Presidential Elections - Roman Signals for the Second Round

Petre Roman doesn’t want to express his opinion about his counter-candidate that he might support in the second round of the Presidential elections, an announcement about this being supposed to appear at the "right time".

However, during yesterday’s debate at the Romanian Press Club, Roman expressed his options. First of all, he said his personal relationship with Traian Basescu is "quite compromised" for now. The DF (Democratic Force) candidate said after that the present DP (Democratic Party) leader "cannot handle the Presidential function" and that he has "an uncontrolled message", referring to the big "diplomatic mistake" he recently made with the critics towards the French Prime minister. When he was his collaborator, reminded Roman, there were extremely difficult episodes for Basescu, which he surpassed only with Roman’s help. An example about that was the moment in which Basescu had been accused of selling the Romanian fleet. Roman also talked about his support for Basescu as a Minister of Transport, even though the RDC (Romanian Democratic Convention) didn’t want him.

CRITICS. Petre Roman said he had also criticised Adrian Nastase many times, because there were times when it seemed like "corruption felt like home in Romania", but he admitted he had once supported the present Prime Minister in front of Ion Iliescu for the job of Minister of external Affairs.

About his relationship with Ion Iliescu, Roman said he doesn’t have a political project common with him, even though, in 2002, reconciliation appeared when Iliescu launched an attack against "the godfathership capitalism". (By Oana Stancu)