Lustration law comes 22 years too late

The lower house of the Romanian parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, passed a lustration law on Tuesday which bans former members of the communist regime from holding political office for a five-year period. Twenty-two years after the collapse of communism, the law comes far too late, writes the daily Gândul: "The law would have made sense if it had been passed in 1990, because it would have kept the communist nomenclatura out of public office for a time and prevented them from continuing the bad practices and vices of the old regime and thus preventing society's advancement. … But what good is this preventive measure now that 22 years have passed? … The charlatans of the old and new regime who wanted to line their pockets at the expense of the state and people have already done so - with sums ten times higher than before the fall of communism. … This is not to say that a lustration law is entirely futile, even if it comes so late. If it soothes the pain of those who suffered under the communist system - even for just one day - then it will at least have done some good."

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