The Minister of the Interior, Lucian Bode, is the fourth member of the cabinet accused of academic fraud. In 2021 and 2022, two ministers had been pushed to resign following revelations of the same type.
by Mirel Bran (Bucharest, correspondent)
The Romanian government is shaken by a series of plagiarism cases. Several ministers accused of having copied part of their doctoral thesis are weakened. Lucian Bode, in charge of the interior, defended in 2018 a thesis on the energy security of Romania at the University of Cluj (northwest of the country). Appointed Minister in December 2020, he should have made his doctoral thesis public, but he refused access to the manuscript. The university did the same, on the grounds that the text had been published. However, there is no trace of this research work in libraries and bookstores in Romania.
To defend itself, the University of Cluj supported in November 2022 that only 2.95 % of the thesis in question had been plagiarized. “I salute the result of this evaluation, had immediately congratulated Mr. Bode. My thesis is correct and I can keep my title of doctor.” But The independent media Pressone revealed shortly after that 65 of the 194 pages of the thesis had been copied. Embarrassed by this survey, the university immediately decided to check the manuscript again. “The suspicions of plagiarism is confirmed and the ethical slippages have deeply vitiated this thesis,” concluded the University’s ethics committee.
Discontent of this reversal of the situation, the Minister brought a lawsuit against the establishment on January 5. He lost first instance on Tuesday, January 17. “The accusations against me are unjustified, they are motivated by political considerations,” defended Mr. Bode.
The Prime Minister also concerned
He is not the only one in the Romanian political scene to know this uncomfortable situation. In November 2021, the Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitization, the Liberal Florin Roman, resigned from his post following an investigation by the investigative journalist Emilia Sercan proving the plagiarism of his thesis . On September 29, 2022, it was the turn of the Minister of National Education, Sorin Cimpeanu, also liberal, to make his apron, for the same reason.
Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciuca, was not spared by these accusations. Appointed head of government in November 2021, this 55 -year -old general was supposed to govern Romania with an iron fist. Nicknamed “the general of the desert”, he directed the battalion of the Red Scorpions, deployed alongside the American army during the operation “Extring Freedom” in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003. The Romanian darling of the Pentagon was also pointed out in 2003 during the battle of Nassiriya, Iraq. Novice in politics, Mr. Ciuca had highlighted these service states to reassure Romanian public opinion, the army being one of the most respected institutions in the country. But Emilia Sercan, a “hunter of plagiarism” self -proclaimed, was interested in the thesis of doctor of military sciences of the head of government. And his verdict – 42 pages plagiarized out of 138 – singularly sliced the image of an honest military of the Prime Minister.
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