Exactly on the day when the supreme misogynist was shattered in Dubai in a boxing match by an actor wearing pink gloves, causing a major identity crisis in the manosphere, President Nicușor Dan announced a referendum in the justice system targeting the legitimacy of the CSM.
For a journalist, believing in miracles is a professional weakness, but sometimes they happen, especially around Christmas.
Andrew Tate, a former kickboxing champion, settled in Romania in 2017, saying: „I like to live in countries where corruption is accessible to anyone. […] I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of being able to do what I want. I like to be free.” And he was right. For 8 years, a person accused of rape and human trafficking in the US, UK, and Romania has been mocking our justice system.
In history, many times, a political regime, a social or professional system collapsed following seemingly minor events that rolled a small snowball, quickly turning it into an avalanche.
What seemed like a perfect mechanism of Justice control, one where politicians and associates were protected from the law, cracked before our eyes in a matter of days.
The event, the small snowball, was the Recorder documentary, which has nearly 5 million views on YouTube. The two-hour journalistic investigation had the merit of presenting simply and clearly the ways in which corruption accusations are evaded, convincing some judges and prosecutors to speak publicly about corruption in Justice.
The Fury in Society Provoked by Special Pensions of Magistrates
In fact, the shock produced by the documentary consisted of the public's realization that there is indeed an understanding between a few politicians and a few magistrates not to investigate corruption cases anymore, and the defendants in the ongoing court cases to be acquitted en masse.
And the avalanche consists of the succession of events that followed the revelations, culminating in President Nicușor Dan's statement, which questions the legitimacy of the CSM and the support of the council by magistrates.
If we step out of today's whirlwind of events, we easily notice that this conflict between Lia Savonea, CSM, the Bucharest Court of Appeal, and the Judicial Inspection on one side, and public opinion on the other, was exacerbated by the inflexible position adopted by Judge Savonea regarding the reform of magistrates' pensions.
I have written several times about the radicalism displayed by the Chief Justice in an issue where, clearly, she had no support, neither politically nor publicly, such as that concerning magistrates' pensions, indicating a poor reading of societal trends and a serious misunderstanding of the changes that have taken place in Romania over the past year, following the annulled presidential elections.
The chaos at the press conference organized by the Bucharest Court of Appeal to attack the journalists from Recorder, the call made by Lia Savonea during the event to provide instructions to the court's leadership on what to declare, and the scene reminiscent of the Romanian Song from the communist era, composed of judges called to support Liana Arsenie, the head of the Court of Appeal, were nothing but scenes that confirmed the hallucination given by the discretionary power manifested in the Romanian justice system.
A Profoundly Dysfunctional System
At this moment, after the president's statement and the meeting with the magistrates at Cotroceni Palace, it can be observed that Nicușor Dan has taken the initiative, and the CSM is on the retreat. In two successive statements, one issued by the judges' section and another by the prosecutors' section, the council has shown a white flag, but it's a bit too late.
"Any dysfunctions, if they exist, must find solutions in a stable social climate characterized by institutional cooperation…", it is emphasized in the CSM statement.
This position of the council was issued before the meeting between Nicușor Dan and the magistrates, broadcast live on TV channels and social networks, a meeting that once again confirmed how control of the Justice system was taken over by Lia Savonea, this time with validation from the magistrates at Cotroceni Palace.
"We have communicated to the Presidential Administration two specific cases that could present characteristics of abuses. These are not simple accidents, but symptoms of a profoundly dysfunctional system," said Judge Liviu Cârneci from the Covasna Tribunal during the meeting.
"The real problem is that the justice system lacks real internal self-correction mechanisms. Abuses are not identified and corrected from within, because power is excessively concentrated at the top, in a way that allows for informal control of the careers of all magistrates and the selection of individuals opting for leadership positions based on criteria other than meritocracy," the judge further stated.
"In recent years, I believe that an oligarchic system in Justice has been consolidated, whose center of gravity is at the top of the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the CSM," emphasized the magistrate.
Lia Savonea is the President of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, and during the meeting, several prosecutors and judges pointed out that the Superior Council of Magistracy is reached through arrangements and possible acts of corruption.
The Justice system in Romania was defeated by Andrew Tate, who built here, in our country, through corruption, a small empire on social media from whose throne he instigates violence against women, rape, human trafficking, crimes he was accused of but never convicted for.
It took an actor from a Netflix reality show, Chase DeMoor, with an angelic face and armed with pink boxing gloves, to bring justice and shatter the myth of the supreme misogynist that the Justice system in Romania repeatedly failed to hold accountable for his actions.