By Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, May 3 2007 (IPS)

Over the past months, the Romanian Parliament passed a censorship motion against reformist justice minister Monica Macovei and suspended President Traian Basescu. As the elected representatives of the people get increasingly entangled in power games, prominent intellectuals try to speak up, only to be slandered in response.

“Nowadays we are assisting at the break of the majority of the Romanian political class from the natural course of history and from the wishes and aspirations of most of the Romanian people. This is the real political crisis Romania is going through at the moment,” says an ‘Appeal of the Intellectuals’.

Initially signed by 60 of the most prominent Romanian writers, journalists, philosophers and artists in February, the statement later gathered about 5,000 signatures.

“I believe we are witnessing the deepening of the gap between an increasingly vibrant civil society and the political society which is still dominated by obsolete and base structures,” Vladimir Tismaneanu, director of the Centre for the Study of Post-Communist Societies at the University of Maryland told IPS.

Tismaneanu is one of the initial signatories of the appeal of the intellectuals as well as head of the presidential commission for the analysis of the communist dictatorship in Romania. As a result of his report, in December 2006, President Traian Basescu issued an official condemnation of the communist regime in Romania.

A condemnation of communism as a whole would be highly controversial, and Tismaneanu insists that this is not the intention of his report. What the report recommended, the scholar told IPS, was the condemnation of the communist regime leading Romania between 1947 and 1989.

President Basescu was a champion of the cause of the condemnation of communism, which is described by Tismaneanu as one of the “moral priorities” facing contemporary Romania.

Also a “moral priority” is the fight against corruption, another sphere where Basescu took a leading role, by supporting reformist justice minister Monica Macovei. The European Commission often referred to Macovei as the main engine behind the cleaning up of the justice system, without which the country could not have joined the EU on Jan. 1, 2007.

In mid-February, a senate dominated by the Social Democrat Party passed a simple motion asking for resignation of the politically non-affiliated Macovei. On Mar. 1, some of the signatories of the appeal of the intellectuals, along with six civil society organisations, organised a march of support for Macovei.

Hundreds of people showed up in University Square, where the demonstration took place, and many more signed a letter of support for the minister. At the time, the intellectuals were warning that Macovei’s enemies would do anything, even restructure the government completely, in order to get rid of a threatening minister.

The government was then a coalition of the Democratic Party (from which Traian Basescu originates), the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu and the Hungarian Party.

On Apr. 1, the Liberals and the Hungarians, with the support of the Social Democrat dominated Parliament, formed a minority government from which they eliminated the Democrats. The place of Macovei was taken by Tudor Chiuariu, judicial counsellor of Liberal businessman Relu Fenechiu.

Over the past year, President Basescu has been engaged in an open conflict with the Liberal Party and the prime minister, whom he calls a “tool of the oligarhs.”

The appeal the Romanian intellectuals signed in Feb is not just a statement of outrage at the detachment of the political class from the concerns of the citizens. It is also an expression of support for Basescu, praised for three “important achievements”: waging a war against corruption, opening of the archives of the communist secret police, and officially condemning communism.

Philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu was one of the initiators of the appeal. Less than one month after the launch of the appeal, Liiceanu was the subject of a press attack coordinated by daily newspaper Ziua.

On Feb. 27, Ziua published extensive material under the title Liicheanu (dirty, scheming individual), in which the philosopher is accused, among other things, of having plagiarised the influential German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The passages brought as evidence merely show that Liiceanu, a scholar of Heidegger and the translator of the works of the German thinker to Romanian, was quoting Heidegger in his analyses.

What the passages actually show is that Ziua was leading a slander campaign against the philosopher. – Liiceanu became a target of these abominable attacks precisely because of his capital role in writing the appeal,” said Tismaneanu.

Sorin Rosca Stanescu, director of the daily newspaper, is a former business partner of Liberal Dinu Patriciu. Patriciu is manager of the largest oil company in the country, Rompetrol, and a close political ally of the prime minister. He was investigated for corruption during Macovei’s mandate as minister.

But Tismaneanu does not refer to that. Confessing that he too was a victim of a slander campaign led by Ziua since 2006, he sees behind these attacks people who want to protect the old regime – the Communist Party continuing into the Social Democrat Party – by discrediting the condemnation of communism and the fight against corruption.

The interests of apparently opposing camps converged in this campaign against the intellectuals. The timely alliance between the Social Democrats and the Liberals in order to bring down Macovei is proof of that, Tismaneanu says.

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