A special parliamentary committee is looking into the strange unfolding of the presidential election of 2009
In a very democratic, although rather perfunctory move, a special Parliament committee is investigating the unclear circumstances in which in 2009 Traian Basescu won a second term in office as president of Romania, after defeating the then president of the Social Democratic Party Mircea Geoana in the runoff. The committee was set up following disclosures by the controversial journalist Dan Andronic. Heard on Monday, he said he had no other information apart from what he had already made public, nor any evidence that the election had been rigged. A questionable character, arrested last year in a corruption-related investigation, and the author of a booklet whose very title, "100% anti-Basescu," is tale-telling of his firm beliefs in the early 2000s, Andronic later switched sides and got a well-paid job as political adviser to then-president Basescu.
He said in an interview recently that on the night of the runoff 8 years ago, he had met, in an informal setting, with the then Prosecutor General of Romania Laura Codruta Kovesi, currently the head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, the former head of the Romanian Intelligence Service George Maior, now the Ambassador of Romania to Washington, and his deputy Florian Coldea. According to Andronic, the meeting looked very much like the gathering of a crisis committee. All the participants, Andronic went on to say, risked losing their positions had Geoana won the election. Hence the tension with which they received the exit-polls indicating the Social Democrat Geoana as the winner, and the sigh of relief at the news, made public the next morning, that Basescu had won after all, by a very narrow margin.
On Tuesday, both Geoana and his campaign chief Viorel Hrebenciuc, appeared before the committee. Still unconsoled after that defeat, which made him a subject matter for many jokes, Geoana said there had been a deliberate effort, coordinated by top-level leaders of public institutions in Romania, and intended to influence the outcome of that election. Hrebenciuc, too, said he suspected a fraud, especially in the polling stations abroad, some of which had reported more than a thousand voters in only 14 hours.
The former chief of the Permanent Electoral Authority, Octavian Opris, said that, according to documents signed by officers with the relevant institutions, the 2009 elections took place in normal conditions and all the relevant documents were legal. Opris admitted, nonetheless, that the way the vote had been organized at the Romanian Embassy in Paris, run at that time by a very pro-Basescu Ambassador, Teodor Baconschi, did not look completely right.
The parliamentary committee will next hear other prominent diplomats and politicians involved in that election. Commentators note that, even if shattering revelations were made, nothing can now take back Basescu's term in office or make Geoana president instead. The only likely consequence of the investigation is that people's distrust of an already unpopular political class would be dramatically reinforced.
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