CHAOS, CORRUPTION AND EXTREMISM

Political Crises Abound in Eastern Europe

Almost two decades after the fall of communism, a number of Eastern European countries are still struggling to establish stable democracies. From radical right-wingers to authoritarian post-communists, the political landscape lacks a center. Last Saturday in Bucharest, after everything was said and done, and the people's victory over the country's parliament was complete, Traian Basescu stepped up to the microphone. He seemed proud and exhausted at the same time -- seemingly as overwhelmed by the enormity of the moment as if he had just successfully staged a coup. "The Romanians," he said, "no longer want their country to belong to the oligarchs."

Traian Basescu is the president of Romania.

Three-quarters of parliamentarians in the Romanian capital accuse Basescu of having violated his country's constitution -- and even went so far as to vote to remove him from office. The president, they say, overstepped the bounds of his largely ceremonial post by interfering with government business. But the dismissal was short lived. Three-quarters of Romanian voters disagree with the parliament, and in a referendum held last week they voted to allow their president, a self-appointed crusader against corruption and nepotism within the country's intelligence service, to remain in office.

The referendum was just the latest chapter in the mudslinging that had bedeviled Romanian politics since the country joined the European Union in January. But as chaotic as the governmental crisis there has been, it has had plenty of competition from other countries on the eastern periphery of the EU, where chaos, insults between rival political camps, and governments struggling to stay afloat seem to have become the norm...(SPIEGEL ONLINE -By Walter Mayr, Marion Kraske and Jan Puhl /May 29, 2007)