A quarter of the 36 state secretary position within the ministries (37 if a new job is set up at the Foreign Ministry) have not been filled two weeks after the Victor Ponta Government was installed. The new administration says it is prepared for a fast transition, but the reality seems different. People in ministries don’t talk publicly, but, as with every government change, there is a lot of commotion.
The newly installed officials have high demands, share out the fields they would like to be in charge of, as is the case of the Finance Ministry, for instance. Here it is not only the state secretaries who were changed, but also the secretary general and the deputy secretary general. Now these positions are filled by interim appointments. The same happened with one of the most sensitive ministries, Justice, where there is also an acting state secretary in place. Secretary general Stefan Gati has also left the Health Ministry. So, in many ministries, things happen in a more or less improvised manner. And this blocks any initiative.
At the start of his term, the prime minister said that he would only change the county prefects and the state secretaries who are, according to him, people with public functions or whose mandate has been entrusted to them by the Government. He reaffirmed his promise at the end of last week, but laid down conditions: heads of decentralized local institutions subordinated to the ministries must not play politics or get involved in the election campaign. This applies both to those in power and to the opposition.
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Ioan Rus, says none of the managers of these local autonomous institutions will be changed, in any of the counties, but “those who are not competent or were appointed politically, only because they are party members, should prepare to leave on their own.”
“Slowly we have to depoliticize the state’s institutions and form a corps of high public officials who can serve the citizens’ interest irrespective of the political regime or of the Government in place,” Rus says.
Only things are quite far from that at local level. One example is Gorj (the prime minister’s fief, as he is a deputy of this county), as reported in the local press: prefect Ioan Calinoiu (the Agency for Payments and Interventions in Agriculture), has set his sights on replacing Corina Dorobantu and the head of the County School Inspectorate Anca Purcarete, about whom he said in a TV show they were incompetent.
In Alba county, the prefect is said to target the head of the Postal Office, that of the Forestry Department and that of the County School Inspectorate. And plenty more such examples can be found in the local press.
The latest departures from the central administration are Constantin Cerbulescu, former head of the National Authority for Consumer Protection (at his own request) and Viorel Comanita, head of the Customs (dismissed by the prime minister). The position of head of Consumer Protection will be temporarily filled by vice-president Mioara Toth.
Several managers left government agencies, but they have not been replaced yet because between talks over the sharing out of these jobs are still ongoing between the parties in the ruling coalition. So the political bargain is still used, despite the depoliticizing of the administration that the prime minister and the interior minister are talking about.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)