May 2020, Plushunia – The spring is near the end, and despite the dramatic reduction of the diplomatic activity in Plushunia, the past months have been tumultuous in terms of the internal life of the country, with a spectacular comeback, an election and the start of a long-term crisis taking place…
January-February 2020 – The return of Hop
The year started well. The economy wasn’t galloping anymore, but it was still going forward. The old days of the crisis were over, and the Liberal-Social Dem leadership, despite being plagued with corruption, was a successful one. But tensions were already growing. The failure of the Liberals and Social Democrats to win the local elections caused deep cracks in the coalition. Voices in both parties, such as Cățel Plușeanu (PNL) and Oița Baciu (PSD) demanded that the coalition break up, since it was unable to coordinate and win the local elections. Meanwhile in the opposition, the Democratic Party was on the rise, Iepuroi Hop, one of the most charismatic politicians of the country, returning to top-level politics after years of being a mere “joke” and becoming Leader of the Opposition. Sensing the weaknesses of the governing coalition, he started to make daily appearances and press conferences, making speeches like this one:
The past months have been allegedly “good”. We had growth, we had stability, we had justice, but now that is over! Every day, journalists publish new articles about all the corruption and infighting hidden behind the mask of stability the Government shows us. After being defeated by us in the local elections, these idiots keep fighting each other more then they are fighting us. The “stable” coalition which ruled us for the past months is now breaking up, and instability will soon engulf us once again. But this time we should not let Purcel’s desire for power get between us and the future of Plushunia! It is time to show the country the alternative to infighting and corruption! It is time to overthrow Purcel and his 30-day cabinets! It is time to show Plushunia our way, the way of the Democratic Party!
The Liberals tried to fight back, with Purcel declaring that “those speeches are bold for a political failure like Hop”, and that “The government is stable, Hop just wants to attract attention and return to the top of politics”. Their efforts, backed by the Social Democrats, were futile. The Government did have 2/3 of the Parliament behind it, but that was only in theory, and the cracks in the coalition showed up when Hop tabled a motion of no confidence. The motion passed, to the surprise of everyone, and the Purcel V cabinet was overthrown. Several dissident, anti-coaliton groups, formed within the parties of Purcel’s coalition, helped the PD remove him from power, and broke away from their respective parties in order to join forces with the Democrats and establish a new Cabinet. However, even with the help of these parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), which broke off from PNL, and the National Union for the Progress of Plushunia (UNPP), a group originating from PSD, as well as the National Democratic Party (a party formed in late 2019 through the merger of two other nationalist parties) were not strong enough to help the Democrats form a new government, the Parliament being split 50-50 between pro-PD and anti-PD parties. After a few weeks of failed negotiations organised by the President in order to help establish a parliamentary majority, the pro-PD parliament members decided to collectively resign from the legislature, and since the Parliament can only function, according to the Constitution, with 50%+1 of its MPs (one of the multiple amendments made to the Constitution in October 2019), the said gesture triggering snap elections, which were held on 9 February. The results of the elections were not far from the expectations: Hop’s aggressive campaign and his success in removing Purcel from power saw the party go from 31% (December polls) to 37.08% (election day results), while the parties from the Purcel coalition were dragged down by the dismissal of the Purcel cabinet and by the smaller parties which split from them, with the PSD going from 31% (December) to 24.44% (election result), and the PNL + PNȚCD + PC experienced a very sharp drop, from 30% (December) to 19.66% (election result). The percentages for the PND remained though almost unchanged (8% in December, 8.43% at the elections), while the new small parties performed surprisingly well (PLD – 5.62%, UNPP – 4.77%). With a record score for his party and a majority together with his allies, Hop returned to the office of Prime Minister almost two years after the end of his first term, making him the first person in the history of Plushunia to have two non-consecutive terms as Prime Minister. Having ran on a platform focused on law and justice (unlike the Liberals, which concentrated on supporting right-wing economics and economic growth, and the Social Democrats, which advocated for improving the social welfare system of the country), he easily won the election and now was free to start his “war against crime and corruption”.
His first target was organised crime. During the last months of 2019 and early 2020, the political instability and the favorable economic climate helped many small criminal groups appear and thrive. However, the Purcel cabinets largely held them under control, until late January, when several of these groups joined forces, forming a powerful crime syndicate in the New Plușeni area, with the Purcel V cabinet failing to properly deal with the situation (this failure further diminishing the public’s faith in Purcel). Hop however started a crackdown on this syndicate, destroying it almost completely by March and capturing its leaders in May.
But Hop’s prime goal was not fighting criminal groups, but stopping the corruption which dominated the previous eras. He appointed independent Pisic Plușeanu for the Ministry of Justice, unlike the Purcel IV and V cabinets, whose “independent” minister of Justice was repeatedly seen at party meetings. This new independent minister was appointed in order to establish a strong, independent justice. Under Hop’s “watchful eye”, the new independent justice started to investigate some recent alleged corruption cases, marking what he called “the dawn of justice”. However, his investigations had to wait, as the country faced a new danger: COVID-19.
March-May 2020 – Coronavirus and crisis
By early March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic had reached neighboring Romania, and in a few days state of emergency was instituted there. However, most of the citizens of Plushunia are plush toys, which can’t get sick from coronavirus, so the Hop cabinet decided not to institute state of emergency or take any special measures to stop the pandemic. However, the human citizens did enter quarantine, with the President himself entering self-isolation at his summer residence in the Argeș region, while granting Hop some special powers in order to administrate the country in his absence.
The pandemic did though have some serious effects in Plushunia, with the lockdown in Romania and other countries disrupting trade routes and increasing most prices, which led to imports decreasing sharply (the imports being currently managed by a state-owned international trade company directed by the President). Plushunia is though a small country, so imports are vital for its economy, and less imports mean less trade, which means a decrease in tax revenue (value added tax is the greatest source of revenue for the state). That reduced public spending, and the international crisis led to the government starting to save money, further cutting spending. The state and the state-owned companies are though the main investors in Plushunian economy, spending enormous amounts of money on infrastructure projects which create many jobs, so the spending cuts brought an end to most of these infrastructure projects, resulting in great losses for most of the industrial and construction companies, many being forced recently to start firing employees and cutting wages (a measure which, while criticized by the Social Democrats, could save the said companies from bankruptcy). Meanwhile, private investors, worried about the worldwide crisis, decided to stop investing, in a bid to keep themselves and their companies from becoming bankrupt. This sharp drop in demand started in early April, with a full-blown crisis starting by early May, overwhelming the Government, which decided to place a cap on cash withdrawals from the state bank (in a bid to prevent a financial crisis), raised profit, income, VAT and property taxes and is currently discussing imposing a new set of austerity measures. However, due to the cabinet’s faith in Plushunia’s economic independence and in the liberalization made by the preceding Liberal cabinets (with incumbent Minister of Economy, Commerce and Public Finances, Cățel Plușeanu, arguing that without the extensive privatizations of the public companies and the elimination by the Purcel cabinets of the employee protection regulations imposed by the Socialist regime, the economic crash could have been much worse), anti-crisis measures were only imposed in late April, the Hop II cabinet’s response to the crisis being quite unpopular (criticism coming from both the other parties and the population alike), with the Democrats going down in polls from 41% (March) to 33% (April), and rising back to 35% recently after a stronger response to the crisis was promised. However, as the recession goes on, dark times await the Hop II cabinet. Should they swiftly defeat the crisis (which is compared often in Plushunian media to the 2009 crisis in neighboring Romania), the Democrats will emerge as the strongest political force in Plushunia for years to come. Should the crisis defeat them, the next election will be the Democrats’ end. It is up to them to decide…
Plushunian News Service 