who handed out summary justice to the young people rounded up by the security services in the aftermath of April 7th 2009.  What Popovici and his fellow judges did that day in the service of the Communist party was really awful:

1. In a single afternoon, Popovici examined 32 administrative files and 10 applications for disciplinary measures.  If we assume he worked five hours; then he spent an average of seven minutes on each case.
2. The 'trials' were carried out in the Police headquarters, not in the court.
3. Defendants were represented by a court-appointed lawyer, who they had never met prior to the 'trial', who made no effort to defend them and who subsequently disappeared.
4. Defendants were denied the right to appeal their sentences, being forced to sign acceptances late into the night after the trial.
5. Some of the defendants were minors
6. Some of the defendants weren't even participants in the protests
7. Mothers of dependent children were locked up, against the prevailing law

Such kangaroo courts which deny basic legal rights to the accused are a disgrace in the 21st century.  If the Moldovan courts are to clean up their act and be fit for a country planning to join the EU, then the CSM needs to do far more that slap Mr Popovici on the back of the hand with a wet bus ticket.  Not only should he and his accomplices be summarily dismissed from their profession, their cases should also be referred to the Prosecutor for trial.

Genocide?

I woke this morning to the news that Turkey was recalling it's ambassador to the United States in protest against a congressional committee's classification of the 1915 killings of Armenians as 'genocide'.  'Genocide' is an emotionally charged word that lacks a precise definition, and as a result different states view historic events in different ways.  Armenian expatriates claim that Turkey massacred 1.5m of their compatriots in a deliberate campaign of extermination.  Turks counterclaim that the figure was far lower and that the Armenians were simple casualties of war.

My gut tells me that there is a common-sense definition of genocide that would go something like this:  "The systematic and intentional extermination of more than 100,000 members of a group sharing a certain characteristic".  The characteristic in question could be race, sexual preference, ethnicity, political views etc.

On the definition above, the key to deciding the Turkish / Armenian question is whether there was intent to kill Armenians simply because they were Armenians.  I would argue that the mass killing of Armenian civilians for no military reason shows that the intent existed.  Genocide being established, it is now time for Turkey to face up to its past so it can move on into its future.

On a related theme, an opinion piece published today by Timpul's Constantin Tanase highlights deaths in Basarabia caused by the Soviet occupation after the second world war.  The commission appointed by interim president Ghimpu to study the Soviet Communist era has now established the following as fact, based on recently declassified KGB archives:

1. 173,684 basarabians died due to the post war famine induced by the communist authorities
2. 74,515 died as a result of deportation to Siberia
3. 54,618 died fighting on the Soviet side, having been press-ganged into service by their 'liberators', in breach of the Geneva conventions.

This is a total of over 300,000 people.  Remember that the population of Basarabia at the date of occupation was of the order of 2 - 2.5 million people, so we could be talking about as much as 15% of the population.  If it can be established that persons of a particular ethnicity were singled out, or perhaps those holding certain political beliefs, then we may be talking about a Basarabean genocide at the hands of the Soviet Union.

Grimm stuff.

The Joy of Declassification

Since coming to power, the government of Vlad Filat has made a strong commitment to open government.  Cabinet meetings are televised live and every minister has been required to spend a few hours each month hearing petitions from citizens.

Perhaps the most interesting process, however, is the declassification of documents categorised as 'secret' by the previous Communist administration.  The documents being released provide a priceless window of access into Voronin's mind; many of them are quite routine and shouldn't have been secret at all, while others were evidently withheld from public view for very real reasons.

In any case, the documents have provided hours of amusement for journos and bloggers alike.  Today's tasty morsel can be found here.  It's a note written by Communist counsellor Oleg Reidman to then President Voronin on the 4th of July, i.e. before the July 29th election.

In the note, Reidman sets out two forecasts for the Government's budget.  The first forecast is for two months, and shows how, with local borrowing and a ban on capital spending, the Government could have met its obligations through to the end of August.  This presumably was the 'handover of power' scenario which would kick in in the event the Communists lost power on July 29th - keep the wheels on for a couple of months, then hand over to the AIE and hope for the worst.

The second scenario is more long-term (and presumably designed to cover the outcome of a Communist victory on July 29th);   It covers the period up to about the current time (February - March 2010).  It is truly frightening and contains elements that would have revolted the Communist electorate:

1.  Reduction of public service salaries to 2008 levels (ie minus the increases handed out by the Communists prior to the April 5th election)
2. The elimination of public sector bonuses
3. Public servants being forced to take leave without pay
4. The elimination of 'nominal benefits' paid to invalids, pensioners, children, war veterans etc.
5. The dismissal of 5,000 teachers
6. The cessation of preferential lending
7. The cessation of a first home buyer's programme
8. Cessation of the indexing of Banca de Economie deposits held during the hyperinflation of the early 1990s.

Even with all of the measures, the budget would have been short to the tune of 2.2bn lei, an amount which Reidman envisaged being provided in large part by the IMF, with whom the Communists had failed to reach an agreement two weeks' earlier.

What makes these revelations really embarrassing for the Communists was their comportment during the election campaigns, when they were giving away pension & salary increases as election bribes and claiming that the economic crisis wouldn't impact on Moldova; when they were scaring voters with stories about how their incomes would be cut if the opposition were to come to power.

As it turns out, the new Filat government was able to negotiate a much more sizeable agreement with the IMF and to secure substantial additional funding from the US, EU and Poland.  These funds enabled the public service to continue functioning without any of the draconian anti-social measures planned by Reidman and communicated to Voronin.

It seems that Moldova's voters made the right choice on July 29th 2009, just in case anyone was still wondering.