Ion Iliescu
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| Office: | President of Romania |
|---|---|
| Term of Office: |
22 December 1989 – 20 May 1990 (interim) |
| Predecessor: | Nicolae Ceauşescu (1st time) Emil Constantinescu (2nd time) |
| Successor: |
Emil Constantinescu (1st time) |
| Date of Birth: | Monday, 3 March, 1930 |
| Place of Birth: | Olteniţa |
| Marriage: | Elena (Nina) Şerbănescu |
| Profession: | Hydrologist |
| Political Party: | Social Democrat |
Ion Iliescu (born March 3, 1930) is a Romanian politician. He was the President of Romania for eleven years, from 1990 to 1996, and 2000 to 2004. His presidency was interrupted by Emil Constantinescu, and his successor after the final term is the former Democratic Party leader Traian Băsescu. Currently, Iliescu is Senator for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which is one of several parties formed by the breakup of the National Salvation Front, and which remains the largest single political party in Romania.
Iliescu is often accused by political opponents of having communist convictions and allegiances and tolerating corruption in the PSD (when he was a party leader) and the administration (when he was a president). At the same time, Ion 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.
In 2005 investigations began that could eventually lead to Iliescu's trial on a number of charges, including crimes against humanity(this charge was introduced because is the only charge without prescription; could be a clear sign of political vengeance ), related to the considerable abuses of power he allegedly committed during the years 1989-1990, especially during the Romanian Revolution and the violent Miner's Riots of the early and mid-1990's. Supporters of Iliescu and Iliescu himself claim that the investigations are an instrument of political vengeance of the current political power.
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Family background
His father, Alexandru Iliescu, was a railroad worker with Communist views back in the days when 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 Soviet state for the next four years and was arrested upon his return, dying in prison in 1945. Alexandru Iliescu had divorced and married with Mariţa, a chambermaid. A questionable source (mentioned in the discussion page) states that Ion Iliescu has a second given name "Ilici", due to the communist opinions of his father.
Early life
Image:Ion Iliescu 1965 poster.jpg Born in Olteniţa, Iliescu studied electrical engineering at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute and then as a foreign student at the Energy Institute of the Moscow University.
During his stay in Moscow it is alleged that he knew Mikhail Gorbachev, although Iliescu always denied this. 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.<ref>România Liberă. Gura lumii despre România, May 8 1990, quoting Paris Match</ref>
He joined the Uniunea Tineretului Comunist (UTC - Union of Communist Youth) in 1944, he joined 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. He served as Minister for Youth-related Issues between 1967 and 1971.
However, in 1971, he was marginalized by Nicolae Ceauşescu and removed from all political offices, being assigned that of vice-president of the Timiş County Council (1971-1974), and then president of the Iaşi one (1974-1979). In 1984, he was excluded from the Central Committee, and until 1989 he was in charge of Editura Tehnică publishing house.
After the 1989 Revolution
Iliescu was the main figure of the period immediately following the Revolution that overthrew Nicolae Ceauşescu in December 1989, as well as the main person to benefit from it, as his leadership was quickly aknowledged within the inner circle of revolutionary leaders.
As the leader of the provisional authority, Iliescu declared that he wished for Romania to become 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. In later yers, he amended and further explained this initially vague statement by expressing his distrust for the clear, no in between choice of Capitalism versus Socialism, evoking the possibility of a Swedish model (most likely, a reference to large-scale state ownership).
The National Salvation Front (FSN: Frontul Salvării Naţionale) 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 85% of the votes.
| Image:Roman-Iliescu-telephone.jpg |
| Image:Iliescu si Bush.jpg |
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). Progresively, 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 enganging 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, alligning 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 widescale 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 and political instabilty 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
He was responsible for calling the miners of Jiu Valley to Bucharest on 28 January and June 14, 1990 to end the non-violent protests against the ex-communist leaders of Romania (the Golaniad). This ended in violence, as the miners armed with clubs attack the protesters and trashed the Bucharest University, various museums and the headquarters of opposition parties, claiming to have discovered them as havens of decadence and immorality - drugs, false currency printing machines and firearms they had claimed as evidence later proved to either non-existent, or (according to case) black and white xerox machines, and compressed air rifles used for target practice. The miners' violence left at least 6 dead (some sources have claimed figures varying between 200 and 300), with at least 5000 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). There is no fundament to the reasons cited by them: "ending anarchy and securing the ideals of the Revolution" , "destroying Fascist elements" - a reference to coups planned by Iron Guard or Ion Antonescu sympathisers, ones that had been alleged by Iliescu himself on several occasions. The overwhelming majority of Iliescu's adversaries had been committed to democracy, all were organized, peaceful, and on the brink of disbanding their unitary protest (for several reasons, the most obvious of them being the students' exam session), while their main demand had been minimalistic and seen as a logical outcome of the previous Revolution: ousting all neo-communists from power.
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 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. 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 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.
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 dissmissed 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.
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).
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 returns 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 a 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 being revoked only 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 contoversial 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.
- "You animal !" Iliescu shouting at a press journalist in Constanţa.
- "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. [1] - in Romanian
See also
Notes
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External links
Further reading
- Vladimir Alexe — Ion Iliescu - biografia secretă: "Candidatul manciurian" (Ion Iliescu - The Secret Biography: "The Manchurian Candidate"); 2000; ISBN 9735810360
- The supplement dedicated to Iliescu (in Romanian), published by Academia Caţavencu, 22 December, 2004
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