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| PROS AND CONS FOR ROMANIA'S PRESIDENT TRAIAN BASESCU (30.04.2007) |
| (2007-04-30) |
| Last updated: 2007-04-30 13:46 EET |
The election campaign held in the run up to the May the 19th referendum is in full swing. Ardent supporters or adversaries of suspended president Traian Basescu have been pleading for or against the idea that he should continue to be Romania’s president after the mid May referendum.
While some of the Romanians left for May Day mini-holiday, others preferred to take to the streets in support of their political beliefs. The Social Democratic party, the main opposition party in Romania, has strongly advocating the dismissal of the president whom they accuse of having violated the Constitution. They haven’t disregarded Basescu’s promise to step down within five minutes after his suspension by Parliament. Social-Democrat leader Mircea Geoana:
“Mr. Basescu has panicked. He realizes that people’s support for him has diminished of late, with opinion polls showing he has lost more than 20 points in two months. I haven’t seen such a slump, of 25 points, in the electorate’s preferences in any democracy, except for the Watergate scandal involving US President Richard Nixon. Basescu is afraid of the people, scared of losing immunity and is now trying to find all sorts of bogeymen and evil forces in parliament in order to justify his fear of voters. He’s scared.”
In exchange, the Liberal-Democrats have urged the population to come to the polls in large numbers, saying that what is really at stake, is not president Traian Basescu himself, but the fight between oligarchs who use state institutions to serve personal interests and those who want Romania to become a country where the rule of law reigns supreme. For this reason, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party, both supporters of president Basescu, believe that indifference, apathy, staying at home during the referendum of May the 19th would be a crime.
The suspended president has supporters even in Paris, where around 150 people have gathered on the famous Trocadero esplanade. They’ve carried placards reading “Down with the cleptocrats’ dictatorship”, and “Romanian MPs, Europe’s shame” and have chanted slogans against the 322 Romanian MPs who voted for the suspension of the president; the protesters have also described the decision by the Romanian parliament as utterly anti-democratic, since the accusations leveled against President Basescu had not been confirmed by the Constitutional Court. Here is how two protesters motivate their presence in the rally.
(Ioana Mera): “We have come here to support president Basescu, for what is happening now seems to be a shame for Romania.”
(Augustin Varlav): “I am jurist in Paris and have come here to back president Basescu. I believe we, the Romanians in the Disapora, can do at least this.”
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