Cu exceptia catorva poze si titluri de capitole adaugate articolului original, Neue Zürcher Zeitung a preluat fidel textul aparut in Nine o'Clock: http://www.nineoclock.ro/index.php?issue=4588 <http://www.nineoclock.ro/index.php?issue=4588&page=detalii&categorie=homene ws&id=20091229-12291> &page=detalii&categorie=homenews&id=20091229-12291 Viewpoint
1989-2009: from tyranny to oligarchy 29.12.09 | by: <mailto:[email protected]> Ion Vianu | in: <http://www.nineoclock.ro/index.php?issue=4588&page=homenews> homenews On December 22, 1989, Ceausescu relinquished the power he had held on to so tightly for twenty-four years and an illegal regime of more than four decades came to an end. Two days later, on Christmas Eve, the tyrant-dictator was executed following a sentence passed by an exceptional tribunal. A typically communist show-trial, a basic denial of justice. Even Ceausescu summed it all up: You could have shot us without this masquerade. Yet, he was the author of his own undoing. Still, we are not morally entitled to condemn the sinister farce at Targoviste, as we wanted it to happen that way, and not without reason: at the time the Ceausescus were being executed, blood continued being shed in the streets of Bucharest. The power was absent. State authority vanished. This exceptional situation called for exceptional justice. Throughout history, there have been times of gap and beginnings. The communist regime ended the way it was born and lived in denial of legality, and Romanians were nurturing hope. If the new Romania had been the opposite of the former one, had it become a just country, the scrupulous democracy its citizens began to hope of in that early January, when Down with Communism inscriptions could be read on walls, then, we could have gotten over the masquerade at Targoviste. Yet, it wasnt meant to be. Neither in the wake of the events back then, nor to this day has it been established who fired on the people that December. The horrible suspicion, namely that the dead of the Revolution were the victims yet of another large scale deception remains the true founding document of post-communist Romania. And in the twentieth year since the Revolution, the dossier of this affair was closed, while this country is sentenced by international courts of law. The foundation of contemporary Romania is built on shifting sand: the lie about the events in December 21-25, 1989. Time has been burying the deeds deeper and deeper, and with it, the chance the historical truth being restored. It is on this shaky ground that todays Romania has been built. Its founders, the former communists, who saw us as a middle ground between a weakened Soviet Union and a charitable Europe, had to gradually get used to the idea our collective destiny is part of the Old Continent. By a gradual process, Romania has become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, later on, of the European Union. A gangster that visits an exquisite society frequently does not automatically become a gentleman. Similarly so, the access to European institutions has not made the Romanian oligarchy more civilized. During those first days of freedom, the atmosphere of conspiracy and betrayal consolidated for a very long time the network of influences and complicities that stood at the root of power in the new society. Further more, the dictatorship turned into tyranny. Ceausescus megalomaniac projects, whose implementation had personal glory as the sole purpose, stand testimony to this. Along with the wish for freedom and normality of an oppressed nation, the voracious appetite was also born of a power and wealth thirsty nomenklatura under pressure from a fierce master of whom they wished to get rid at any cost. It is this interplay between the wish to escape misery, to express oneself free, to recover a nations lost pride and the egotistic drive for possession of an increasingly prosperous oligarchy against which the drama of these past twenty years has been played. The outcome of this dialectics is the Romanian society of today. A society that suffers a great deal because the best of its children emigrate. A society where the state is weak, unable to oppose the selfish interests of an oligarchy built on the pattern of the former nomenklatura. The features of this weak state are as follows: an inefficient justice system, decaying public infrastructure (health, education, transports), the lack of a coherent national development program. Growth is anarchical, and aimed at satisfying egotistic oligarchs, while the public welfare is left out. As to expressing ones opinion, it appears that the securest wording shut up! was replaced by the derisory permission: You may speak as much as you want, it doesnt matter anyway. A summing-up twenty years after the events that marked Romanias destiny gives us no reason for being triumphant, nor desperate either: the confrontation is in full swing. The recent presidential election showed it could be won by a candidate who fought against the impressive propaganda apparatus of the mogul press and televisions (though it is just as true he was also helped by the incredible blunders of a childish opponent out of the control of a mediocre campaign staff. The debate, no matter how violent and passionate, had more than showed what the hottest topic was discussed: the reform of the state, of the rule of law first and foremost. Observance of the principle of separation of powers, trampled underfoot by a cynical law allowing Parliament to rule over the core of accusations leveled against a deputy or senator; the reform of education, health, maintenance and development of the transport network; food self-sufficiency. The communism state was excessive, an excess egotistically and willingly distorted over time by the ruling nomenklatura. Todays state is too weak, almost knelt-down by an oligarchy which is the direct descendant of the communist nomenklatura. This is where the main battle is being waged, this is where the hope in victory lies. Nothing warrants it, yet nothing rules it out either. Twenty years after the anti-communist revolution, we are still tilting between a post-Soviet oligarchy and a Western-type democracy. © Copyright Nine o'Clock 2010 ---------------------------- Vali "Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions are the chief mark of greatness." "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Aboneaza-te la <mailto:[email protected]> ngo_list: o alternativa moderata (un pic) la [ngolist] Please consider the environment - do you really need to print this email? _____ The bloody beginnings of the new Romania and the mystery that still resides around Ceausescu's murder are a weight around the nation's neck, according to psychiatrist and writer Ion Viona: "We have never really found out who gave the orders to shoot the dictator on that day in December. And the terrible suspicion that the thousand or more people who died in the revolution could be the victims of another farce of even greater proportions, lies at the heart of post-communist Romania. But twenty years after the Romanian revolution, the files on those events have been closed, and at the same time, our nation is being condemned by international courts. Romania today is standing in the quicksand of lies about the events of December 21 to 25. And if historical facts are sinking ever deeper into this quicksand, so are our chances of ever finding the historical truth." http://www.signands <http://www.signandsight.com/intodaysfeuilletons/1991.html> ight.com/intodaysfeuilletons/1991.html Von der Tyrannei zur Oligarchie Über die Lüge, die am Beginn des heutigen Rumänien steht http://www.nzz. <http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/aktuell/von_der_tyrannei_zur_oligarchi e_1.4891995.html> ch/nachrichten/kultur/aktuell/von_der_tyrannei_zur_oligarchie_1.4891995.html
