Source and evidence

By trying to put the blame for a very severe misdeed on someone else, Daniel Morar, a head of DNA (National Anti-Corruption Department), actually put the blame on Traian Basescu. In fact, he pointed to the President as the source that unveiled in the open the recording allegedly incriminating minister Remes and ex minister Muresan. While Robert Turcescu, host of the TV talk show, was pressing him, Daniel Morar kept on denying that the documents had leaked to the Romanian Public Television from the prosecutor handling the case or from himself. And this is how the head of the DNA made it plain that the respective document had reached Cotroceni Palace. It is common logic that shows the guilty must be sought for in Cotroceni Palace, at the highest level, since it was not prosecutors who plotted the fake.
According to the law, the release of materials thought to be evidence is sanctioned because the law bans such a practice. There are at least two reasons for it. The unveiling of information is risky for the success of the inquiry and it may jeopardize the prosecutor's work. On the other hand, until the respective information turns into relevant evidence, meaning judicial proves, until the proves become part of an indictment to reach court after the accused has learned about the indictment, to release such information to the public means to break the presumption of innocence, to nail to the wall people who may prove innocent and compromise their honor and public credibility.
In the first case, if the person under watch is indeed guilty, he gets away with it because of procedure break. Therefore the law protects both the progress of investigations and citizens' basic rights. This is why law breaks are severely punished, no matter who commits them. Since the President keeps silent, we can only admit that Daniel Morar is right. Therefore it was from Cotroceni Palace that the information leaked to the Romanian Public Television.
But how come the recording broadcast on this channel last Wednesday had reached Cotroceni Palace ? Why did Daniel Morar send it there and to whom ? We know that the so-called evidence against Remes and Muresan was recorded in the last week of September. And this was the last time the members of the commission established to decide whether certain officials should be investigated or not got together. The commission was suspended because of minister Chiuariu's argument that several commission members were in a conflict of interests. Secondly, the commission was simply dismembered by means of the government's emergency ordinance. Therefore the recording couldn't have been meant for a ghost commission in Cotroceni Palace. Than for whom ?
The answer to this question is the key to several mysteries of the recent past. It was Traian Basescu who started the trend of investigations made on TV, of disclosing information from cases in progress, not part of indictments. While browsing the information he used to get at Cotroceni Palace as head of state, the President broke both the rule of the game and the law several times, by releasing via some press mercenaries information true or faked in order to compromise people he took for adversaries. It has been a kind of ritualistic exercise. Sometimes Traian Basescu made use of such information overtly, in his own statements.
This time it is as clear as daylight that Traian Basescu is the source of this disclosing. And he must be sanctioned for it. But Daniel Morar is guilty too. He too broke the law when providing the President with such documents, since the President hasn't got the constitutional right to stick his nose in criminal cases.
As for the public television, an institution we pay for, it had no right to participate in obvious manipulation originating from an illegal deed, even if it was the head of state himself who had done it.

Sorin Rosca Stanescu
Ziua friday 12 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english