Financiarul

In his pathological euphoria President Traian Basescu can imagine that he is competing in elections with Napoleon Bonaparte himself, said former President Ion Iliescu, honorary chairman of the Social Democratic Party, on Sunday.

“Mr Traian Basescu boasted in Craiova [southern Romania] that he ‘is competing in elections with Ion Iliescu.’ I am sorry for him, but he does not longer have this chance,” said Ion Iliescu in his own blog.
As for the “demagogical” statement, according to which “at Ion Iliescu’s time [the media barons] Voiculescu, Patriciu and Vantu are said to have consolidated,” Ion Iliescu thinks it is discrimination.

“Why on earth does he make such a discrimination and does not continue the enumeration according to which, at the same time too, Basescu and Berceanu and Videanu and the Cocos family, with their entire clientele, consolidated too? Mr Basescu, his family and close friends should not underestimate themselves from this point of view! Actually Mr Basescu’s thesis according to which ‘corruption and thefts are said to flourish at times of quiet and social equilibrium’ is wrong.

On the contrary, as experience shows it, it amplifies at the very times of strain, perturbation of the political and social climate, of permanent scandals and institutional conflicts, which President Basescu has been fuelling for five long years. And as for his outlook on modernization, in general, and on the modernization of the state, in particular, we have already understood it. We have had enough of it! It’s too much of a good thing!” concludes the former Head of State.

President Traian Basescu said on Saturday in Craiova that during this election campaign he would not fight Mircea Geoana, he would fight Ion Iliescu, whom he would defeat. He added that he had seen that Ion Iliescu said, when Mircea Geoana handed in his candidacy for the supreme position in the state, that he was handing over to him, a reason for which he had the impression that his rival in the election was the former President.

Later Basescu told a news conference given in Craiova that Social Democrat Mircea Geoana wanted to change the country into what Ion Iliescu had changed it too, namely “a quiet, peaceful country, under which Vantu, Voiculescu, Patriciu flourish.”