Education laws are about the future, PNL is about the past

Out of curiosity, I looked at the first page of history written by the liberals, alongside the Fesenists, now social democrats. It happened under the magic wand of Teodor Stolojan, the former treasurer of the “special currency contribution” accounts of the Security, who since then endeared the liberals so much that he would accept, for a while, the quality of their candidate for the presidency . Which had the gift of subsequently plunging him into a deep depression and making him give up everything, smoothing the way to Cotroceni for another former Fesenist, Traian Băsescu – but that’s another story.

On October 16, 1991, the composition of the Government headed by Theodor Stolojan was voted in the Chamber of Deputies. Two ministers did not receive the necessary votes for the investiture in the Senate: Victor Babiuc and Ludovic Spiess, but a month later they were finally voted in and the so-called “technocratic government”, destined to prepare the elections, began to work. In fact, it was still a Fesenist government: Stolojan himself was a Fesenist at the time, as were ten other members of the cabinet. There were one more from the Ecologist Party, one from PDAR and four independents, one of whom, the tenor Spiess, was actually proposed by Ion Iliescu, two were former undercover Security officers, at Commerce and Industry. There was actually only one independent and technocrat, Professor Mircea Maiorescu, director of the Institute for Mother and Child Protection and the “Marie Curie” Children’s Hospital.

The liberals accepted the “technocratic” offer and participated in the government, through two ministers: Mircea Ionescu Quintus, liberal president, at Justice and George Danielescu, at the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The government was supposed to be short-lived, but it was extended for 399 days, until November 19, 1992. Today, the liberals govern together with the social democrats for 541 days. Over three decades ago, the liberal ministers were only part of a so-called “technocratic” landscape, in fact, a government in which the prime minister and two ministers had worked for the Security and 11 were Fesenists, with a large Fesenist majority in parliament , to which were added the almost 9 percent of liberals, who voted side by side with the government. They did nothing, apart from Danielescu, master of a masked aid game, SAFI, for which he was later sentenced to an already pardoned sentence.

However, the voters did not pardon the National Liberal Party, which took only 4.7% of the votes in the 1992 elections and never entered the Parliament. From almost a million votes obtained in 1990, they barely obtained 500,000, with which they sat watching from the sidelines, how to reach “zero economic growth” under four years of government of the new Nicu Văcăroiu, from the former State Planning Council, without any hindrance: it was supported by a “red patroller”, in which the Fesenists had allied this time with the nationalists, from PUNR and PRM. So the liberals re-entered the Democratic Convention and the government in 1996.

A saying used until it became completely dull and remained empty like a tin can thrown in a parking lot is that we must learn from the mistakes of history. The liberals used it too, but they don’t apply it. Not at all. Although they should instinctively know that any alliance of the leaders with the former enemies is regarded by most of the army as a betrayal, yet on the orders of the Supreme Commander Iohannis they did it. He governs, they say, with a protocol, alongside the PSD. And they will continue to govern, up to double the 399 days, which were fatal for them in 1992. In fact, since the conclusion of that protocol and the return of the social democrats to government “in the national interest”, the liberal-Cotrocenist strategy has brought the party and its new president (the third, in two years) in the “snowball position”, compared to the so-called partner. The photo above illustrates, as it cannot be more correct, the de facto relationship between the pesedists and liberals, between Ciolacu and Ciucă.

The liberals have not had and will not have any gains, as a result of this alliance. On the contrary, they will be the only ones who will “settle” the failures, from the inability to access PNRR funds, to the unresolved issue of special pensions, whose exponent is Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă himself, and to the last one, the strike in Education. The justified strike of “Educated Romania”, of President Iohannis. To which are added the disastrous ministers, with whom the liberals marched to government and whom they tend to maintain – from the plagiarist Bode, the head of the Interior, to the unpopular Popescu, from Energy.

It is, indeed, “a wonderful world”, as the children in Sibiu sang to Iohannis, in the midst of the teachers’ strike. But in the future the liberals will probably no longer be part of it. If indeed “history repeats itself”, the world will be wonderful for the Pesedists and their possible new allies, after the upcoming elections, when the governing alliance between the former Fesenists and nationalists can be revived. Liberals have learned nothing from the history in which the “mistakes of the past” are repeated. And he risks getting out of it. Their only chance would be to ask Ilie Bolojan to become party president and join the opposition. Which, of course, will not happen: the titan from Cotroceni has his plans, in which “the education laws are about the future”, as Anisie, former minister of education, said, and the PNL is about the past. It is true what I said in 2014, when I resigned from the Liberals, when Klaus Iohannis came to lead the party: he will destroy it.