Ioana Lupea: „The Romanian people seem to be cursed to an eternal set back.”

Adrian Nastase’s come back in the leading positions of the main Romanian opposition party, with just a step away from becoming Romania’s Presidency candidate, brings us back to the 2004 moment. Then, we witnessed a famous confrontation between two former comunists, Basescu and Nastase.

Both the fight against corruption and the process of selling state owned companies to private investors, which Traian Basescu promised show us now that every step forward is revertible. The delays in solving political corruption cases and the unmendable decision to stop revealing former political police collaborators is reverting takes us to the past.

We became members of NATO and the European Union only to drown into nationalism once more. After Ceausescu, we turned to Ion Iliescu, then after Emil Constantinescu, to Ion Iliescu again. Now, after Traian Basescu, we risk going back to Adrian Nastase or stopping at Traian Basescu.

They both come from the same breed, even if they have developed differently. They both offer themselves as containers for the everyday frustrations felt by the Romanian people. And there’s a thin line between Basescu’s flattering and Nastase’s arrogance.

Nastase’s re-emergence will annihilate any political offer, with his capacity to polarize the anti-presidential options. The present leader of the Democrat Socialist Party (PSD) has seen his political death before his eyes and will fight hard for recognition. There will be a confrontation between the anti-Basescu and the anti-Nastase and then we will get to choose the smallest possible damage.

Romania isn’t given a chance for a change, incarnated by Barack Obama in the United States of America. Something new is not a trend in our case, it’s just a slight change. The promise to change something was used by every party in every campaign represents the way they change parts. And the great cinism lyes within the fact that they have kept their promise.

The clock runs backward, to the negotiations between PSD, the liberals, hungarians and the conservatives to form an Executive. The pro-presidential party is running out of time: just when it reaches to the main opposition party, the former adversary, Adrian Nastase has a comeback and ruins their plans.

The National Liberal Party will hang on, at least until the next elections. The Nastase-Iliescu duo needs time before the final battle for their party. The new PSD runs toward victory, not to compromise.

The liberals will become prisoners. Unfortunately, their present and future survival depends to PSD’s will and not to their inner resources.

The Democrat Liberal Party, (former Democrat Party), will throw Traian Basescu in the battle and will try to isolate PSD, with little success.

We also must consider Viorel Hrebenciuc’s stand. Hrebenciuc, a friend of the current president of PSD is a good friend of some influential liberals and liberal-democrats. The game is not over yet, it’s still up to Hrebenciuc.

The revolving situation of giving power to the same characters that experienced political status before and after the 1990’s, is what stops the evolution of romanian politics toward a true politics, and society’s development to european up-to-dateness.

Our life is still addicted to the political factor, and the private social factors are still very interested in who takes the power.