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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Special Travel Sports People Features Living Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Far from the wilder shores of Marx
By Gavin BowdThe Rusacks Marine Hotel in St Andrews, Scotland, is normally frequented by champion golfers and film stars. It's the kind of place where you're more likely to bump into Tiger Woods or Sean Connery, than neo-communist former rulers of Balkan states. However, in late March 1999, the genteel reception area found itself invaded by the entourage of Ion Iliescu, executioner of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, and president of Romania from 1990 to 1996. The leader's bodyguard offers me a bone-crushing greeting, before introducing me to Iliescu, resplendent in Italian suit and fedora.
The ex-president's lightning visit has confused and intrigued politicians, journalists and police alike, unsettling the normally sleepy student population of Scotland's first university. Leaving the hotel, Iliescu tells me that he has stopped off in London on the way to visit the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, of which he was a founding signatory, and to speak to the BBC's Romanian service. Now, here he is in a small mediaeval town on the North Sea coast to give a talk entitled: "Romania: Ten Years After the Revolution, One Year Before the Millennium". Why would he accept such an invitation? For a (literal) breath of fresh air after the smog of Bucharest? Or in the hope of finding some fragment, however small, of that respectability which he so desperately craves?
Ion Iliescu is undoubtedly a controversial figure. Born in 1930, he made his career in the Romanian Communist Party. He was first a member of the Politburo, then minister for youth between 1968 and 1971, before being appointed secretary of the Central Committee. He was second only to Nicolae Ceausescu in the Party hierarchy, before falling from grace for openly opposing the 'cultural revolution' which would later create the bloated personality cult of the self-styled 'Danube of the Mind'.
Iliescu reemerged from the shadows in December 1989, as head of the National Salvation Council, an eclectic mix of poets, army generals and dissident apparatchiks. He was overwhelmingly elected president in 1990, then again in 1992. But such popularity did not make him immune to controversy. In June 1990, with anti-communist demonstrators violently disrupting the centre of Bucharest, Iliescu went on television to appeal to the miners of the Jiu Valley to put down the "counter-revolutionary disorder". They rose enthusiastically to the appeal, killing three students in the process. The following year, the miners appeared again in the capital at the behest of the president: the result was more mayhem and the resignation of his now arch-rival, Petre Roman. Iliescu then further blotted his copy-book by accepting the parliamentary support of the rabidly xenophobic Greater Romania Party of maverick poet, Vadim Tudor.
Nor does this controversy spare St Andrews. As we walk towards the venue at which he is to speak, protesters are gathering: Romanian students who claim to have "fled" him, workers for Romanian orphan charities, activists for Amnesty International. Iliescu's speech is meant to kick off an academic conference on "France and Romania in the Twentieth Century", but even some of the delegates have misgivings about his presence.
Iliescu is unfazed. He begins his allocution by stating emphatically, "I do not want to dwell excessively on the past;" However, "some facts are worth remembering." He explains the fall of communism: "The historic changes of 1989 took place because communist regimes had maintained rigid economic systems in defiance of the laws of the market. In terms of political structure, they maintained a one-party monopoly, in total disregard of basic human rights and liberties." Therefore, Iliescu had sought to create a new Romania, characterised by "'respect for human rights and political pluralism, a market economy, reinstating property rights, and opening the country to the West." He could thus put a positive gloss on his electoral defeat in 1996: "By effecting such a mature transfer of power, Romanian democracy came of age and took deeper roots."
Yet he goes on to vigorously attack the new 'democratic' government in Bucharest: "Those in power today seem determined to ignore the suffering resulting from their socio-economic policies of stark austerity, and to treat lightly the possibility of social unrest. Political patronage and clientelism are practised on an ever larger scale." Such "shock therapy" treatment carries within it the threat of creating a new 'Iron Curtain' that would once again divide Western from Eastern Europe.
Passing into seminar mode, the audience are quick to press him on sensitive issues: the miners' march on Bucharest, the role of an alleged "third force" of Arab terrorists in the December Revolution. Iliescu does not hesitate to bludgeon such questions with the dialectic his Moscow training instilled in him: "The combination of objective contradictions" explains the political crises that occurred under his regime, thus diminishing his own personal responsibility, and refuting the "fabulations" peddled by his interrogators. It was unbloodied and very much unbowed that the senator proceeded to the wine reception.
In a nearby pub, Iliescu's performance was assessed by Professor Dennis Deletant, Britain's foremost expert on Romania and adviser to MI5 and the Ministry of Defence. For Deletant, Iliescu's account of the Revolution was "relatively candid and objective." Iliescu, he believes, "is an honest and even naive man. He called on the miners, because he could see no other way of restoring public order. He accepted the votes of the far Right, because he felt he had to listen to other Romanians." Deletant is pessimistic about the prospects for present-day Romania: "The state enterprises have only been superficially privatised, with the result that public and IMF money is being poured into the pockets of the mafia. But if there were real privatisations, it would alienate vested interests and cast millions of Romanians out of work. It is a no-win situation."
At dinner that evening, Iliescu's press attachée confides: "Things were more good under Ceausescu." Her favourite city is Belgrade: "The best of the West and the best of the East." She is diffident, even embarrassed about the Party for Social Democracy (PDSR), of which Iliescu is leader. They have just been rejected again by the Socialist International, who continue to reproach them their past flirtation with the far Right. "Blair is a Thatcherite," replies Iliescu.
Romania is a country in very deep crisis. The miners have only been temporarily appeased, and any meaningful restructuring of the economy promises to pile much hardship on the population before there is any discernable improvement. In the week that Iliescu visits Britain, the nation's currency loses half of its value. "There will be severe disruption," Iliescu tells me in the street the following day. Elections scheduled for next year may well be brought forward. The Senator looks out keenly for a bureau de change. You have the impression that he and his entourage do not want to go back, even if the PDSR seems well-poised to win whatever elections may come.
Outside the Rusacks Marine Hotel, the press attachée has her photo taken by Iliescu's bodyguard. 'I will never stay in a hotel like this again,' she tells me. Then, they set off in a taxi to see Edinburgh, a capital preparing for its own "velvet devolution." From there, they will return to the economic and political maelstrom of Romania. That war across the border will do nothing to help.
