Romania is now living some of the most adverse times in its modern history. The world economic crisis has simply acted as a detonator of a much deeper crisis that was bound to erupt irrespectively of international developments. Democracy is founded on the rule of law and enjoyment of fundamental rights, while also involving political stability and a certain level of prosperity, seen as a core prerequisite for good governance.

For over six years now, Romania has been in a perpetual state of political instability emerging from the open clash between the presidential institution and the other powers of the state, primarily the parliament, judiciary and mass-media, all in the pursuit of a claimed ‘modernisation’ of the state. This conflict has grown into an attrition warfare that has undermined institutional stability, resulting in the forceful politicisation of the whole of public administration, the expansion of nepotism and corruption in all the sectors of society.

As far as economy is concerned, we are also witnessing the most grievous crisis this country has been in ever since WWII. The Romanian state is ill, rotten on the inside by the inability of its authorities of playing by the rules of democratic games in a country where the scars of communism are still very much present.

History has demonstrated and the experience we are living right now in Romania dramatically reinforces that, whenever financial interests clash with rights and liberties, the latter always lose the battle. Despite the tremendous headway the world in general and former communist states in particular have made since the Cold War, what we can say for certain is that it is still money that makes the world go round. The financial crisis starting from the US in 2008, followed by the beginning of the most serious economic recession in Europe after the 1930s have shown quite clearly that most deprived social categories always end up paying the highest price.

On Monday, while returning from the G-20 summit in Toronto, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned the world’s biggest economies against making the poorest people on the planet bear the brunt of plans to slash public debt and government deficits. “We cannot abandon the most vulnerable,” he said.

But while most of the world decision-makers are striving to device a new financial model and regulate the economy catering for the new, global context, seeking to prevent similar crisis from happening again in the future while seeking to protect in the same time their citizens against the effects of the crisis, Romania is about to return to the roots of the so- wild capitalism. Under the new rules initiated by the Ministry of Public Finance via the new Tax Code, from now on, natural persons will be treated in terms of accounting standards, based on the principle according to which ‘economic rationale prevails over legal rationale,’ an ‘aberration’ that – legal professionals say - denies law itself. In addition, based on the new financial ‘concepts’ upheld by the government these days, the Romanian state will no longer have to guarantee retirement benefits in the originally calculated amount and says pensions will ‘fluctuate’ so that they fit into the social security budget at a certain point in time. In other words, instead of doing what it takes to render the budget sustainable so as to assure the payment of pensions at their legal value, the government wants ‘to distribute’ the money it will have on random criteria.

Social genocide, annihilation of the weakest for the survival of the strongest are extremely powerful words and phrases that are now being often used to depict the horrific image of this country’s near future. Such wording is more and more often heard in the rhetoric of political opposition, labour unions, and senior citizens and of all those representing all major categories hurt by the recent austerity plan. Even the head of public finances admits that the VAT rise will worsen economy and will expand recession beyond 2010. Not to say that the measure is highly unfair for public workers, namely teachers, medical staff, fire-fighters, policemen, military who will have their wages chopped by 25 per cent as they will support as well the VAT rise from their diminished salaries. Equity guaranteed by the social state become simple words deprived of any meaning on a piece of paper, and I name here the Constitution.

In the meantime, cohorts of people singing in the chorus of praise strive to deny reality, explaining that pensioners protesting in the street are ‘hysterical people’ paid by the opposition, that union heads are ‘corrupt’ and that public sector workers are ‘the fat ones’ stuffing themselves with the public wealth. They mostly blame the press for criticising austerity measures and presenting an apocalyptic ‘landscape’, thus pushing people to the brink of suicide. Some ‘civil society’ representatives are so overzealous as to say that the austerity measures were already ‘accepted’ by the public the very day when they were presented by President Basescu.

We have so easily returned to the same old textbook statements of the propaganda that had been so effectively employed 20 years ago, on the occasion of the first democratic election in Romania after 1989, when the neo-communist power was accusing University Square demonstrators of being on the opposition’s payrolls. The virulence and haughtiness with which these people, many of whom being self-proclaimed intellectuals, deny the screamingly tragic evidence while buying themselves or just preserving some ephemeral privileges suggest serious lack of civil responsibility and, above all, the kind of dehumanisation that leaves one astounded and baffled.