| A BELATED LAW? 20/05/2010 |
| (2010-05-20) |
| Last updated: 2010-05-21 14:40 EET |
In the wake of the 1989 anti-Communist revolution, civil society in Romania demanded that former Communist officials and repressors be prohibited from acquiring public positions. For the last 20 years, however, the political class has obstinately protracted the start of the cleansing process among its ranks.
After being neglected for many years, the lustration bill eventually received the deputies' final vote this month. Under this new law, former activists, intelligence officers and police officers who occupied high-ranking positions between 1945 and 1989 cannot not run for or occupy the positions of state president, senator and deputy, not can they hold any leading positions in the legal system and other public institutions.
The lustration law was voted by all parliamentary parties with the exception of the Social Democratic Party, an old enemy of the project. This party has seen in its midst the largest number of members that come under the law's provisions, starting with by Ion Iliescu, the patriarch of the Romanian Left, a former high-ranking Communist official and the first post-1989 president. However, some Social Democratic MPs voted in favour of the law, something hailed by Teodor Maries, one of the anti-Communist revolution leaders.
Although he admits that such a law should have been passed two decades ago to prevent the heirs to an illegitimate and murderous regime from getting involved in public life, Maries says that the law is still welcome and is the most genuine accomplishment of the wishes of people who gave their lives in 1989. Florian Mihalcea, the head of the Timisoara Society, the body that came up with the idea of a lustration law in 1990, has termed the passing of the law as a historic moment, marking a break-up with Communism. 20 years late, the law gives a moral punishment to people who took part in the construction of an aberrant, oppressive and humiliating system.
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2025-04-03
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