Civil courage for corrupt mayors

In the last few days citizens have taken to the streets in two southern Romanian cities to show solidarity with mayors who are under investigation on charges of corruption. Citizens distort values when they go to these lengths for such a reason, writes Liviu Antonesei in the daily Adevărul: "I can imagine many things but I would never have believed we were capable of organising civil protests and using the term 'honour' to protect corruption and the corrupt. To what extent are we willing to turn values we believed unassailable upside down to allow such a thing to happen? It is astonishing, embarrassing, and dirty; words fail me. Romania is undergoing a chemical transformation in which petty, medium and grand-scale corruption reach out to each other to produce a true systemic corruption, in which the corrupt and the corrupted are seemingly bound together in an eternal alliance and civil courage is spectacularly directed against civil values. ... We need not be surprised that Europe not only is 'monitoring' us but already sees us as some kind of foreign body that represents a danger to its own ethics."

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