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Romania through international eyes

People
People in the News

February 2005

A wave of national enthusiasm accompanied the election victory of Traian Basescu as Romania’s new president, and a coalition government drawn largely from business and academia and led by Calin Popescu Tariceanu, as prime minister. The new administration wasted little time and almost immediately made significant attempts to simplify Romania’s unnecessarily complicated tax legislation, which included the introduction of a 16 per cent flat company tax, an increase in dividend tax to 10 per cent, from five per cent, and a doubling of the monthly turnover tax of microcompanies from 1.5 per cent to three per cent. The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said that Romania would have to increase plans to stamp out corruption if it wanted to join the EU by 2007, and the British Ambassador, Quintin Quayle, said corruption remained a serious problem. The new government said it would do away with the parliamentary immunity from investigation, which had hitherto protected some former politicians, and the Justice Minister, Monica Macovei, said that “ex-dignitaries suspected of crimes would be investigated just like ordinary people.” Furthermore, enquiries are to be launched into contracts agreed to by the former government worth several billion dollars, that had not been subject to a tender, including the $2.2 billion highway deal with the US company Bechtel that is to link Brasov with the Hungarian border. Mr Basescu’s first foreign trip as president was made to Moldova, where he had talks with his Moldovan counterpart, Vladimir Voronin, and said that he wanted to make closer relations between the two countries a foreign policy priority. The government said it had committed a further 100 troops to the American occupation of Iraq, bringing the total to 800. Adriana Iliescu, a 66-year-old retired university professor and author of children’s books, made world headlines by becoming the oldest woman on record to give birth. Environmentalists accused Ion Tiriac, the former tennis player, of massacring more than 180 wild boar during a hunting weekend to which foreign dignitaries were invited. Two Hungarian pilots of an aircraft were killed when the plane in which they were flying crashed in Ciric forest, outside Iasi. Marcu Rozen, who wrote The Holocaust under the Antonescu Government – Historical and Statistical Data About Jews in Romania 1940-1944 and was himself a survivor of the Transnistria deportations, died, aged 74. Heavy falls of snow hampered driving conditions in Bucharest. Adrian Mutu, the captain of the Romanian national football team who was sacked by Chelsea last year for taking cocaine, signed with Juventus. Octavian Belu, the doyen and coach of many renowned Romanian gymnasts including Nadia Comaneci, resigned after a row over money. Romania’s first and second rated male tennis players, Andrei Pavel and Victor Hanescu, were both eliminated in the second round of the Australian Open.

A meeting of minds: Bill Gates, Tony Blair and Bono pictured at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland

George W Bush was sworn in for another four years as president of the United States, and then confirmed he would seek approval for an additional $80 billion to finance American military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new money would add to the $300 billion Mr Bush has spent on the military since the attacks of 9th September, 2001. In Iraq, where US military spending averages $4.8 billion every month, the first multi-party elections in 50 years were held, yet many Sunnis refused to vote and many Shias shunned the election because of the threat of violence. Schools reopened in Banda Aceh, the Indonesian province located on the northern tip of Sumatra which bore the full brunt of the Asian tsunami, in which 142,000 people died in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somalia, Burma, Maldives, Malaysia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Bangladesh and Kenya, and from which 147,000 people remained missing, many presumed dead. A solemn ceremony in freezing conditions attended by dignitaries from all over the world marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi extermination camp at which more than 1.5 million Jews were murdered during the second world war. Victor Yushchenko was sworn in as the new president of Ukraine after an epic electoral battle. UK chancellor Gordon Brown managed to get his fellow G7 finance minster to agree to write off the debt of the world's poorest countries. The Thai Rak Thai was reelected in parliamentary elections in Thailand. Thirty-one American soldiers were killed when the helicopter in which they were flying came down in bad weather in western Iraq, close to the Jordanian border. Four British men and one Australian were freed from Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Procter & Gamble bought Gillette for the equivalent of $57 billion, paid for mainly in shares. The United States dolar rallied to a three-month high against the euro. Johnny Carson, the founding father of the television chat show, died, aged 79. Achille Maramotti, who founded the MaxMara fashion house, died, aged 78. Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese communist leader who was purged for opposing the crackdown and violence prompted by the 1989 student protests of Tiananmen Square, and who spent the rest of his life under house arrest, died, aged 85. Marat Safin won the men’s title at the Australian Open tennis Championships, beating Lleyton Hewitt in four sets, and Serena Williams won the women’s title against Lindsay Davenport, in three sets. England’s cricketers had their first series win in South Africa in forty years. A poll amongst some of the pop world’s biggest names found that the video which accompanied the song 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash was the best music video ever made. The 14-minute video for ‘Thriller’, by Michael Jackson - whose trial on child molestation charges began in California - was voted second best. A Malaysian postman whose house was found to contain more than 21,000 hoarded letters was jailed for three months and fined two months salary. Swaziland’s King Mswati III married his 13th wife, a 17-year-old beauty queen, in a traditional ceremony.