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H av e We R e a l l y Lo s t i n R om a n i a ?
Convention, withdrew its support for the government in 1998 specifically for this reason
– abandonment of moral principles by the center-right coalition.
Another episode is illustrative of such ghost-hunting actions. The PD minister of foreign
affairs in 1997, Adrian Severin, who was considered second most senior in his own party,
revealed in an interview that he had access to documents that proved that some famous
journalists and some prominent political figures in Romania were secret agents of foreign
intelligence services. He also attacked his own boss, PD Chairman Petre Roman. Follow-
ing the interview, the media demanded to see the list of spies or that the minister step
down. After a while the minister resigned, but he never denied the existence of the list. He
was soon expelled from his own party. Since no one could clarify what had actually hap-
pened, several rumors immediately began to spread: the minister was intoxicated by the
former secret police as to make him look ridiculous, or the minister himself was part of a
conspiracy to artificially create another public scandal.
At the end of 2000, the law on disclosing the names of Communist secret police informers
was finally passed in parliament, although not the version that was supported by the ini-
tiators, but a more moderate one. An institution was created to research the former secret
police archive and disclose the names of informers. The first attempt to clear the parlia-
ment of persons with a dubious past was made before the 2000 elections. Some prominent
figures of the historical parties (the Liberals and Christian Democrats) were disclosed
as having reported to the secret police on colleagues and dissident friends. Contrary to
public expectation, the number of names disclosed from the PDSR (heirs to the Com-
munists) and PRM (known as the party where all former Communists and secret police
officers sought shelter) did not exceed the number of names coming from the center-right
coalition. Even the president of the National Liberal Party, Mircea Ionescu-Quintus, was
unveiled as a former collaborator with the Communist secret police. The ghost hunting
thus ended up with the ghosts among the hunters.
VII. When Ideologies Clash
and Institutions Quarrel
One of the basic problems of the center-right coalition from 1997-2000 was that it was
not really center-right. It won the elections against the post-Communist party (PDSR),
and in order to beat the opponents several parties had to form a coalition around the
Democratic Convention. The CDR itself was, however, a mix of ideologies. It included
traditional social democrats, which withdrew from the government by the end of the
term and merged with the center-left PDSR opposition. The other two partners in the
Democratic Convention – the Democratic Party and Democratic Union of Hungarians
– were not center-right at all. The Democrats were members of the Socialist Interna-
tional and the Hungarian Union had a blend of liberal, Christian-democrat and social-
democrat ideologies. It seems quite obvious that such an inclusive coalition could not
have a coherent reform program. Even though liberals and Christian democrats had
pushed the center-right issues on the agenda, they had to compromise with the views of
the partners in the coalition
