Interview-event with Gabriel Liiceanu for HotNews readers. “I’ve been obsessed with this for many years…”

“The chain of corruption is terrible and it is stretched like an octopus over Romanian society”, believes the philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu, in an extensive interview given to the public of HotNews.ro and which we will publish on Sunday, on Easter day.

Gabriel Liiceanu, the director of the Humanitas publishing house, claims that it has been many years since he studied the documents of international and Romanian institutions, related to corruption. He says some are written in the language of numbers or in a way that the general public doesn’t agree with. And that’s why information doesn’t end up being perceived at its true magnitude. Beyond the style, however, the reality revealed in official documents and studies, says Liiceanu, is terrible.

“Something is catching the Romanian society. The thing that grips society, I tell you from the beginning, because I have been obsessed with this matter for many years, is the degree of corruption of the public administration. This means from the mayors of the communes to the top of the political society”, considers the philosopher.

Gabriel Liiceanu says that, at this moment, it has gone from corruption to corruption accompanied by defiance.

“I’m Underworld”

We are, says the philosopher, witnesses “of a discourse that has reached the limits of ultimate cynicism. We don’t have any laws to sanction this behavior where you go out on the street and say you’re a thug. But there is the electorate that would disqualify him on the spot”.

These behaviors have become normalized. “A minister of agriculture said: “And what if I hired my daughter in the ministry? Every father loves his little girl.” We continue to live in these habits and it seems natural”, claims Liiceanu.

“Competitions for public positions are farces. At one point, I took out a book made by Valeriu Nicolae with the CVs of all the parliamentarians. It’s scary! There were people who were doing two or three doctorates at the same time and had multiple services in cities hundreds of kilometers from each other. They were hallucinatory things!”.

Tomorrow, Sunday, May 5, you can read in HotNews.ro what Gabriel Liiceanu thinks about the elections in Bucharest, about Klaus Iohannis and about the solution left at the disposal of Romanian society.