Behind the appearance of quietness and concentration, the current Boc Government keeps analyzing the draft of the new pension law. The deadline for sending the project to Parliament has been repeatedly deferred, in spite of the IMF and World Bank request to give priority to this legislative act among the measures aimed to cope with the current economic and financial crisis. In order to appease to a certain extent this deviation from the conditions formulated by the bankers as a preamble to the financial loan granted to Romania, Premier Boc has recently “acknowledged” that the first condition for the modernization of the Romanian state is in the future law regarding pensions and salaries.

But the appearances of quietness and concentration disclose an unpredictable bitterness. The supporters of the current governmental coalition and members of the Executive overdo in connection with the fact that we have too many pensioners, while the pension budget shows a deficit.

Thus is fed the psychosis that precisely the pensioners, seen as an oversized social category, represent an obstacle to overcoming the present economic and financial crisis. But those who plead in favour of this false conclusion turn down any historic retrospective.

They “forget” the fact that the pensioners do not represent a unitary category in order to be charged “in bulk.” Over 900,000 of them were pensioned in advance for medical reasons. Such pensioning is explained not only through relatively abusive medical certificates, as the rulers say. They are the expression of the fact that in a recent top life quality, Romania ranks 53, much below all its neighbours. The poor quality of life is precisely that which affects almost half of the population of Romania, and makes our country to have primacy in EU in regard to child mortality, lung and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc.

The rulers themselves complain in a first stage of the fact that the difference between the minimum and the maximum pension is around EUR 90 against EUR 9,000 and plead, quite naturally, for this difference to not exceed 15 times. Premier Emil Boc himself was initially very critical about the 200,000 so-called “callous pensions” obtained subject to the parliamentarian arrangements between the people in power and those from the opposition. Arrangements which are both corrupt, irresponsible and discriminatory also towards the principle of the contribution to the social insurance budget. Which arrangements were squeezed into certain legislative provisions and, now, they have primacy in the court rulings. That is why the targeted persons sue the Government and very frequently even win the lawsuits, continuing to have “callous pensions.” This is explains the fact that PM Boc avoids today to refer to such pensions.

But, this whole opposition to the normal straightening of the Romanian pension system may not win without the support of the magistrates. Magistrates who rank on a top place among those with pensions which violate the contribution principle. The judges judge their own lawsuits against the Government and win them every time when the point is to defend the favouring pensions. Quite recently, the Superior Council of Magistracy requested Premier a meeting to discuss the draft of the new pension law. They say openly that they represent a unique socio-professional category and, therefore, they must have a unique status also when they have to be pensioned off. In this case, liker in others, the argument is the amount of the pensions given to the Western magistrates. The used figures are real, but the Romanian economy cannot be compared with the economies of countries such as Germany, France, Sweden, etc.

The associations of pensioners are seriously affected by the announced “freezing of the pensions.” The elder defend themselves invoking the electoral promises of the current rulers. But also some legal provisions, like the value of the pension point raised to 45 per cent of the gross average salary. Here intervene also the unions which request a maximum pensioning age of 63 years, instead of 65 as stipulated in the new draft law. And the unions again are those which reject the current governmental provision that the layoff in Education should target first of all the pensioners. Pensioners who, in the schools from the rural environment, are the only title-holders. Which means that their elimination from Education will increase school dropping much above the present level of 20 per cent.

For all these reasons, among which the sine die freezing of the pensions regardless of inflation growth, the pensioners are preparing themselves to protest taking massively to streets. But an “underground” factor intervenes also in this case. The rulers handle all sorts of “favouring exceptions,” but these are precisely those which favour confusion, contradictions and even arrogance, attributes which dominate the debate over the new pension law. Premier Boc promises to raise urgently the minimum pension. He speaks also about other possible bonuses subject to the future economic growth. But the current minister of finance states clearly that he will resign immediately after a possible growth of the pension point. He argues his “firmness” by means of the deficit of the pension budget, forgetting that the pension budget was in excess in the ‘90s, but impoverished afterwards by shifting over one billion Euro into the state budget, and also further to the defrauded privatizations. The benevolent smile of the respective minister reappeared when he announced that the burial allowance was finally increased in the 2010 budget. Wherefrom the folk adagio about the “politicianist cyanide poured into the draft of the pension law.” This is how a mere folk saying synthesizes a long and contradictory process.