PM Ponta: Successful academics should be encouraged to get involved in governing

Photo credit: (c) Grigore POPESCU /AGERPRES Photo

Prime Minister Victor Ponta says that successful people in the academic and university areas should be encouraged to get involved in governing and in future reforms.

Speaking at the University Politehnica of Bucharest on Wednesday, he asserted, 'If there's something I wish to significantly change, it's a certain approach over the last years, seeing people from the university environments as sort of public enemies, who deserve being kept away, who should not be in the Parliament or in the Government, or anywhere. Academician [Dinu] Giurescu resigned from the Parliament to assume a management position in the Romanian Academy, and I thought that many years ago, when the Romanian Parliament and universities were founded, the idea was to have as many university people as possible, so that they make good laws and govern the country properly. Only recently we came to think that the most important thing is to gather various files on them, push them to retirement, keep them out any position, especially of the Parliament or from ministerial offices; at any rate, not accepting them in offices where they could decide something good for Romania.'

Ponta qualified this as 'more than a big injustice.'

'This is a big mistake, and I really wish we found a solution to reward and thank those in the universities, those with academic merits who still want — I can't see why, after all that happened to them — to get involved in the life of society. I really wish we repair this wrongdoing, and I want as many outstanding university representatives as possible agree to give their little available time to help the rest of us, who lack the necessary academic experience to change things in a positive way. I think that successful academics should actually...

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