Vivid Foreword June 2004

FOREWORD
All in the family

June 2004

A bus, a newspaper. A man, a woman. They are both youngish. An article about some EU programme which Romania benefits from. There are photographs of eight men. ìPick out two faces,î says the woman to the man, ìthe two who look least likable.î Actually, she said cei mai scarbos, but we'll leave that as ìleast likableî. He picks two. The photographs are of politicians from around Europe, she tells him, and he has just picked out the two Romanian politicians, the two members of the ruling PSD. That's odd, they agree, looking at the PSD election posters as they go past, they do all have the same kind of face. Genuinely baffled, they go through what it is that is similar. A certain sedentary jowliness and lack of charm or character. A smug bureaucratic look, the look of a technocrat of medium intelligence but enough cleverness to know who to bow to. The smallness of the eyes. The kind who can accommodate themselves with a police state or what is left after one disintegrates. They do not manage to put their finger on it, but they are not people you would trust to buy a used car from. They are not trying to be nasty, it seems. They are just a little bemused by a new discovery and cannot account for it. Because obviously the entire PSD is not from one small village where too much inbreeding has gone on. And it's not a family. Or is it? Strange.

Another bus. An old lady says to another, ìI like that Geoana, he looks friendly,î referring to ex Minister for Foreign Affairs Mircea Geoana, now running for Bucharest mayor. There are two reasons why Geoana has been chosen to run for mayor ñ he was a high profile Minister for Foreign Affairs, and secondly he looks rather good. He does not look like the rest of the PSD family. He looks intelligent for one thing, and his face is slim and narrow rather than heavy. And he is smiling. He is known and liked in Brussels and didn't do anything wrong while he was Romania's man in Washington. If Geoana is elected it will be for his face.

Another bus, another newspaper, another couple. The woman asks the man if he had heard, as Academia Catavencu had reported recently, that Mircea Geoana's father was a General in the Securitate, heading Ceausescu's Civil Defence, as was reported recently, defending the Romanian nation against counterrevolutionary terrorists. He hadn't known.

ìNo reflection on the younger Geoana, though, whoever his father was,î says the man, reasonably enough. ìYes. But think about it. How they all seem to be one big family.î

They are indeed, in one way or another. If they aren't linked genetically, they are a certain type of person. The same ones, the same families, that served Ceausescu have inherited the country, appropriated its wealth, and administer the country through a party called the PSD. Mircea Geoana's virtue, let's assume, is as sparkling as his teeth on his campaign poster. But his party still opposes the release of the Securitate files - something you would imagine is elementary in a democracy and EU candidate country - and Mr Geoana concurs with his party. In an interview with the magazine Barometrul Politic in August 1992, Geoana said: ìLets leave the ghosts of the past Ö where they belong, in the history books.î

Which is a nice idea. Who needs a truth and reconciliation commission, when it will only upset people?

Except that, as some have pointed out, the ghosts of the past are not in the past. They're in expensive houses, holiday homes, business and government. They're in the PSD.

It's all a family thing, really.

June 2004