An After-the-Revolution Premiere

On Thursday, the 27th of July 2006, the unified permanent bureaus of the Senate and of the Deputies’ Chamber have decided that Radu Timofte, the SRI (the Romanian Information Service) director, and Gheorghe Fulga, the SIE (the External Information Service) director, would remain on the same positions until the Parliament would consider their resignation.

As expected, the DP (Democratic Party) leaders (the puppets of the President), after taking another look towards West, waiting for a sign from the Americans, stated the decision of the permanent Bureaus had been absurd.

This is also the opinion of the presidential servants, who are mainly former members of the Security, an opinion they shared in writing. This argument comes in addition to the traditional one of the Orange Revolution Guardians: it is a SDP (the Social Democratic Party) maneuver done to keep the present directors of the information services.

It doesn’t mater that, like Gheorghe Fulga and Ilie Botos, Radu Timofte hasn’t been the SDP supporter during the second round of the presidential elections. Moreover, he was the person with the decisive contribution to the Coup d’Etat that led to the overturning of the score in the first round. He activated his covered agents in the media, he blackmailed the former informers of the Security, and he collaborated with the TV station of Sorin Ovidiu Vantu and with the so-called civil society, all in order to attack SDP.

It doesn’t matter either that the decision of the permanent Bureaus has been voted by all the parliamentary parties. Of course, DP voted against it, but they are the slaves of the Cotroceni decisions once again, even though this is highly undemocratically.

The Cotroceni officials say and will continue to say that the decision of the permanent Bureaus is using an insignificant detail to stop the Great Man from fighting as much as he can against the caddish system.

The position of Traian Basescu in the Romanian democratic system could be identical to the one of many citizens of our country. The ones that are used with leaving the welding workshop without saying or even with taking the welding machines with them, the Romanians that like the soap-opera politics will be amazed of the fact that the two heads of the information services cannot resign due to such a small detail. However, this is not such a simple detail.

The things that happened at Cotroceni, on the 20th of July, are a clear example of breaking the legal procedures. In order to create the smoke curtain to cover the actual causes of the freeing and of the escape of Omar Hayssam, Traian Basescu put on the light and sound show entitled "The Resignation of the Three Secret Information Services’ Heads". He didn’t want to punish the people responsible for the disappearance of Hayssam, but he wanted to launch a smoke bomb, which was proved afterwards by the disappearance of the Virgil Ardeleanu character. Even though the resignation is an unilateral thing, the procedures have to be followed strictly. Radu Timofte and Gheorghe Fulga have to come in front of the Parliament and explain their decisions. Otherwise, the suspicion that Traian Basescu blackmailed the two leaders of the information services to determine them to resign could be seen as true.

Many Romanians are yet to see that we are facing a crucial moment in the after-the-Revolution politics:

1. For the first time after December 1989, we get to see a public confrontation between the Parliament and the President. A conflict, which could also be seen as one between the Romanian politicians and a man who wants to be a second Ceausescu. NLP (the National Liberal Party), SDP, GRP ( the Great Romania Party), DUHR (the Democratic Union of the Hungarians in Romania), and the Conservatory Party have all voted against Traian Basescu.

2. For the first time after the elections in 2004, Traian Basescu’s temptation of not going by the rules faced a serious reply.

The problem is that the democracy of the after-the-Revolution Romania could depend on the result of this war.