Pulcinella’s secret – or how to classify a political intention
by March 26, 20180126
The declassification of SRI-Prosecutor’s Office protocols
After the current ruling power publicly launched the deep state theory, the appearance of the “imperious necessity” to declassify these protocols comes to complete or outline a part of the fantastic screenplay that seems to have several variables but that nevertheless tends toward a single deducible hypothesis. That the state’s security structures (in this case the SRI) have allegedly gotten involved over the years in the Romanian judicial mechanism in a way that is less than legal and democratic.
And this automatically and implicitly entails, for certain Romanian political and social circles, that the said state structure allegedly got involved – more than the law permitted and required – in the political affairs of the state too.
However, nothing can any longer be so surprising when you go up against such reasonings and conclusions as long as, lately, the Romanian state is permanently just a step away, a Government and a parliamentary committee away from being completely eclipsed and irredeemably suffocated by the political octopus.
As I hope it is already understood, the source of these speculations that have appeared overnight is rooted in the inexhaustible props of political show. More exactly and precisely, in the “mysterious” calculations and intentions of the leaders of the ruling coalition.
Calculations and intentions that, in fact, for any minimum logic of common sense and of any reason that could directly concern the current interests of the state and our interests, the interests of all Romanians, are unknown or prove to be completely devoid of solid, true, and especially important grounds.
The mysterious protocols and the reason behind them
Ever since 2013 or so (if not even earlier than that), it became official that there is a certain degree of tangency between the SRI and the prosecutor’s offices. This closeness was translated in official terms through the creation of inter-institutional co-op teams that, in time, took the well-known and already disabused name of “binominal.” Teams that theoretically consisted of one or more SRI officers and prosecutors involved in investigating and handling important legal dossiers.
“The Public Ministry – SRI institutional binomial worked in 2013 too, at optimal parameters, something reflected in the dynamic of results both in view of knowing, preventing, and combating the threats to national security, and also from the standpoint of the effects on the plane of penal instruction,” read the SRI report at the time.
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The reason these mixed teams were set up and their role, explained in official terms, was “the juridical assessment of the operative situation and of the proposed measures to document the criminal activities.”
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Hence, from these statements and reports one can easily and clearly conclude that the SRI’s presence in these teams was justified and agreed for the highest good of the Romanian state and for the observance – not the breaking – of the democratic provisions and norms of the rule of law. And this presence, as repeatedly mentioned, was strictly limited to technical aspects that concerned the said investigations and juridical handling.
Moreover, the entire mechanism of these teams was officially and legally agreed by both state parties – the SRI and the Public Ministry.
And this was validated by the CSAT at the time. In the sense that certain directions of priority for Romania’s security, concerning the SRI, corruption, tax evasion etc., were established. Matters that President Traian Basescu in fact admitted. Nevertheless, the technical aspects of these things were not handled by the CSAT.
Thus, everything went on as peacefully and in perfect agreement as possible until recently. When, out of a sudden, Justice Minister Tudorel Toader expressly and officially asked Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar to trigger the procedure to declassify the protocols concluded by the Public Ministry, National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), Directorate for the Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) and the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI).
And Prime Minister Viorica Dancila vehemently and radically joined the Justice Minister’s demand, supporting and completing it.
The political reason for the declassification of protocols
Why has this whole (other) fuss appeared overnight in Romania, on a topic that, whether by chance or not, has as backdrop the same judiciary and the same magistracy corps that have recently become the predilect targets of the current ruling power?
Well, it seems that somehow, somewhere, someone suddenly realised that these protocols might contain certain types of information that, once passed through the border between classification and declassification, could implode a great part of the whole political structure of the state.
Moreover, such a challenge thrown in the media and public space automatically raises a series of warning signals that, in their turn, give birth to all kinds of questions that trigger another wave of national suspicion about transparency, the observance of the fundamental principles of the rule of law, especially of the one that talks about the separation of powers in the state and especially concerning those regarding certain state structures’ degree of interference in the area of its fundamental institutions and of politics.
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I would dare say that we are able to witness a bizarrely precise synchronisation with the intense and continuous propping up of the topic of the deep state, the enemy of Romanian democracy and of the current ruling power, a topic with which we have been bombarded for weeks by the ruling power through all media channels. And, added to it, the just as strange and inexplicably furious witch hunt started against Laura Codruta Kovesi and the DNA.
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For many years, Romania has been far from getting closer to the completion of the great, unending, and unfathomable problem of high-level corruption in the state.
The great European process of centrifugation and concentration of the democratic levels on which the EU member states stand automatically and directly obligates Romania too, and implicitly the political power in Bucharest, to perfectly align itself with the new and future requirements of the architecture of European democracy.
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At present, Romania’s image is not one of the most favourable when it comes to corruption and the eradication of corruption. Because, as long as at the helm of the country there are people who have very big and very grave problems having to do with acts of corruption, problems that are legally and juridically proven as concretely and as well as possible, in Romania and about Romania there can be no talk in terms of transparency, democracy and rule of law.
And that goes with or without these protocols and with or without their declassification.
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Hence, it remains to be seen whether this new storm in the national cup of water which now holds the code name of ‘declassification of the SRI – Public Ministry protocols” will favourably work in the next weeks and months for the issuing of certain sentences in important dossiers that have been sitting for far too long on the judiciary’s table. Or whether it will prove to be another smokescreen behind which the current Government and Parliament are getting ready to conclude another cycle of “protocols,” emergency ordinances and legislative procedures that must be passed (on political order) as fast as possible and as far away as possible from the scrutiny of the public opinion and of the press.
Debbie Flanigan 
