I have published the article below in 2007.Before that and since then Romania’s situation deteriorated further.The country and its politicians are limping from crisis to crisis, as the current developments testify.
Truth be told, engineers and their talents are essential when it comes to technological progress, industrialisation or economic development. Unfortunately, the engineers’ involvement in politics, directly or indirectly, can and often does have tragic consequences.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Following the abortive action to suspend the president, Victor Ponta (finally) spelled it out : the serious political problems in Romanian society and in the PSD party are due to the engineers who lead both the economy and most of Romania’s political parties.
From an economic point of view, a communist state was organized as a command-and-control society. The main beneficiaries of this system were, in our country, the engineers. Trained in faculties and institutes founded during Stalinism, they came to represent not only the economic elite of the communist regime, but since 1989, the political elite as well.
The chief engineer of the republic that emerged 17 years ago is, of course, Ion Iliescu. Most of the main political parties’ leaders are, in turn, engineers. Calin Popescu Tariceanu and Mircea Geoana are construction engineers, Ion Diaconescu from PNTCD party is an engineer by training, as are Gheorghe Ciuhandu, Petre Roman, and the examples can go on and on.
If someone were curious, for example, to research the qualifications of the Romanian embassy officials in the US, they would notice that almost all of them are engineers by profession, having been trained in diplomacy through short-term courses. In other words, under the leadership of Sorin Ducaru (currently NATO ambassador to Brussels), himself a telecommunications engineer, the embassy could have been transformed at any time into a mini-factory, with technical and economic management able to be easily provided by the embassy staff.
Leaving aside the example of the Romanian embassy staff in the US, chosen at random due to the good quality of information to be found about this institution on its website, let's consider briefly the very notion of engineer.
Unfortunately, the meaning differs between our world and the Western one. In Romania, most engineers were and still are disconnected from the practicality or hands-on experience in the fields in which they specialize, preferring the briefcase and the white collar to the screwdriver and overalls.
Most were taught how to use imported equipment and were qualified to instruct others how to pull levers and press buttons, limiting themselves to reporting and competing for management positions (let's not forget that communist Romania did not train its engineers in industrial management, for example).
In the West, but also in the Far East, so to speak, an engineer who does not know how to tune an engine (engineer = the one who deals with engines) whatever that engine may be, in his field, is completely useless . The typical Romanian engineer, therefore, excels in creativity and theoretical knowledge, but usually lacks any practical skills.
Returning to the political situation in the country, I think it is obvious to any informed observer that since May 19, the political system has finally entered a deadlock. Both the replacement of the current constitution and the fundamental rebuilding of the political system (introduction of the uninominal vote, reduction of the number of parliamentarians, changes in the electoral law) are urgently needed.
More skilled at financial engineering than at engineering proper, many of the Romanian engineers who entered Parliament have contributed with their lack of political knowledge and imagination to the current disaster.
Thus, it matters less to which party our disoriented politicians belong, than to the fact that they belong to a trans-party fraternity of communist-type engineers. That means an incompetent fraternity, but one focused on getting rich quickly and - perhaps unconsciously but certainly - motivated by the "free corridor" left open by other categories of intellectuals (lawyers, teachers, sociologists, artists, writers, etc.). These categories of intellectuals were less inclined to manifest themselves as a professional guild with political aspirations and become involved in the public affairs of the country, and less focused on the monopolization of state structures on behalf of the professional group they belong to.
The "golden age" of the republic of engineers was the period 1992-1996, when Nicolae Vacaroiu was at the helm of the Romanian government. During this period, Romania's bankrupt factories and plants passed into the ownership of those who had brought them into bankruptcy. Banks, which for specialists trained in the school of communism are nothing more than simple institutions for allocating credits, were forced to grant unprofitable loans to unprofitable enterprises. The state budget became the piggy bank of enterprises that continued to be veritable black holes of the Romanian economy.
Foreign competition was eliminated with the help of miners' bats and a corrupt and hostile bureaucracy. This was the period when the Petromidia refinery, for example, despite its huge losses, was modernized to a Nelson factor of 9.8, i.e. one of the most advanced in Europe. After that, it was ceded to Mr. Patriciu. ( PNL party)
Starting with 1989, the same “specialists” - who failed to produce a truck that brakes equally on all four wheels, a tractor that does not break down frequently in the field, or to build the roads from Transylvania to the rest of Romania that can be used all year round- have also built the current republic, at our expense and taxing everybody’s patience.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the republic is dysfunctional and has now gone bankrupt. Probably if I had been asked to become a section chief or a factory manager, as a historian I would have been incapable of fulfilling this obligation competently. Unlike our engineers, however, I would have declined the “honor “ of undertaking tasks for which I have no skills or specialized training.
Notes
With rare exceptions, Eastern European engineers lack any talent and understanding for politics. This fact was acknowledged with great honesty by former President Yeltsin, who confessed that he could not sleep at night because he did not know what decisions to take the next day.
Evidence of this political ineptitude is abundant in our country. Thus, in 1995 5e PNTCD party was taken over by Eng. Ion Diaconescu (an engineer ) from Corneliu Coposu, who had managed to bring the party to an electoral representation exceeding 30%. Today, opinion polls give PNTCD a maximum of 2% of the electorate's preferences…
In 2004, when Calin Popescu Tariceanu ( an engineer ) took over PNL from Theodor Stolojan ( an economist )and Valeriu Stoica (a lawyer ) , the Liberals attracted over 20% of the electorate's preferences. Today, this share has dropped in the polls to approximately 10%, and the downward trend continues.
In 2004, Mircea Geoana ( another engineer ) took over a PSD that was at the forefront of Romanians' electoral preferences, halving the number of its supporters (from 34% to approximately 14% today).
