Romania 2007 seen from abroad

The war the ex partners in the Liberal-Democrat Alliance are fighting could not show a positive 'image' of Romania abroad. The whole adventure, culminating in the attempt to revoke the head of state, was first perceived as very worrying. It was presented as such by two main information means. By the political means the representatives of the PD (Democrat Party) provided European officials and bureaucrats and first of all the European Christian-Democrats, their present partners, with their version of the conflict, claiming that President Traian Basescu and the ex Justice minister Monica Macovei had been depicted as victims in the battle against the corrupted, 'oligarchic' system. By the media means the international press reported on similar messages from civil society voices, the same ones highly critical of the 'neocommunism' of the Romanian governments in the early 90s. The diplomatic reports sent by embassies in Bucharest probably took such an interpretation into account.
Still the foreign perception seems to have reached a balance in the meantime. Continental leaders have used the international diplomacy language to say that domestic political battles are Romania's business, like in any democracy. The only thing to be emphasized is that stability is desirable. During PM Tariceanu's recent visit to Brussels, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, a president of the European Commission, insinuated that the report on Romania, now in progress, the first report after the accession to the EU, would be 'fair'. It seems to mean that it won't be negative, as some people have prophesized, speculating that the protection (which we call 'safeguard') clauses will be applied. The NATO Summit due next April in Bucharest has also been reconfirmed, which is proof that domestic disputes are not thought to be so severe to cast doubt on the state's progress as a representative institutional system.
Such visible balancing of the perception is the effect of Monica Macovei's positive image in Brussels and also of the positive image her successor, Tudor Chiuariu, is enjoying. Until a short while ago he was a chief of the Anti-Fraud Department, in excellent terms with the OLAF in the EU. The same goes for the foreign affairs, our interface in diplomacy. Adrian Cioroianu, the new foreign minister, is less experienced that his Liberal predecessor Mihai Razvan Ungureanu. But he too is a valuable historian, just like the latter, and he experienced a few months of being a MEP. As for the support the President has got from the respective group of intellectuals both in Romania and abroad, it can no longer be as credible as it was right after 1990, when Romanian society was split in the former system, clumsily disguised as a democratic state, and true reformists. The authors of pro-Basescu appeals are now offending one of the parties that have made Romania European and they are supporting a President who has got his merits, but who started his political career as member of the Front for National Salvation, a group derived straight from the Communist Party. And I am not developing upon his recent blunders (calling a journalist 'filthy gypsy', invoking 'God's will' and so on)
Briefly, no matter how disagreeable, the political scandal in Romania has been in keeping with Constitution procedures: state institutions are working as usually, even if the structure's stability is weak and - the supreme argument, surely - economy has been ceaselessly improving, with a recently reported spectacular budget increase. Hence a fully positive 'image', nevertheless...

by Ion Bogdan Lefter
Ziua http://www.ziua.net/english