Ion Iliescu (born March 3, 1930) is a Romanian politician. He was the elected President of Romania for
eleven years (three terms), from 1990 to 1992, 1992 to 1996, and 2000 to 2004. His first and second terms were separated from the
third term by the presidency of Emil Constantinescu. His successor is the former
Democratic Party leader Traian
Băsescu. Currently, Iliescu is Senator for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which is the largest single political party in Romania.
The PSD was one of several parties formed after the breakup of the National Salvation
Front, in the early 1990s.
Iliescu is widely recognized as the predominant figure in the first fifteen years of post-1989 Romanian Revolution politics. During his terms Romanian politics stabilized, and
Romania joined NATO. However, he is often accused by political opponents of retaining
communist convictions and allegiances, as well as tolerating corruption in the party he led
(successively named FSN, FDSN, PDSR, and PSD) and his administrations.
In 2005, investigations began that could eventually lead to Iliescu's trial on a number of charges, including crimes against humanity, related to considerable abuses of
power he allegedly committed during the years 1989-1990, especially during the Romanian
Revolution and the violent miners' riots of the early and mid-1990s. Supporters of Iliescu and
Iliescu himself claim that the investigations are an instrument of political vengeance by his opponents currently in power.
Family background
Iliescu's father, Alexandru Iliescu, was a railroad worker with Communist views during the period in which the Romanian Communist
Party was banned by the authorities. In 1931, he went to the Soviet Union to take
part in the Communist Party Congress of Gorikovo, near Moscow. He remained in the USSR for the next four years and
was arrested upon his return, dying in prison in 1945. During his time in the Soviet Union, Alexandru Iliescu divorced and
married Mariţa, a chambermaid.
Early life
Born in Olteniţa, Iliescu studied fluid mechanics
at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute and then as a foreign student
at the Energy Institute of the Moscow University. During his stay in Moscow, he
was the secretary of the "Association of Romanian Students" it is alleged that he knew Mikhail Gorbachev, although Iliescu always denied this. [1] Ceauşescu, however, probably believed a connection between the two
existed, since during Gorbachev's visit to Romania in July 1989, Iliescu was sent outside of Bucharest in order to prevent any
contact.[2]
Iliescu married Nina Şerbănescu in 1951; they have no children.
He joined the Union of Communist Youth in 1944 and the Communist Party in
1953 and made a career in the Communist nomenklatura, becoming a secretary of the
Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth in 1956 and a member of the Central
Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965. At one point, he served as
the head of the Central Committee's Department of Propaganda.[1] Iliescu later served as Minister for Youth-related Issues between 1967 and 1971.
However, in 1971, Romania's leader Nicolae Ceauşescu felt threatened by Iliescu -
as he was seen as Ceauşescu's heir apparent - and he was marginalized by and removed from all major political offices, being
assigned vice-president of the Timiş County Council (1971-1974), and later president of the Iaşi Council (1974-1979). In 1984, he was excluded from the Central Committee, and until 1989 he was in charge of Editura Tehnică
publishing house.[1]
1989 Revolution
The 1989 Romanian Revolution began as a popular revolt in
Timişoara, but after Nicolae Ceauşescu was
overthrown, Iliescu and a few other second-rank communists seized power and created an organization named National Salvation Front (FSN: Frontul Salvării Naţionale). Iliescu was quickly
acknowledged as the leader of the organization and therefore of the provisional authority.
Iliescu proposed multi-party elections and an "original democracy". This is widely held to have meant the adoption of
Perestroika-style reforms rather than the complete removal of existing institutions;
it can be linked to the warm reception the new regime was given in Mikhail Gorbachev and the rest of the Soviet leadership, and
the fact that the first post-revolutionary international agreement signed by Romania was with that country.
Iliescu did not renounce the communist ideology and the program he initially presented during the revolution included
restructuring the agriculture and the reorganization of trade, but not a switch to capitalism[1]. These views were held by other members of the FSN, such as
Silviu Brucan, who claimed in early 1990 that the revolution was against Ceauşescu, not
against communism. Iliescu later evoked the possibility of trying a "Swedish model" of
socialism.
According to his own statement, Vladimir Bukovsky is in possession of a document
containing the following address of Gorbachev to the Bulgarian leaders:
One of the Bulgarian leaders, Petar Mladenov, said: "Iliescu is very good for us, in
Romania". Gorbachev answered: "Yes, but let's not speak about this in public. We would do him great harm, let's keep silence"
[3][4]
After the 1989 Revolution
The National Salvation Front was originally meant to be organizing the free
legislative elections on 20 May 1990, and afterward disband itself
- however, it eventually ran in the elections, which it won with over 70% of the votes.
Iliescu during the revolution
|
Iliescu and George W. Bush
|
As a founding member, Iliescu followed the Front in its new avatars: the NSDF (National Salvation Democratic Front), then the
Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR), then the Social Democratic Party (PSD) (see Social Democratic Party of Romania). Progressively, the Front lost its character as a
national government or generic coalition, and became vulnerable to criticism for
using its appeal as the first institution involved in power sharing, while engaging itself in political battles with forces that
could not enjoy this artificial status (nor the credibility). Iliescu himself came to be seen as hostile to a proper
civic society, and more committed to a revised version of democratic centralism.
Under the pressure of the events that led to the Mineriads, his political stance has veered
with time: from a proponent of the Perestroika, Iliescu became a neophyte social
democrat, aligning himself with the Western European political spectrum. The main debate around the subject of his
commitment to such ideals is linked to the special conditions in Romania, and especially to the strong nationalist and autarkic attitude visible within the Ceauşescu regime. Most critics have pointed out that,
unlike most communist-to-social democrat changes in the Eastern bloc, Romania's tended to
retain various cornerstones (sometimes expressed with scandalous traits - to the Mineriads themselves can be added the slogan of
Iliescu supporters in the early 1990s, Noi nu ne vindem ţara! - "We will not sell off our country!").
The new Constitution was adopted in 1991, and in 1992 he won a second term
when he received 61% of the vote. According to Romanian political analysts such as Daniel
Barbu or Dan Pavel, his election was based almost exclusively on the rural population and
disoriented lower class industrial workers, controlled through manipulation from the state-controlled media (Televiziunea Română, the state television, was the only wide-scale TV channel until 1993). He
ran for a third time in 1996 but, stripped of media monopoly, that of virtually all urban citizens and even of some traditional
votes, he lost to Emil Constantinescu. Over 1,000,000 votes were cancelled, leading
to accusations of wide-spread fraud.
In the 2000 presidential election Iliescu ran again and won in
the run-off against the ultra-nationalist Corneliu Vadim Tudor. He began his third
term on December 20 of that year, ending on 20 December
2004. The center-right was severely defeated during the 2000 elections due largely to public
dissatisfaction with the harsh economic reforms of the previous four years as well as the political instability and infighting of
the multiparty coalition. Tudor's extreme views also ensured that most urban voters either abstained or chose Iliescu.
In the PSD elections of 21 April 2005, Iliescu lost the Party
presidency to Mircea Geoană.
Controversies
Mineriads
Allegations against Iliescu
He, along with other figures in the leading FSN, was allegedly responsible for calling the
Jiu Valley miners to Bucharest on 28 January and
June 14, 1990 to end the protests of the citizens (mainly
students) gathered in University Square, protests aimed against the ex-communist leaders of Romania. The pejorative term used to
describe this demonstration was the Golaniad (from the Romanian golan, rascal). The miners descended on the capital, armed with wooden clubs and bats
and attacked the protesters. They trashed the University of Bucharest, various
museums, and the headquarters of opposition parties, claiming that they were havens of decadence and immorality - drugs, firearms
and munitions, "an automatic typewriter", and fake currency [5] the miners had claimed as evidence later proved to be either non-existent, or (according to case)
black and white copiers, or compressed air rifles used for target practice.[citation needed] The miners' violence led to an official figure of at least 6 dead (some
sources estimate figures between 200 and 300 dead), with at least 5,000 injured. Miners shouted slogans such as Moarte
intelectualilor! ("Death to intellectuals") or Noi muncim, nu gândim ("We are the workers, not the thinkers" -
implying legitimacy).
Official explanations
The official motives gathered from press reports stated that the crowd gathered in University Square held not only an
unauthorised demonstration, which was still allowed to go on for days, but that these demonstrators were wielding un-democratic
ideals and anarachist slogans, as well as being a danger to public health. At least this last part is verifiable, University Square having become a cesspit of trash and human feces over the days in which demonstrators
gathered tightly in tents and bivouacs. [citation needed]
Iliescu later thanked the miners:
- "I thank you [miners] for all you've done these past few days, in general for your attitude of high civic conscience."
He expanded on this, declaring a right-wing liberal neo-fascist international conspiracy to have attempted the usurping of
legitimate power and the destruction of the progressive left within Romania.
According to his lawyer and the military prosecutor Dan Voinea, Ion Iliescu has been recently
placed under criminal law investigation (the official term for prosecution) with regard to the events that occurred in June 1990
in Bucharest. If convicted on all charges (that include crimes against humanity, accessory to murder and revolt, censorship), he
faces life imprisonment.
Constitution violations
Iliescu is accused by his opponents of having held three terms in office (four, counting the one between December 1989 and
June 1990), although the Constitution, adopted in 1991, during his first mandate
(1990-1992), was not to allow it. Before his unsuccessful campaign of 1996, the Constitutional Court of Romania ruled in favor of
his third candidature and henceforth of his third presidency, begun in 2000. In view of this, the accusation can be described as
biased, since it ignores the illegitimacy of ex post facto legislation within
the framework of Romanian constitutionalism. The situation is fairly similar to those in Russia
(Boris Yeltsin), Ukraine and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the same time, taking into account that Ion Iliescu
had a shorter first term and that he had a break during the second and the third term.
In 1995, the procedures of impeaching the president Ion Iliescu were started by the Romanian Democratic Convention, following a press interview in which Iliescu appeared to
deny the owners' rights as a whole to properties nationalized during the communist
period. The Constitutional Court agreed on the unlawfulness of the declaration, but the Members of Parliament rejected the
proposal of impeachment.
In the 2004 electoral campaign he actively supported the Social Democratic
Party of Romania (PSD) and their candidate Adrian Năstase, despite Romanian laws
forbidding the President from engaging in partisan politics. He dismissed accusations that he was violationg these laws by
remarking that he was "not the chief of state in Switzerland" (and thus inducing the image
of that country as excessively neutral). He argued that, since he was also a PSD candidate for the 2004-2008 Romanian Senate (the
upper chamber of the Parliament), he had the right to campaign for his supporting party, thus increasing the doubt that his
actions as President had been marked by a conflict of interest. Another 1996
decision of the Constitutional Court had ruled that the president in term, even not as a party member, may run on a party list at
the end of his mandate. The topic of the president's involvement in party politics is still a sensitive issue in Romania, largely
because of the legal precedent created by Iliescu, but also because of several contradictions in the laws themselves (coupled
with issues posed by the cautions of Romania's semi-presidential system, many
times pereived as ambiguous).
Alleged KGB connections
In 1995, the Ziua newspaper published an interview with an ex-KGB officer who declared
that Ion Iliescu was a KGB inductee. Iliescu denied any involvement, and Ziua journalists began to investigate the topic
in detail. However, only a few days later, Ziua alleged that its employees were being placed under the surveillance of the
Romanian Intelligence Service -- the official explanation was that the
secret service was in fact watching a spy that lived nearby. [citation needed]
The scandal on his alleged connections continued in 2003, when Russian dissident Vladimir
Bukovsky, who had been granted access to Soviet archives, declared that Iliescu and most of the Salvation Front members
were KGB agents, that Iliescu had been in close connection with Mikhail Gorbachev ever since they had allegedly met during
Iliescu's stay in Moscow, and that the Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a plot organized by the KGB - in order to regain control
of the country's policies (gradually lost under Ceauşescu's rule). [citation needed]
Pardons
On 15 December 2004, a few days before the end of his last
term, Iliescu pardoned Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners
during the early 1990s, who had been sentenced in 1999 to 18 years in prison in conjunction with the 1991 Mineriad. This has
attracted harsh criticism from all Romanian media. The United States Embassy released a
press statement calling the pardon "a surprising and worrying act".
For the pardon to be legal, it had to be countersigned by Adrian Năstase, the
incumbent Prime Minister. However, when asked by the press, Năstase first stated that he was not aware of the planned pardon,
then that he did not approve of it and that his signature was ultimately a mere formality. Upon returning from Brussels, he stated that he wasn't aware of what he had signed, and that he placed his trust in the President,
to the point of approving papers without reading them. Iliescu's party, the Social Democratic Party, stated that it could not be
associated with the President's decision, neither constitutionally, nor politically. Furthermore, they did not support the
decision and asked for its revocation, a position later adopted by Adrian Năstase himself. Finance Minister and Party
vice-president Mihai Tănăsescu said he would resign his Party position if Iliescu would return as
leader of the Social Democrats early in 2005.
Also pardoned other 46 convicted criminals, most controversial being:
- Vasile Buşe, former vice-president of the International Religion
Bank - convicted for abusing his powers in granting a loan of over 1 million USD
- Ioan Corpodeanu, former help of chief of police in Timiş - convicted for the deaths of several protesters during the Revolution of 1989 (through coincidence,
the pardon took effect exactly 15 years after the Revolution's beginning in Timişoara)
- Petre Isac, former presidential adviser - convicted for corruption
- Mihai Gheorghe - convicted for embezzlement
- Horia Grigoriţă - convicted for fraud
- Valentino Acatrinei, former judge in the Bucharest Court
of Appeals - convicted for influence peddling and bribery.
On 17 December, Iliescu and Adrian Năstase, while
still in Brussels, 'signed' a revocation of the pardon. Due to the fact that in order for it to be legal it had to be the
original, handwritten document, press speculated it was signed even before the two left for Brussels. According to legal experts,
however, the revocation was not legal, an individual act can only be revoked as long as it is not already in effect - in this
case, only if the convicts would not have been not released. This would equate with a person being convicted twice for the same
crime. This legal opinion prevailed in courts as on June 2005, Miron Cozma was freed from prison on the basis of Ion Iliescu's
pardon. The legality of the pardon decree is still under scrutiny.
Cozma was taken back into custody minutes after the presidential spokeswoman announced the President's intention, on the
dubious basis that he had not been able to identify himself during a police checkup, and then sent to Bucharest because "there
are documents there regarding his detention". Finally, the official statement stated that he was being detained in connection to
crimes he committed while in prison, along with the same person that picked him up when he was first released, previous cell-mate
Fane Spoitoru.
The EU Delegation's head in Bucharest, Jonathan
Scheele, said "I am as surprised as anyone by the President's last decision!". Internally, the pardon may have had further
serious consequences, as the Democratic Union of Hungarians in
Romania cited this as the reason behind its move to disengage talks with the Social Democrats for forming the new
parliamentary majority.
In 2002, Iliescu signed a pardon for George Tănase, former Financial Guard head commissionary for Ialomiţa, who had been convicted for corruption, only to
revoke it days later due to the media outcry.
Another controversial pardon was that of Dan Tartagă - a businessman from Braşov that, while drunk, had ran over and killed two people on a zebra crossing. He was sentenced to three years
and a half but was pardoned after only a couple of months. He is currently serving a two-year sentence for fraud.
On account of revoking pardons, it serves to point out that it is not legally possible to issue a new presidential edict that
would revoke the previous one, as the Constitution of Romania and specific criminal laws do not allow it.
Others
In the last days of his President mandate, he awarded the National Order Steaua României (rank of ceremonial knighthood) to the ultra-nationalist controversial
politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a gesture which drew criticism in the press and
prompted Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel,
fifteen Radio Free Europe journalists, Timişoara
mayor Gheorghe Ciuhandu, song writer Alexandru
Andrieş, and historian Randolph Braham to return their Romanian honours in protest. The
leader of Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, Béla Markó, did not show up to claim the
award he received on the same occasion.
Quotes
- "Nicolae Ceauşescu tarnished the noble ideals of Socialism" — Iliescu on national TV,
22 December 1989, shortly after Ceauşescu had fled.
- "...and I thank comrade Adrian Năstase.." during a National PSD Congress in 2004. The press was astonished at the use of such a word, reminiscent
of the communist regime.
- "You animal!" Iliescu shouting to Paul Pârvu, a journalist in Constanţa and colleague of Radu Ştefan Mazăre, the future mayor of
the city (Mazăre was to eventually join the PSD himself).
- "The lawyer is the devil's advocate. Lawyers' profession is one of private
interests not of morality. He is paid, he pleads for his clients. Such is the logic and morality of a lawyer." Ion Iliescu,
trying to defend his own lawyer on June 9, 2005. [6]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d New York Times, "Upheaval in
the East: A Rising Star; A Man Who Could Become Rumania's Leader", 23 December
1989, p. 15
- ^ România Liberă. "Gura lumii
despre România", May 8 1990, quoting Paris Match
- ^ Cotidianul, Bukovski: "Băsescu este un preşedinte slab", "Bukovski: 'Băsescu is a weak president'", May 9, 2006
- ^ Ziua, Iliescu KGB, May
9, 2006
- ^ http://www.avmr.ro/media/Mineriada_Iliescu_1-4.avi
- ^ (Romanian)Ziua, "Iliescu nu regretă ca a
chemat minerii" (Iliescu doesn't regret calling the miners (to come to Bucharest)), June 14, 2005
External links
Further reading
be-x-old:Іён Іліеску
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