Lawfare Kills Democracy in Romania – and Beyond - An American view on the Călin Georgescu case, especially for ActiveNews


Lawfare Kills Democracy in Romania – and
Beyond
Stephan Marshall
”Constitutional courts
provide the necessary means to outflank majorities and nullify their votes.”
— Robert Bork, Coerciving Virtue: The
Worldwide Rule of Judges (AEI, 2003)
Romanian authorities seem determined to compound the attack
on freedom and democracy they began by cancelling the presidential election in
December, after an undesired candidate won the first round. The "detention” of
frontrunner Calin Georgescu — along with raids on his supporters’ homes — is a
thinly-disguised coup, an obvious lawfare operation designed to
intimidate Georgescu and all Romanians and prevent them from electing him
president.
The question now is, who exerted the pressure on Romanian
authorities for this repression? Pressure to cancel the election came from the
Biden Administration in the United States, where the State Department issued a thinly-veiled threat to Romania, instructing them that
Georgescu is unacceptable as president of this key NATO member and situs of
NATO’s largest military base, because of his desire to end the bloodbath in
Ukraine.
But it seems unlikely that the Trump Administration was the
instigator of this most recent action. Elon
Musk quickly tweeted his indignation. Before that, Vice President J.D.
Vance had just delivered a stinging rebuke to Europe’s petty tyrants for their
contempt of the very "western values” that they claim so vocally to promote:
little things like free speech and fair elections. Of all the outrages he
cited, Romania’s canceled election has most shocked the world.
Most likely, the pressure this time came from the European
Union, possibly seconded by Britain. Both are determined to continue the
killing in Ukraine, even after the impending departure of the Americans. The EU
has the financial leverage to force Romania to dance to its tune and multiple
reasons to use it against Georgescu.
In this, the EU is simply tightening the same squeeze it
has been using against its member states for years, albeit on less momentous
matters than elections. When democratic electorates in Ireland or France refuse
to ratify new EU treaties or "constitutions”, the EU simply repeats the
referenda until the people vote as they are told. Financial leverage is used to
punish Poland and Hungary when their democratically elected governments dissent
from EU immigration policies (a matter on which the EU has no jurisdictional
authority to be formulating policies in the first place).
Now Romanians (along with all Europeans) are likewise being
told, even more directly, that they will vote for the right candidates or they
will not vote at all.
A more direct and extreme assault on the very concepts of
freedom and democracy than cancelling an election and arresting the winner is
hardly imaginable. If the newly "acting presidents” Klaus Iohannis and now Ilie
Bolojan had teamed up with the Constitutional Court and the army to seize
control of the Parliament, jail its members, and declare themselves the ruling juntafor life, it could hardly have constituted a more flagrant coup d’etat.
(And Iohannis’ belated resignation — months after his term expired and under
threat of impeachment — does not change this.)
But for all his ambitions, Iohannis’ role in this was not
driven by lust for power. The same cannot be said of the Constitutional Court —
and now of the prosecutors who are harassing Georgescu.
Another source than the EU accounts equally for the coup
d’etat, one that Washington has refrained from denouncing and that hardly
figures on the radar screen of MAGA supporters or the MAGA media. Yet it is
largely American in origins, and it may be even more insidious than the
European Union: the Imperial Judiciary.
The epigraph quoted above from Judge Bork (like the title
of his book, whence it comes) shows that the trend leading to this coupis not unique to Romania. In fact, it is the culmination of not so much
Romanian politics as western ones generally. Perhaps above all — and it is
understandable that Romanians may not realize this — it is largely a product of
Anglophone and especially American politics: the ever-expanding,
quasi-totalitarian rule of judges, lawyers, prosecutors, bar associations, and
other legal operatives. For decades, the English-speaking countries and above
all the United States have been exporting what the late Kenneth Minogue called
"legal salvationism”. Yet even Americans are stymied to rein in judicial power.
One can hardly expect the countries to whom it is exported — most of whom have
little experience with judicial tyranny — to make sense of it.
One recurring modus operandi ran through the naked
power grab that took place in the US during the last 5 years: judicial power.
The "Deep State” may or may not be doing tangible harm to people, but the
judiciary destroys lives daily and by the thousands. Americans are terrified
of their courts, knowing that a summons to court — even an groundless one
that results in no punishments or awards — means financial ruin. Innocence is
no excuse, because a prosecution alone can destroy your life.
This transfer of power from sovereign people to judicial
operatives may be the most dangerous trends in the western democracies. The
judiciary, after all, is the branch of government whose job is punishing people
with jail, prison, and whatever they come up with. They can do this criminally
or "civilly”.
The EU itself has been gradually extinguishing democracy
for years by touting "the rule of law”, which really means the rule of lawyers.
And the logical progression from the rule of lawyers is, more specifically, the
rule of prosecutors — functionaries who build careers by putting as many people
as possible into prison. One is now prime minister of Britain, where he is censoring his people
and diverting law enforcement away from violent crime and into prosecutiong ordinary Britons for infractions like "hate
speech”. Another prosecutor recently won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the US. (Numerous other prosecutors occupy theUS Congress and American state governments.)
An oligarchy of prosecutors is far more deadly than any
machinations by a bureaucratic "deep state”. And yet we hear nothing about it,
even from MAGA Republicans. J.D. Vance judiciously neglected to mention routine violations
of America’s own Constitution and Bill of Rights, perpetrated by the very
institution that is supposed to be protecting them from violation by others: the judiciary. European leaders were too ignorant or too
ashamed to retort with this obvious tu quoque.
Lawfare operations were a major weapon used to prevent
Donald Trump from being elected US president. And it may have been under
American pressure that similar lawfare is underway in France against figures
like Marine Le Pen and a previous presidential candidate, Francois Fillon in
2017.
It is true that the American democracy has survived the
lawfare onslaught against Trump and his allies, and Americans rejected the
election of a prosecutor-president. But it is not clear that they realize the
nature of the danger they avoided.
The Trump Administration now has many evildoers on the run,
but as far as I can tell, the judiciary is not one of them. Trump and his
housecleaners have said not a word about cleaning house at the almighty
American judiciary. They have not said a word precisely because it is almighty.
Romanians need to clean house in theirs before it tightens
its grip further on what is left of their fragile democracy. The Romanian state
is already poisoned, perhaps irreparably, by this coup. Who can now
believe that the Constitutional Court — whose job is to ensure the
constitutional integrity of the rest of the state — retains any constitutional
integrity itself or respect for constitutional government? It is likely that
any president other than Georgescu will be deeply compromised and lack any
legitimacy in the eyes of Romanians, and the same is true of any government or
parliament that bacquiesces in, or even survives, this fiasco.
Stephan Marshall is the pen name of an American academic historian and political scientist
ActiveNews nu a primit niciodată altă publicitate decât cea automată, de tip Google, din care o îndepărtăm pe cea imorală. Aceasta însă nu ne asigură toate costurile.
Ziarele incomode sunt sabotate de Sistem. Presa din România primeste publicitate (adică BANI) doar în măsura în care este parte a Sistemului sau/și a Rețelei Soros. Sau dacă se supune, TACE sau MINTE.
ActiveNews NU vrea să se supună. ActiveNews NU vrea să tacă. ActiveNews NU vrea să mintă. ActiveNews VREA să rămână exclusiv în slujba Adevărului și a cititorilor.
De aceea, are nevoie de cititorii săi pentru a supraviețui așa cum este acum. Dacă și tu crezi în ceea ce credem noi, te rugăm să ne sprijini să luptăm în continuare pentru Adevăr, pentru România!

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Recomandările noastre
Persoane: Călin Georgescu J.D. Vance Tulsi Gabbard
Organizații: CCR Comunitatea de Informații din SUA Parchetul General
Tip conținut: Opinii
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