Suspect no. 1

The President of Romania Traian Basescu told the nation that the recording released on the Public Television didn't originate in the presidential safe. Still all the clues show it was him who ordered the plot.
Yesterday morning the President commented that, to the entire political class, he was the "suspect on duty". In the evening he said the evidence had reached his presidential safe, but that it was not him who had disclosed it. Daniel Morar, a head of the Anti-Corruption Department, also claimed that the evidence had not originated from the institution he ruled and he blamed the progress of the inquiry on his employees. Prosecutors Claudiu Dumitrescu and Lucian Papici had the legal means to search and arrest the agriculture minister Decebal Traian Remes, but they didn't do it, which is unexplainable. They preferred the media show, a political strike for Traian Basescu, to Justice. The result followed at once: minister Remes resigned.
The Superior Council of Magistracy started investigations to detect the source of the leaking information. On the other hand, Rodica Culcer, a coordinator of the News Department in the Romanian Public Television, says everything was legal and she mentions the Public Television is in the habit of censoring materials.
The National Council for Audio and Visual Media addressed the Prosecutor's Office on the break of human rights and of the Criminal Procedure Code.
As for the international press, there are commentaries on this latest high level corruption case in Romania and on the European Commission's warning about the state of Romanian agriculture. (...)

Razvan Savaliuc
Ziua friday 12 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english