Since Wednesday, the Romanian Opposition has been officially on parliamentary strike, protesting the unilateral manner in which the majority led by PM Boc’s Democrat-Liberal Party pushes laws, but also against anti-democratic derailments such as the attempted to merge local and legislative elections. The last intent was however circumvented by the street protests.

The Social-Liberal Union (USL) wanted its protest to have a strong impact, but the way in which it was managed, starting with the postponement of making a definite decision, weakened its intended effect. Two weeks ago, the Liberal Party launched the idea of a resignation of the Opposition en masse from parliament.

Their problem is that they announced the probability publicly, suggesting that the Opposition was ready for a courageous and radical step, but before making a definite decision within USL. Even if, from a procedural point of view, the resignation of all of the USL MPs would not have automatically led to a loss of majority for the power, it would have undoubtedly created the necessary political pressure both locally and abroad for the government to resign. But the hesitations that followed transformed the protest gesture into a toned down action savouring of defensive retreat. The Opposition was not brave enough to move on to action, although even if, from a strategic point of view, the risk taken would have bounced back tenfold in its favour electoral-wise. The calling of an Opposition parliamentary strike bordered an image catastrophe. In the last few days we have had the feeling of reliving the same day again and again, because every day, USL was obsessively announcing its parliamentary strike…announcements that were accompanied by embarrassing lamentations over losing indemnities for attending parliament works. Crin Antonescu’s statement that he would just have to borrow money after losing his indemnity left with a sour taste anyone hoping the Opposition would break the tradition of Romanian politicians (of all orientations) for whom a public office is an unending series of privileges and personal opportunities. Given that over nine million Romanians now live on the poverty threshold due to the austerity measures imposed by the Basescu-Boc regime, his statement was simply indecent. Unfortunately, the pertinent observations he made during the hearing in the European Parliament on Tuesday, on the degradation of democracy and rule of law in Romania were overcast by his clumsy management of the initiation of the Opposition’s parliamentary strike. His colleague Victor Ponta managed to score points in that department, announcing that the Social-Democrat MPs would donate their indemnities to charities. Maybe the voice of the street, made heard in the same debate in Brussels by Claudiu Craciun, protester and lecturer at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies, was of a nature to bring them more down to earth: ‘Dear politicians, we want to trust democracy, we want to trust public institutions. But, please, do not make it so difficult for us. (…) dear politicians from the Power and in the Opposition, please listen, for the sake of change. May we cherish this moment when politicians listen and the citizens speak. Dear politicians in the government, dialogue does not mean sending public order enforcers to beat up people. That is not dialogue. (…) That is something you should be ashamed of, you and the people who decided that it should be like that. Parties in the Opposition, it is not easy. Maybe you are glad the people are in the street, but you should know they may be back in the street next year, if you win election. Please, listen! Listen to them!’

On the other side, Emil Boc is finding it increasingly difficult to foster cohesion in his party and ruling coalition and keep the majority in parliament. In PDL the tune was set by his rival, Senate Speaker Vasile Blaga, who reportedly suggested to him to step down. It seems obvious that Emil Boc has lost absolute control over both the government and coalition. It is something that becomes apparent from his inconsistent decision-making and changes of position. After announcing on Monday morning that he had been mandated by the coalition to negotiate a wage and pension rise with the IMF, in the evening the same Boc was emphatically stating that the government was not going to ‘open the tap of populist measures’. In the time slot between Boc’s two statements, President Basescu, who was just back from the informal EU Council in Brussels, had said there were no resources for any pay rise…

Meanwhile, UDMR is inclined to detaching itself from the platoon, having said it was looking at the option of snap election and that it still supported the wage and pension rise. Amidst such dissensions, PDL and the coalition have lost another MP, which makes its majority in the Senate even more frail, as it has now come to depend on just three MPs. The resignation of Senator Mircea Banias (investigated by DNA in the Constanta Customs bribe case) from PDL and his joining the Conservative Party blocked the activity of the Senate on Wednesday, putting the majority in an unprecedented position. Under crossfire, Boc refuses to go, claiming he ‘has the solutions’ even if he cannot share them with anyone else – not even with his own party, nor with the coalition, nor with the Parliament and obviously not with the public who is still waiting for concrete solutions.

Symptomatic for the mayhem reigning over the entire country administration is also the more than surprising decision of the Constitutional Court to postpone the presentation of its unconstitutionality ruling on the election merger law. That’s an unprecedented decision coming after two previous successive deferments of a decision on the electoral law. The obvious and unavoidable question is whether the Court judges had passed the judgement before phrasing the motivation and now they need more time to come up with arguments. Otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. But maybe this is exactly what it is sheer nonsense, as for a growing number of Romanians it is harder and harder to understand the decisions and the conduct of the public institutions’ representatives.

Meanwhile, far away from Bucharest, the Jiu Valley miners have gone on strike. Some of their leaders’ announcements that they were preparing to come to Bucharest sent chills down the spine of many Romanians. The reloading of former miners’ leader Miron Cozma, the man who overturned a government in the 1990s and led barbaric violent attacks on the University Square protesters makes us wonder if indeed Romania has not travelled 20 years back in time from all points of view – social, economic – and with regard to instability.

With Romanians having no more confidence in politicians and institutions, the only still solid landmarks that we have are the capacity of the citizens of this country to drive a change for the better, as they did in 1989 and also Romania’s European Union membership. Five years after accession, we should remember that a majority of the civil rights and liberties that we now enjoy we owe to our EU membership. However, on its own, this membership is not an absolute guarantee, for democracy is a day by day fight requiring collective effort, civic attitude and vigilance.