In a short statement on Tuesday evening, at the end of a series hallucinatory events in the Parliament, Romanian President Traian Basescu addressed parliamentary party leaders Victor Ponta, Crin Antonescu, Daniel Constantin, Gabriel Oprea and Kelemen Hunor demanding them, repeatedly, “to immediately cease their actions against the institutions of the Romanian state. Naming them, a rather unusual twist in his latest statements, looks more like a warning.
A warning that these leaders have individual responsibilities in an illegitimate action, which the Presidents says it is seriously breaching EU values, with economic and external effects similar to those of the miners' violent "crusade" to Bucharest in June 1990. Through his attitude, Basescu also suggested that these five leaders might answer individually for what they were doing.
They cannot answer for their vote. As individuals, they might only answer in a criminal inquiry. Traian Basescu's accusation that the five acted against "institutions of the Romanian state" make us think about a chapter of the Penal Code entitled "Crimes against national security". The only article where the five’s actions might fit is art. 166 index 1, entitled "Actions against the constitutional order."
This article reads: "Taking any action aiming to change by illegal actions and by violence the constitutional order or the national, sovereign, independent, unitary and indivisible character of the Romanian state is punished with imprisonment from 5 to 15 years and interdiction of certain rights."
Are we in such a situation? Is the blitzkrieg-like action against the last forts of power an "action against constitutional order"? Do the action against Constitutional Court judges, or PM Ponta's ignoring a Court decision fit here? Not really. If read carefully, art. 166 contains a cumulative condi
