Traian Basescu is playing the nationalist card

Traian Basescu managed the economic crisis by transferring all the sacrifices on the shoulders of the poorest social categories. Promoting an aggressive capitalism and telling the people that barely can survive from their work that they are lazy – Basescu become one of the most unpopular figures in Romania.

Closing hospitals and schools, he blames teachers and doctors for all the failures of the system – a system that he rules for a few years. Yet president Basescu seems that he knows very well how to stay in power.

In February – when the cuts start to affect most of the people in this country – the union leaders were investigated by the prosecutor office. There were 15 union leaders indicted. From February, the people’s discontent had grown and the union’s activity was weak. We can easily say that Basescu assured himself that any opposition will be defeated before any reaction will take place. Although left without any means for reaction – Basescu knows that people impoverished can reach the limit and react against his brutal attack on the working class.

Recently Traian Basescu started to play a new role to induce people in error and move their attention from important problems. This new role he assumed is the nationalist role – and he started with making declarations regarding the past of Romania. He denies that Antonescu (Hitlers ally during WW2 and Nationalist General) was guilty for the holocaust of the Jews in Romania, he declared himself nationalist and marked other remarks against Russia – trying to get to the surface of an old frustration of the Romanian people. In this way he declared, that if he would have been at this time the leader of the country, he would have ordered his soldiers to march together with the German Nazi-Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union to “liberate” Bessarabia. (The region is today part of the Republic of Moldova and of the Ukraine). Furthermore he declared in a TV-Interview, that Nazi-Germany as “Allies”. Also he got into public attention the territorial reorganization of the country that raised nationalistic feelings on both sides: Romanians and Hungarian minority from Transylvania.

Who is Basescu in fact? He is an old communist bourgeois – that become a prosper capitalist after 1990, changing his ideological views without blinking (according to the historian Marius Oprea, before 1989 – Basescu’s family fortune raised at 2,4 million Lei). He was the state secretary at the Ministry of Transports in 1990 when Romania was at the edge of a civil war and thousands of miners (escorted by SRI – The Romanian Information Service) were coming with the trains in Bucharest – to help the government to preserve power. The whole history of Basescu has shown us that he is a leader ready to do anything to preserve his power with any means necessary.

In the opinion of many people – Basescu is nothing more than a fascist – promoting nationalism these very days in order to maintain himself in power.