Calin Popescu Highlander and a sedative for Basescu

ZIUA spoiled the day of backstage servants. Yesterday before the start of the debate on the bill against the government, the ZIUA director Sorin Rosca Stanescu delivered live on Antena 3 TV station a bomb that exploded straight in the faces of those who had done everything to get power again, of the Front for National Salvation kind. Sorin Rosca Stanescu informed both public opinion and most of the MPs who had no idea about a protocol between the PSD and the PD (Democrat Party), established with consent from President Traian Basescu.
The Pharisee-like propaganda attitude of the President and of the PD and PSD leaders came out. They say one thing, but they do the other backstage. Traian Basescu claimed the PSD was public enemy no. 1 who supported the Liberal government from the shadow, and the PD leader Emil Boc claimed the same. But the PSD supported the government that much that they came up with the bill against the Tariceanu Cabinet. And the PD joined it. They also claimed the 322 MPs who voted for the suspension of the Romanian President were some villains to be driven away. But it was proved that Traian Basescu and the PD would have actually given anything for at least 232 of the 322 MPs to vote for the bill.
State interests were dropped in pubs and palaces. They proved indifferent to national priorities. National budget, election of MEPs, the NATO summit Bucharest is to house, assimilation of EU funds, fight against corruption, separation of economy from politics and no political interference in economy, they all are issues that Tariceanu government is concerned with and working for, despite the dreadful pressure. But the opposition has ignored them.
Right now both the PSD and the PD are in a more than embarrassing situation. They made fools of themselves in the eyes of their own electors. The PSD is a fool because of the prostitution with the PD to serve President Basescu, although just a few month before the party initiated the suspension of President Basescu and supported the Tariceanu government without PD members. It is also to be assumed that the PSD has got electors cleverer than the poor manipulated, people who honestly trust the left and would really like to see the PSD prove a modern left doctrine of the Tony Blair kind, instead of the old Communist smelling propaganda, as provided last night in the Parliament by Dan Mircea Popescu. Ceausescu himself would have voted for it, for something of the "redistribution to meets needs". But anyway, as foreseen, Mircea Geoana is history. The bill failed and he failed with it too.
The shoes the PD is in are even worse than those of the PSD. The Democrats voted against their own ministers in the first Tariceanu Cabinet, sacking them by bill. And they voted against the right government criticized by the PSD. Deputy Radulescu's speech against the Liberal Party resembles the denunciations common at the time when the ex Communist Secret Service in Romania used to get reports. But today he dares, like the PD does, to plead for lustration. There are also characters like Cristian Boureanu, most unrelenting enemies of the National Liberal Party, but who would have never reached the Parliament had there been no National Liberal Party. The latter will have to consider a priority such as ban on political migration or expelling from the Parliament as sanction.
But of course PM Calin Tariceanu, his government and party have got no reason to boast about victory. They passed the budget test, but obsessed President Basescu will do everything to sabotage the government. He had instigated against it one evening before the bill debate, urging the PSD and the PD to vote for no governmental project. As for the Tariceanu Cabinet's duties, some other time.

Roxana Iordache
Ziua thursday 4 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english