The Post-Communist establishment tries to discredit Romania’s President Basescu (Apr 13, 2006)

President Traian Basescu’s actions supporting a more resolute fight against high-level corruption eventually emerged into an actual political and media turmoil.

The post-communist establishment in Romania feels the danger of losing its plutocratic powers as Basescu and his allies—i.e. the intelligence community and, possibly, the former president Ion Iliescu—joined their efforts in a bid to clean-up the country’s political and business environment.

Therefore, the ‘new plutocrats’ and ‘les nouveau riches’ are fighting back by insidiously using either ‘human rights’ or ‘anti-communist’ issues.

First, earlier this year, the Parliament tried to oppose the upgrading of anti-corruption legal framework but it was forced to give up, as the EU officials intervened in a resolute manner.

The fact that, now, some prominent political gurus and potent businessmen are prosecuted for corruption and/or financial crimes, eventually turned a number of Liberal, Conservative and Social-Democrat leaders into President’s Basescu diehard enemies. Thus, the Liberals and the Conservatives—even if members of the Govt—are intending to re-launch some anti-communist bills (after 16 years since the fall of Communism, sic!), in order to dig up alleged links between Basescu and the former Securitate’s secret political police.

As the Senate passed a bill meant to ban former top-communists and secret services informers from key public offices, a Conservative MP tried to insert a paragraph to the bill which would specifically deny President Basescu’s right to stay in office. This absurd article was eventually excluded from the bill—that now has to be passed by the Chamber.

However, Basescu did not avoid further attacks. Some influent local media—controlled by Basescu’s opponents—recently re-fuelled allegations according to which Romania’s President purportedly was a Ceausescu’s ‘Securitate’ informer.

Thus, on Monday (April 10), Mugur Ciuvica (a diehard anti-Basescu militant) made public what he called “three MoD secret documents”, according to which President Basescu has been an informer of the military spy services, ‘Jurnalul National’ daily reported. The Presidency denies the accusations.



President Basescu had to deny ‘proofs’ already dismissed as false by court

A communiqué issued by the Presidency reads that the would-be ‘MoD documents’ were already used as ‘proofs’ during a court case that Ciuvica previously lost against President Basescu—who sued Ciuvica for defamation.

Curiously enough Ciuvica, after losing the lawsuit and after paying a fine of about ROL half billion, goes public again by using the same ‘proofs’—which appeared to have been cooked up under the previous Social-Democrat regime in an attempt to prevent Basescu from winning the 2004 presidential elections.

Even the Liberal minister of national defence, Teodor Atanasiu—who is not quite a Basescu’s fan—yesterday admitted that the ‘MoD documents’ to incriminate Basescu as a ‘Securitate’ informer were clearly forged.


Romania Report