The price rising in this electoral year has left Romanian politicians without masks, showing their real faces of populists and demagogues. The international energy price rising has led to a general fit of politicians, who think the international context is to be blamed, so the solution is cheat on the state budget. In fact, the economic crisis looming ahead in Romania is emerging from within the country and it is very predictable. The pay balance deficit, which is the rheumatism Romanian economy suffers from, is causing sharper and sharper pain. Romania is the fifth importer in Europe, although its economy is ten times smaller than Italy's. But the government has drawn no plan to cut on the deficit. They have relied on the immigrants who sent 5 billion Euro a year at home, without being aware that these funds can but enlarge the deficit because of the consume goods import and put inflationist pressure. Te reform and liberalization of economy would have been the solution, since we have got a Liberal government. But never mind it, Romania is the European country with the most charges and the last European country in terms of economic freedom. The sudden depreciation of national currency from 3, 3 to 3, 7 per 1 Euro was another clue of crisis. Then there followed the Stock Exchange decline. Still politicians didn't move a finger. The real estate market reached the bay then. But nothing happened in the government's palace. The government was counting on direct foreign investment of about 9 billion Euro a year, thought to save the current account deficit. But the foreign investment may go down, because the government has achieved no privatization except for the Romanian Commercial Bank, ready for it ever since Adrian Nastase was in power. This is the background against which the government opened Pandora's Box by irrationally rising pensions, also surrendering to Social-Democrat pressure. And there followed more expensive electricity and the private monopolies replacing the state monopoly in Romania. The electricity distributor Distrigaz Sud announced a 12 % rise of gases prices yesterday, also informing about the intention to proceed to another 20% rise starting with October 1. In brief, our economy is uncompetitive, the current account deficit is 75% greater than in 2006. It is chocking with fees and bureaucracy, threatened with 10% inflation and Stock Exchange and real estate crises. The budget deficit growing because of the larger pensions has got warnings from Brussels. And what are out officials doing under such circumstances? The labor minister Paul Pacuraru is announcing pensions will improve in January 1, whereas the Democrat-Liberals want them increased starting with August 1, 2008. The PM is announcing an extension of the "milk and croissant" program from schoolchildren, initiated by Adrian Nastase a few years ago. Will they give each child two croissants and two glasses of milk or will they use the program on university, MA and Ph.D. students too? Since the main political parties have gone mad because this is a year of elections, they are making lots of promises: help for Romanians to foot their electricity bills, a cut on the VAT for food, the increase of the minimum salary and better wages for teachers (why not for policemen too, since they protect us against thieves?) and so on. The only chance to save people is for politicians to lie and make promises which they won't keep after elections. In case they truly want to carry out the aberration above, economy is compromised years from now on. Our left-right demagogues haven't learned simple things yet. To devastate the budget to give electoral alms is to commit murder. If instead of achieving reforms the present officials destroy economy by populist measures, Romania will reach the third world straight and it will stand no chance to avoid it.

George SCARLAT