Alarm at the Black Sea

It is Romania’s interest to promote the supporting of the democratization wave of the former Soviet states from the Black Sea. And it has to be done in all the international instances it is a part of. This is the opinion of Traian Basescu, which he has after the 15-year-old experience of the after-the-Revolution Romania.

The democratization process for the former Soviet space surrounding the Black Sea will be successful only if it meets a lot of involvement from everyone, including Romania, the President said at the opening of the "New Europe. Who is afraid of democratization?" seminary. This is organized by the Association of the Students of the Political Sciences Faculty (ASPSF) of the SNSPA (the National School for Political and Administrative Sciences), under the aegis of the Ministry of External Affairs, and the participants are students from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, the Moldavian Republic, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Bulgaria and Belarus.

DROP-BY-DROP DEMOCRACY Basescu talked about Romania’s experience after the 1989 Revolution, which, even though it was ruled by regimes democratically chosen, was astonishing the Occidental democracies with the "periodical repetition of events like the rebellions of the miners". He explained the students the things that the Occident and our country have to do in order to help the former Soviet neighbors on the shore the Black Sea get over this kind of moments.

"The fact that in a former totalitarian state the elections are won by democratic politicians is not enough, because the totalitarian structures continue working under these winning politicians", President Basescu emphasized. He said that leaders like Victor Iuscenko, the Ukrainian President, and Mihail Saakasvili, the Georgian President, have to be supported by the occidental democratic states in the European Union and NATO. This involves not only public statements, but financial and human assistance as well, with the purpose of reforming the institutions of the states that are used to the totalitarian mentality and methods.

DANGERS AND SOLUTIONS "15 years after the Revolution in 1989, Romania still has problems with the normal functioning of the democratic institutions, and there are laws that are not abided by", the President stated. He added, "The transition to democracy of the former communist states ends when the people abide by the laws in real life, when all the people of the state’s institutions think for the people, but not against them".

His statement from the seminary was live on at least one TV station, but the President asked the press not to have any first page headlines regarding his opinion about the after-the-elections situation in Ukraine. Even though he wasn’t so sure he was doing the right thing by calling things by their proper names, Basescu drew a parallel between the situation in our country and the one in Ukraine, referring to the obstacles in front of democratization especially. "Imagine that all the institutions of the state that one democratic leader considered as being institutions that worked against the people, which really happened during the communist regime, would have been annulled one or two days after the Revolution in Romania or Ukraine. The institutions cannot be annulled overnight, simply because there is nothing to replace them so quickly", the President said.

According to him, in cases like Romania’s, the other occidental countries found it difficult to understand the process, taking into account that we had "structures created by very powerful dictatorships, more powerful than in many other states". "This is why I suppose Ukraine didn’t have an easier job than Romania with the dictatorial structures and I suppose President Victor Iuscenko is facing great difficulties in correlating the political will, the political statement and the reality of the functioning of the Ukrainian institutions".