What’s behind the campaign against the „deep state”

The theory of the day is that the „deep state” has controlled them all. Traian Basescu, Elena Udrea, Victor Ponta, Crin Antonescu, the entire elite of politics followed orders clicking their heels. Is not very clear how heads of state and prime ministers have been manned by the people they themselves have appointed, how it is possible for the gods in the Olympus of power to tremble before humble civil servants who could have been sacked at any time, but we were told this was how the country functioned for years.

Besides the “deep state”, there would have been a global conspiracy, the Minerva plan for the enslavement of states, the transformation of small countries like Romania into a Western colony. The United States and Brussels would have drawn black lists, throwing innocent people in prisons with the hand of the deep state to enslave the country.

All these bizarre, stupid or at least exaggerated theories you hear every day, every week, every hour. We are witnessing a classic operation of rewriting history by today’s powerful, the yesterday’s outlawed. At the end of the vast brainwashing operation, everything you knew about the huge corruption in Romanian politics must be forgotten. Such has never existed, but only in the minds of the few exalted manipulated by foreigners.

The recipe is neither new nor original. Thanks to political consultants, the theory of an invisible enemy makes a global career: Trump, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Orban, and almost all those who exercise power wrongly are fighting enemies in their own deep state. The advantage is that you can pin anything on it without anyone contradicting you. The audience is attracted by conspiracies, therefore is willing to accept a lot. This is why the theory enjoys some success, and all politicians having legal issues invest heavily in its propagation.

On top of creating a scapegoat, diversion from the real governance issues, long-term discrediting the fight against corruption, revenge and settling accounts, the never-ending battle against the deep state has yet one more well-defined goal. In the case of Romania, all great convicts dream of the day of rehabilitation and hope to push some reasons for clearing their criminal records.

For some like Dragnea and Voiculescu, the goal is to scam a termination in court of the convictions exposing them, and even worse, prevent them from occupying top positions of the state. Those who have not yet received a conviction obviously struggle to avoid it.

For this reason, Liviu Dragnea and PSD leave no stone unturned to keep the deep state theory on the agenda, concealing any other topic of real importance to society. They ask Viorica Dăncilă to ask the Defense Council to declassify the protocols, they drag Maior and Coldea before the parliamentary committee, summon Ghiţă from Serbia to pull out pictures or whatever compromising material on Kovesi, they even use one such Vanghelie to accuse Victor Ponta of doing blacklists in tandem with the deep state.

Liviu Dragnea, Dan Voiculescu and Traian Băsescu are among the great promoters of the of the abusive deep state theory. All three are strongly motivated and have the capacity to initiate and develop such campaigns with some degree of sophistication. But their theory is always about to backfire.

Truth is very simple, and cannot be rewritten or forgotten so easily. They themselves bartered the judicial in 2013, not the deep state. Basescu and Ponta negotiated the infamous deal on justice, and Elena Udrea commuted between them to force her friend, Alina Bica, to the helm of DIICOT. Nobody could order them, as then they were the Gods of Romania. Others, weaker and more vulnerable, were seeking the grace of the intelligence for the simple reason that it was then the spearhead in the fight against corruption. We already know from Maior that Dragnea attended Christmas dinners together with rulers of the „deep state”, Ponta told us the PSD leader did not miss one tennis match and Coldea told the commission that politicians were those coming to SRI, not the other way around. Nobody forced ANI’s Georgescu to open certain investigations, they all ran the institutions better or worse. Some have voluntarily surrendered to the intelligence services, others went their own way without anyone faulting them for it.

Sebastian Ghiţă claims that even Voiculescu has sought Coldea and Maior’s grace. The founder of Antennas denies vehemently, but then we have a big problem: when does one like Ghita lie and when does he tell the truth? Why would the revelations about Kovesi be real, while he rambles about Voiculescu?

Whatever excesses the „parallel state” might have done, however much it would have stretched to the buttons of power before being evicted from the criminal investigations by the Constitutional Court’s decision in 2016, this was not Romania’s greatest problem. This was not the big abuse.

Perhaps the state was not exactly vertical, as Coldea recently named it during his hearing, but a little on the line. But the real danger represented then and now, the repeated attempts to transform Romania into a mafia state and annihilation of justice. Nothing essential has changed since 2012, only the intensity and assault of thieves has increased exponentially. Rewriting of the laws of justice goes hand in hand with rewriting recent history.