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| ROMANIA BETWEEN TWO HOLIDAYS 29/12/2008 |
| (2008-12-29) |
| Last updated: 2008-12-31 15:02 EET |
Apparently immune to the world economic crisis which has reached them as well, Romanians have had an excellent Christmas vacation. Although according to tradition the Birth of Christ is a family holiday, tourists crammed into the mountain resorts on Prahova Valley and Brasov, in central Romania, since Wednesday afternoon until Sunday evening. President Traian Basescu himself had difficulties in making his way through the skiers with his snow-mobile, while taking his regular crowd-bath.
In Bucharest, Basescu’s virtual competitor for the presidential seat next year, independent Sorin Oprescu, who is Bucharest's general mayor, managed to secure three world records for the capital city. Thus, Bucharest entered the Guinness World Book of Records in the last days of December with the highest number of Santas almost 4000 who offered gifts in the street, the longest smoked sausage (392 meters) and the largest fruit-and-whipped cream cake (281 kg). But the other side of the coin in Romania’s capital were the many emergencies that required the intervention of ambulances, police and of the SMURD – the Mobile Emergency Service for Resuscitation and Extrication.
Hundreds of respiratory virus infections, almost one hundred car accidents, tens of digestive problems, suicide attempts, fractures and alcoholic comas required physicians' assistance, almost traditional on Christmas when the incidence of of health problems usually increases. The sign of our times were eight drug addicts who, for the holidays, overdosed, while several others went into withdrawal because they tried to go cold turkey.
Emergency hospitals in Bucharest had to take over patients from neighbouring counties, where, according the daily Gardianul, ''physicians have shut down the hospitals and went home.'' ''There has been blood on the first snow'' throughout Romania, the daily Ziua reports. In only 48 hours, seven people lost their lives, thirteen were injured in road accidents, caused by the slippery roads, poor visibility and drunk drivers. ''The roads to mountain resorts have turned into death traps'', the papers write, reporting that both road and railway traffic between Bucharest and Brasov was disrupted because of a jeep which fell 10 meters down on the rails, damaging the high power lines that supplied the railway engine.
Elsewhere in the news, we learn that 2009 will be, according to the daily Gardianul, ''The year of the Ox in politics'', and that ''highly favoured by stars seems to be the head of state, Traian Basescu, whose sign forecasts luck in the presidential elections next year.'' On Saturday, the third day of Christmas, Basescu chaired a meeting of the government that was born with his help through the association of the two largest political parties in Romania, the pro-presidential Liberal Democratic Party (PDL) and the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD).
''Traian Basescu is up to new tricks'', the daily Evenimentul Zilei headlines, adding that, ''in the name of the crisis'', the Cabinet headed by Emil Boc has announced that it will not keep the exuberant populist promises the parties made in the election campaign. Consequently, the 5% VAT for basic food, the 50% rise in teachers' salaries, the 45% increase in the pension point alongside a rise in the minimum wage are now out of the question. All this is tantamount, according to the daily Romania Libera, to ''Basescu backing an unpopular government.''
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