Basescu's bluff

-- These weeks are decisive for President Traian Basescu's entire political career. Although he has been isolated for a long time now, he has every time managed to find a crack to put a late effect bomb there and divert public attention from the severe errors committed in the first years of his mandate.
According to the Romanian dictionary, bluff means to lead the adversary into error and leave him the impression that your cards are better than his. Like a great poker player, Traian Basescu has always surprised his partners by taking full risks, even if he has only got a plain bluff in his hand. Expert gamblers say that after succeeding with two bluffs it is good to bet on the great cards only, for one adversary may get a good card and force you into showing what you have in your hands, which makes you vulnerable in future games, even if you pick up good cards. Had Basescu read the whole explanation in the dictionary, he would have found out that this bluff doesn't mean only "trick", but also "deceit".
The postponed promulgation of the pension law seems to me to be such a bluff, with Traian Basescu unmasked as trying to cheat on his partners. What the President has counted on in this scenario is obvious to everybody: on the one hand, on the belittling of the government's gain by this measure able to bring important electoral points and, on the other hand, on fooling people that, hadn't he got involved, the pension law would have been unable to apply. But this time his cheat and his demand for the government to provide him with data on the financial resources haven't been enough. It has made politicians roar with laughter. Firstly, because it isn't the President's job to make such a financial analysis, which the law initiators presented to the Parliament in detail anyway. Secondly, given the constitutional prerogatives, the President may at most send the law for revision just once and afterwards he has to sign for it. Then why make this scandal last longer ?
Party representatives were fooled in the latest consultations in Cotroceni Palace, which they attended like lambs ready to be sacrificed, since they knew they were in the middle of a dishonest political play. Now they no longer seem willing to obey Basescu's orders and therefore they have been writing piles of letter to the President, asking him to promulgate the pension law at once. The President is in the habit of making any political speech his victory. But this time he will drink from the bitter goblet of defeat. Unless he is wise enough to put up with his defeat, he may soon get to look into opinion polls like in a deep well, because people are willing to cheer you when you assail journalists. But if you leave them without their soup, they slap you.
This is the first time Traian Basescu is paying for the war he opened against Tariceanu. Under normal circumstances, before producing such a law draft, the parties in the Liberal-Democrat Alliance would have gone to Cotroceni Palace and, after consultations, they would have come out to inform public opinion so that they would enjoy the gains after such a victorious measure. The President has been arrogant at the PM for years now. And now his arrogance is turning into his own enemy. Maybe from now on he will for a long time regret having dumped some allies who would have never pursued to ruin his good reputation in the public eye.
If Basescu postpones the promulgation of the pension law, he will be at the heart of an important chapter in the history of political decay, whose first paragraphs have already been written.

Ion Spanu
Ziua Joi 12 Iulie 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english