Basescu Wants a Young Officer for the RIS

On Monday night, Basescu put an end to the speculations regarding the naming of a DP (Democratic Party) member (like Cozmin Gusa, Dorin Iacob or even Virgil Magureanu) as the chief of the RIS (Romanian Information Service) by announcing that he wants a young officer and not a politician for this job.

COMMITMENT. Traian Basescu promises that he will not use the RIS files in the political fight and that he will make public the information regarding the corrupt dignitaries

On Monday night, on Realitatea TV, the chief of the state stated that he does not support the idea of naming the politicians as leaders of the secret services, because a politician does not have any authority upon the specialists and risks to make the service insufficient, even for the President himself. "We have to get it over with this story, because some of the chiefs of the information services floated over these services", Basescu said. He got back to the information according to which one of the services’ chief will remain in his present position. On the other hand, he said that this would be made step by step, because the RIS and EIS (External Information Service) work together with the similar institutions in the other countries. One cannot change a secret service chief over night. He has to be allowed to make the data transfer and to meet all the secret service chiefs he has ever collaborated with. "The times when the secret service chiefs were changed like the enterprise directors have passed", Basescu stated.

APPRENTICE

The new RIS chief will be a young officer to evolve alongside Radu Timofte, Basescu revealed. "As a newsletter, I can tell you that I have asked Radu Timofte to find a young officer, promoted after the Revolution, who, for now, might be the chief deputy of the Romanian Information Service leader. First of all, I am thinking about officers who graduated from the National Information Academy after the Revolution, so young officers", the President announced.

FILES

Basescu also stated that the RIS files "will have their covers wide open", that he is not to use the information from RIS in the political fight, but he will make public the information about the corrupt dignitaries. According to him, there are many who, when meeting a secret service chief, would tell: "I want the files of X,Y,Z". "I am not interested in it and I won’t do it, because I respect myself. There should be free access for everything when they will be open", Traian Basescu stated. He mentioned that he asked RIS and EIS to focus on the high-level corrupt people as well. He also stated that the Law for the access to the files of the former Security must be modified immediately, because "the law came out in a wrong way and limits even the RIS will of being more transparent". The President also talked about the solution for the transfer of the archives from RIS and NCSSA (the National Council for the Study of the State’s Archives), and this solution includes the transfer of the building in which they are as well.

COZMIN GUSA COMPARED TO VANGHELIE

Basescu’s statements put an end to the speculations that some of the DP members were fighting to launch. They were trying to name Cozmin Gusa as the RIS or EIS leader. In DP, Gusa is seen as an implant of Virgil Magureanu in the party, after the merger between DP and NRP (National Romanian Party) did not manage to enforce the power of his Dorin-Iacob-style tools. On Monday night, Basescu hit Gusa directly, comparing him to Marian Vanghelie, who attacks the President in order to get in the headlights of the press. It is supposed that Gusa, former general secretary of SDP (Social Democratic Party) and present member of the J.T. (Justice and Truth) Alliance, does not need this kind of tricks anymore. Actually, there is a rumor in DP regarding to which Basescu would have tried a move to get Gusa out of the politics by proposing him the job of chief of the presidential Administration. However, this would mean no connections to the security-issues counselor. In this way, the former SDP member might be taken out of the race for the DP leadership. Gusa seems to be aware of this scenario, since he recently stated that there was no such job proposed to him. Nevertheless, he said he would not accept it because the only thing he wants now is a parliamentary carrier.

ANTICIPATED ELECTIONS

The chief of the state revealed that he has an agreement with Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu, which reads that, in case the governing strategy cannot be applied, anticipated elections should be the solution. Basescu said that this is a better option than getting in front of the electorate of 2008 and say: "I haven’t been quite lucky in my life". He also stated that their jobs are not any obstacle to Tariceanu or any other minister.

MERGER

Traian Basescu stated that DP would agree with the merger with NLP (National Liberal Party) only if a popular-European party would be formed, because there is no way for the DP to go towards liberalism. He showed that the "maximum granting" that DP is to make is the formation of a popular- European party as a conclusion of the merger. He stated that 80% of the DP members don’t agree with leaving the Socialist International.