Romanian Senate president: Everybody in Romania is gargling with corruption

Romania’s Senate president and former Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu is upset that everyone in Romania is talking about corruption while the current Government, which is also supported by his party – ALDE, has increased salaries in administration. He claims that there must be a direct connection between the salaries and the quality of administration. “Everybody in Romania is gargling with corruption. From dusk till dawn, corruption is all they have in their mouths,” Tariceanu said on Monday morning at a public event, according to local Mediafax. “Everybody is concerned with the effects of corruption, nobody talks about the causes of corruption in Romania. I think that, if we want to have a quality administration, with well-prepared people, we can’t imagine that we pay them poorly and get quality. This idea didn’t even work in communism. There must be a direct connection between salary levels and administration quality,” the Senate president said at the Romanian Communes’ Meeting. Tariceanu, who is co-president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), the Social Democratic Party’s ally in the governing coalition, praised the cabinet led by Sorin Grindeanu for raising the salaries of local administration workers. At the same time, he criticized the anti-corruption prosecutors’ efforts against acts of corruption in local administration. “In Romania, we have had a witch hunt for some years. A lot of mayors had to go through investigations that have been very unpleasant for them, which affected their public image. Many of them turned out to be innocent. But they have gone through this journey on local TV news, which we have watched for several years, which seems to be aimed at humiliating people and destroying Romanian elites,” Calin Popescu Tariceanu added. Tariceanu has been one of the main critics of Romania’s anticorruption department over the last years. He has made several controversial statements in recent weeks, as hundreds of thousands of Romanians went to the streets to protest against a now repealed Government emergency ordinance which partly decriminalized some corruption offences. Romanian Senate president for BBC: The judiciary in Romania is not independent Senate president: Romania should pull out from CVM editor@romania-insider.com