All language subtitles for DOCUMENTAR RECORDER. 30 de ani de democrație (English)

30 years of democracy

November 1989. Victory Square, Bucharest

Hey, boss! Look smart, they're filming you!

Look over, he's filming you! Hold it up!

Look smart, they're filming us!

Lift it up!

Is it...

That's it! Done!

University Square, Bucharest

The 14th congress of the Romanian Communist Party

...the socio-economic development programme

....the entire activity of the party and even more determination

...for the programme that will forge a multilaterally developed socialist society

...Romania's independence and sovereignty.

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Ceausescu PCR (Romanian Communist Party)!

Long live Ceausescu, may Romania thrive!

Long live Ceausescu!

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

One month later

I believe that, for all of us, Ceausescu dying was something impossible, unbelievable.

I mean, we never imagined we'd ever escape.

Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

I really believe it was a rebirth,

because, overnight, we stepped into a new world which had different rules.

You could speak freely, you had hope.

Freedom!

Ceausescu, the criminal!

Ceausescu - kaput!

History is sometimes a pot that boils over and blows the lid off.

And, after 40 years of what we lived with,

the idea that, for the first time in my life, I was a free man

made me dizzy like I was drunk. The drunkenness of freedom.

It was a sort of...

A reaction to freedom, I mean...

Finally, we can do anything. Without any worries, like some teenagers.

Freedom! Freedom!

There is a God! There is a God!

There was an immense feeling of liberation

and we all had this feeling that from this moment on

we can do anything, we can tear down mountains, change everything.

We were like kids who were not allowed to go to parties

and the first party they go to, they get drunk and go crazy.

That's kind of how we were after Ceausescu fell.

During those days there was this feeling that, together, we were part of an ideal.

Things are getting better and better.

Let's rejoice, happy days are coming.

After 45 years of communism,

Romanians were discovering a feeling that many never experienced before: freedom.

Freedom!

Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

Very few Romanians knew in 1990 what freedom means.

How many in this country really knew that freedom is not something that can be given?

You either take it yourself, or you will never have it.

The Romanian revolution was a great liberation, but it didn't solve everything overnight.

In 1990, Romanians were setting off on a long journey during which they'd discover

just how difficult it is to build a democratic society.

Freedom is a burden

that many want to be rid of.

Once they have it they don't know what to do with it.

That was 1990. Romanians were saying: "There's just too much freedom!"

Too much freedom!

Chapter 1 The burden of freedom

We want...

We want to be left alone, to live peacefully and to work.

To have decent and honest jobs.

Those who came from abroad should go back!

If these people come and buy the factories and start producing an excess, I'll tell you,

we'll end up on the streets! That's what will become of us! Us, Romanians!

The dawn of democracy found Romanians still in the streets,

gathered in city squares, discovering the joy of being able to speak freely.

But doubt was born from these debates and freedom began to be a burden.

I was working in a factory in the 90s, like everyone else, and I remember thinking...

"What am I going to do?"? Will these factories keep running? Are they going to close?"

"Will my skills be in demand?"

And are they going to bring in Westerners to work in your institutions?

They're not bringing anyone in. It's all machines now.

If they want to keep you on, they will. If not, you're fired!

You're fired! They'll fire you!

They'll be on the French Riviera and you'll be a no-one!

Overnight, all the landmarks were gone.

And, of course, everyone was confused.

Nature can't sustain a void and people need something to strive for

and someone needs to point them to it.

What else could've come out of it?

What could possibly come out of this vacuum, but the pseudo-landmark that was Ion Iliescu.

We're determined to do everything we can to deliver on our commitments...

Ion Iliescu was the man who on Dec 22nd 1989 posed as the leader of the revolution, and assumed country leadership.

The country will be now known as 'Romania'!

Through the chaos and confusion at the time, people saw him as a saviour.

ION ILIESCU WE TRUST HIM

The entire country would wait for Ion Iliescu to come on TV

and tell them what will happen with Romania.

I'm open to all dialogue.

And this was in essence Ion Iliescu's role: he provided society with the landmarks.

I was 25 at the time of the revolution, and I liked him.

because I felt he sounded sophisticated and educated.

The National Salvation Front, emerged from the Romanian Revolution in December

and guarantees this country's freedom, peace, and security.

And every worker in our factory was a FSN (National Salvation Front) and Iliescu die-hard ,

"he will defend us against the bourgeoisie who comes to take our jobs"

This was you'd hear everywhere.

21st - 22nd, Iliescu was with us!

After a revolution which claimed over a thousand deaths in the name of freedom from communism,

people's fondness of Iliescu seemed incomprehensible.

The man whose name they were chanting came from the frontline of the Communist Party.

Please prepare for the arrival of our country's flag!

Three colours I know in the world

Which I hold so dear and holy

He was someone capable of reshuffling the former communist structures

in a way that they would resemble an original democracy, as he would call it,

and he posed as a progressive figure, in relation to the party secretaries,

or with Ceausescu and old-school communistists

He seemed the person to embody the Romanian society's ideal at the time:

a Gorbachev-style reform of communism.

I received a call from Moscow, from president Gorbachev.

We agreed that relationships between our countries need to develop on a new, healthy foundation.

FSN, FSN go back to USSR!

There were, however, Romanians who wished the country would cut its communist ties for good

and implement a Western democracy.

Out with communism! Out with communism! Out with communism!

I was the school leader at the time,

so I thought we would organise a protest to say:

"Wait a minute, we want an actual change,

not a half-change, where people in charge are former communist party apparatchiks."

Ceausescu, don't be sad, Iliescu's a communist!

Ceausescu, don't be sad, Iliescu's a communist!

In the spring of 1990, those challenging Ion Iliescu's legitimacy

started to gather every night in the Bucharest city centre.

This gave birth to the "University Square" phenomenon.

I went to bed with Ceausescu in charge

When I woke up it was Iliescu

And the fact their names rhyme is not a coincidence

The purpose of this protest is to fight

and oppose all forms of communism.

No one asked for anything terrible like trials, death penalties and things like that.

The ask was simple: Those who built communism shouldn't be teaching us about living in a democracy.

The 'Square' demanded:

First, members of Security (secret police) to be banned from politics. Sadly that never happened.

On this issue, the protesters were right.

They also demanded that former communist officials shouldn't be frontbenchers.

And, of course, this was too a reasonable request.

But in 1990, the demands from the 'Square' were ignored by the country's provisional leadership.

There are those who take pity on the hooligans causing trouble in the city centre.

The 'University Square phenomenon' highlighted the divide in Romanian society.

Only months after marching united against a communist dictatorship,

those in the square chanting 'Out with communism!' were now painted as hooligans.

Yes, of course! I went to the square together with mum and dad.

This, in fact, led to us falling out with my godparents.

Because, every time we visited them, they'd say: You shouldn't be there,

they're just bums and drug addicts.

There's sexual abominations and who knows what else...

But we were in the square and knew what was going on.

It was staggering that a couple of intellectuals would say such things.

I remember my dad got upset and said: That's it, we're not going to visit them anymore.

And we've never spoken to them since.

I'd rather be a bum than an apparatchik.

I'd rather be dead than a communist!

What upset a lot of people were those dreadful things you'd hear from University Square.

Like "I'd rather be dead than a communist"

There were 4 million party members. Can you imagine? Every one of them was wondering:

What's this? Do you mean to erase our whole lives?

There were millions who in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, had gone through urbanization.

They were taken haphazardly from villages and forced to work in factories.

They'd live in a flat for the first time in their lives. Had a fridge for the first time.

Had a TV and a radio for the first time.

And for most of them there was never anything else but communism.

If you were 44 or younger, you knew nothing but communism for your whole life.

That was their life! That's where they lived and worked, accomplished things, had children.

So that's what it was about.

Chapter 2: "We won at the revolution, let's win at democracy"

Dear viewers, in the next two hours, the guests in our studio

are the three presidential candidates,

Radu Campeanu, Ion Iliescu, and Ion Ratiu.

After spending the last few months, protesting and marching,

the time came for Romanians to make a decision.

On the 20th of May 1990, post-communist Romania was going to hold its first free election.

Ion Iliescu and the National Salvation Front were competing with the historical parties

resurrected after the Revolution:

The National Liberal Party, led by Radu Campeanu,

And the National Peasants' Party, backing Ion Ratiu for president.

Both returned to Romania at the beginning of 1990, after a long exile in the West

and convinced that Romanians wouldn't elect a former communist leader as president.

Mr. Iliescu acknowledges that the system he grew up in

and which he served his entire life is a disaster and in need of radical change.

If we'd want to pursue a relationship with the East, I would vote for Mr. Iliescu

But, if we wish to connect with the West, then Mr. Iliescu doesn't have the credibility

this country currently needs in order to become a democracy.

If you'll excuse me, I feel I must address some of your points.

I believe we shouldn't look towards East or West, but towards Romania first.

A Romanian democracy must be built with an understanding of the realities in Romania

and not by copying foreign models.

We've copied a foreign model before and it proved to be bankrupt.

Therefore, we shouldn't look to foreign models for guidance...

I want a free democracy!

We, the workers, should be the owners of this nation's resources!

50% Romanians, 50% foreigners!

How can we allow foreigners as owners?

Not, not to own.

What are you going on about, boy?

You're young, you have no idea what life is about.

I'm 52 years old, I know what it means for an employer to come in and boss you around.

Let's not blindly copy from others!

Servitude to the West isn't less dignified than servitude to the East.

We don't need any kind of servitude.

Ion Iliescu's message would easily relate with the public,

while the speeches on democracy and Western values from Ratiu and Campeanu

were met with an instinctive reluctance.

They're not our people, man. They didn't eat soy salami.

These messages spread really fast: they didn't eat soy salami like we did. They didn't suffer

Please, listen up!

Please, listen up!

Give him a megaphone!

Get a second megaphone!

We can hear you, we can hear you!

Ratiu: bowtie.

No one wears a bowtie. He's not one of us.

You don't show up in front of a poverty-stricken nation,

a nation which lived through the most terrible events in its recent history,

with a bowtie and an air of aristocracy which 90% of the population couldn't relate with.

They kept me locked up for three hours at the Buzau Police Department, ready to lynch me!

While trying to somehow explain that democracy means listening to an argument before disagreeing with it.

The essence of democracy is this:

I will fight until my dying breath for you to have the right to disagree with me.

He was talking about very lofty ideals. But these could not be used to lead Romania in 1990.

Romania in 1990 was a country where many were former members of the Communist Party,

members of the secret police, people unable to carry the burden of freedom.

And then there was Ratiu and his ideals. It wouldn't have worked.

It wouldn't have worked because the majority of Romanians rejected

anything unrelated to their communist past.

We don't agree with the ones that came from abroad!

They lived in capitalism and now they come to our country?

It doesn't matter whether it's communism or capitalism.

What matters is that we don't elect the ones who came from abroad, they should go back abroad!

But not all historical parties leaders came from the West.

Corneliu Coposu, president of the Peasants' Party

came with the moral authority of having spent 17 years in communist prisons.

But the country wasn't impressed.

In early 1990, thousands of workers stormed the Peasants' Party headquarters, ready to lynch Coposu.

Ole, OIe. Get out, old man!

I remember when I got the call from Corneliu Coposu

and he said there's a risk of physical harm for the leaders of the Peasants' Party.

I went there right away.

Leave the country! Leave the country!

We don't have the right to mistreat them!

I went to the balcony and tried to address the crowds

and then we heard that slogan: 'They didn't eat soy salami'

and that's when I lost the plot, as they say.

I said: Folks, the man you see next to me, Corneliu Coposu,

spent 17 years in communist prisons. What are you talking about?

He'd be lucky to get some bread and some water.

He could only dream about soy salami!

Brothers, please understand, right now the whole world is watching us.

We won at the Revolution! I beg you, let's win at democracy as well!

Coposu escaped the anger of the crowd in an army's armored vehicle.

People were convinced they managed to remove a threat.

Iliescu for president, not brainless Coposu!

In this context, the result of the election on May 20th was a foregone conclusion.

But the FSN nevertheless adopted a series of populist measures in efforts to secure their votes.

What's the situation at the moment? How are pensions being paid?

Pensions are paid based on the decisions of the FSN.

At the agricultural cooperative in Botoroaga, they are paying out the pensions.

Who wants to say a few words?

It's clear that it's higher than it used to be.

Before, one would get, depending on their job, around 120-130 lei, sometimes 200.

And now it's 500 lei upwards.

- Did you get it? -Yes.

Let's see it!

I have it here!

Are those new or old banknotes?

They're good, that's what they are...

Yes, it's true. You'd be able to get groceries, salaries went up.

In essence, from an economics perspective, this amounts to bribing the population.

To give them the false impression that they're living better.

You've accused me of bribing the population, of providing them with some basic needs.

But we should care about the living standards and about doing what's needed

in these trying times. And about helping these people out as soon as possible,

This is a serious matter.

Ratiu and Campeanu were right to accuse Iliescu and Roman of bribing the population before the elections.

And they bribed it with serious money.

They paid back, to the entire population, the funds from the so-called 'social shares'.

These were some sort of share options offered by your employer.

Part of your salary would go towards buying these, on the promise you'd get a share of the profit.

Whenever the enterprise would become profitable.

Well, over the years, that money amounted to a nice payout.

I think it was around 17 billion Lei (approx $120m in 1990)

I was the last one to fight this and say: no, no, no!

But the pressure to pay this out was unbearable. And none of it was right.

They wanted to win the elections, right?

So they paid all of it out. They would tell people: 'Just go to the cashier'.

Cash in hand!

I got some as well, it was a nice payout.

I remember a colleague, bearded, fat guy, who got his money from the cashier and said:

'That's more like it!'

That's more like it...

That was the attitude at the time. And of course, people went to vote in droves.

To vote Iliescu and Roman. 'Cause at least they gave us something'

And such was the day of May 20th 1990, a day of patience and reflection,

when the Romanians searched for their path to the future,

a pursuit emphasised by the high turnout at the first free elections since World War II.

15 million voters would elect the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, and the president of Romania.

I voted for Iliescu. In May 1990, I voted for Iliescu.

Because I was thoroughly brainwashed by the FSN propaganda.

I was a believer.

I voted for Iliescu on a single argument: at that time, he was the only one able to deliver some stability.

I never regretted this decision and, believe me, there was no other option.

THE MAN WE NEED

I believe Iliescu was inevitable.

I think it was an awful solution for Romania, but it was an inevitable one.

Mr. Ion Iliescu, who secured over 12 million votes, becoming the president elect,

has outlined the issues facing the President, the Parliament, and the new Government.

What did we do wrong then?

We didn't do anything wrong.

This was the natural course of our history.

People who were in the system before the 90's had a lot of experience in running an organisation.

The party machinery, the secret police, they had well defined structures. While the people,

the civil society in Romania, was nonexistent at the time.

I pledge allegiance to the Romanian people, its ideals of liberty and prosperity.

I pledge to uphold the laws of the country, to safeguard democracy.

On June 13th 1990, weeks after Ion Iliescu became the first president of post-communist Romania,

law enforcement brutally squashed the rest of the protests in University Square.

Out with Iliescu!

Shame! They're killing people in the street!

Shame!

Incidents escalated, and Bucharest started to look like a war zone.

The violence on that day, when institutions were attacked with Molotov cocktails,

were never cleared up.

June 13th was a horrendous event.

That was an attempt - I still believe to this day - of the former secrete police

to reinstate itself in Romanian society.

The idea was very simple: "we still need to be a lever of power".

Whether they were masterminded by the secret police or not,

the events on June 13th determined Iliescu to call the entire population to take the streets.

We are dealing with a rebellion of a fascist nature.

Therefore, we need a unity between all the conscious powers in the country,

of the whole nation, to respond to these...

The next morning, June 14th,

tens of thousands of miners arrived in the Capital, responding to Ion Iliescu's call,

but also because of the newly founded SRI (Romanian Intelligence Service)

It's been proven, as I've noted in the SRI's report at the time,

that, disappointingly, there were some intelligence officers, part of the SRI,

who were involved in bringing the miners in. And causing a thing that should never have happened.

Bringing in the miners was, in fact, their (the SRI officers') most important action.

Because they planned it, we ended up with the miners here,

which then led to the horrible events we've seen at the time.

Very early in the morning of June 14th,

we got the news that the miners were near Bucharest.

We decided that Ion Iliescu would address them, as he was their man, so to speak.

And tell them "I know you came all this way, but there are no issues here."

We'd give them a hot meal and they'd be on their way.

Unfortunately, things got out of hand, as you know.

Instead of sending them home, Ion Iliescu sent the miners to University Square.

The miners, lead by Mr. Cozma, will advance towards University Square,

which we wish for you to occupy.

This is where scenes of unprecedented violence took place, images that would be seen worldwide

and would label Romania as a nation declining into anarchy.

Some people with some clubs

bludgeoned some other people, law enforcement was in riot gear

buses and the Home Office were set on fire. This wasn't what shocked the Western viewer though.

They've seen their fair share of this.

The novelty was that all of this was somehow a response to a call from the authorities.

One part of the population was pitted against the other.

Romania was closely followed at the time, it was all around the news.

There were lots of freelance journalists in the country at the time

Naturally, Romania's image deteriorated.

I was in Paris, right after these events, and I could've argued anything

I'm blue-eyed, I'm Romanian, I read Baudelaire. The response was always: 'Les Mineurs' (The Miners)

Chapter 3 The school of piranhas

What's your name?

Cotarla Marian.

What's that?

Cotarla Marian.

And do you go to school?

Yes.

Where?

108.

School number 108, right?

What grade?

Tenth grade.

Where did you get these cigarettes?

I bought them.

Where from?

Foreigners.

You mean foreign citizens, right?

How much did you pay?

30.

30?

And here you sell them for 50-60 lei, right?

No, 40.

40, right?

So that you can make a profit.

Right?

After half a year of violence and uncertainty,

Romanians were discovering the upsides of democracy.

And the most daring of them

started testing the most basic forms of capitalism in the street.

Dear viewers, we're looking at so-called trading (bisnita, meaning scalping)

a word that, someone told me jokingly,

might come from the English word "business".

I also went out on the boulevard, I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I sold cigarettes, tickets, jeans.

I did a bit of trading, so to speak.

At that time it was called a scalping (bișniță)

How much did you pay for these?

I bought them for 70 lei, so same price.

I got stuck with them and...

And you sell them for 75?

He asked me for 75.

You know what?

Yeah, I know, you asked me 75.

Where do you work?

Come on, this is a waste of time!

It was inevitable! This was the emergence of capitalism.

Things were being sold everywhere. Anything worked.

No matter what you were selling, people would buy it.

The problem was getting the goods.

The more stock you had and the more diversified, the more you'd sell.

I was making a bag of money.

Yes, I had a lot of money.

A lot of money even by today's standards, never mind back then.

Because things were going well, to be honest.

Smuggling.

In 1990, more than half of business people

would go to places like Turkey and come back with truckloads of goods.

They would buy cigarettes for 12 lei and they would then sell them for 100.

They would buy jeans for $10 and then sell it for $100-200 in Romania.

That was the business back then.

You would see on our roads Dacia cars with the trunks full to the brim.

With goods from Turkey.

I was the Minister of Finance and Petre Roman was prime minister.

I accompanied him on a visit to Turkey.

Where, at that time, the president was an economist

And in a discussion with him, he said:

"I've noticed a great deal of traffic

from Romania to Turkey, from Turkey to Romania."

"Some bring ball bearings to sell in Turkey. From Turkey they buy gold, silk."

And I thought, "What do I do now?"

"Should I strengthen border checks, enforce custom duty?"

And we said: "Let them trade!"

Who could resist that huge wave that started in Romania in the 90's?

Absolutely no one!

You can't get in the way of a people, my friend, no matter who you were.

They brought that gold jewellery from Turkey, they called it "peas".

Those chains and bracelets.

And I would sell them in the shop for a 50% margin.

And, after about a year, I got a visit from Revenue and Customs.

I got fined because I didn't have a license to sell it. I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to sell gold.

Apparently I needed a license from BNR (National Bank of Romania).

I'm not gonna lie, I kept selling for a few more years

without any license, just as before.

I was selling one kilogram of gold every three days.

After the Revolution, in 1990, the beginning of 1990,

we were like a school of piranhas.

We would jump at anything that moves.

No laws, no taxes, no duty, nothing.

You should know that this scalping had a positive impact too.

Because it kept money moving in the economy.

I did the smartest thing that anyone could do.

I wasn't happy with opening just one shop, so I opened 174.

Simple!

I wasn't happy with smuggling a Dacia trunk, I smuggled 15-20 trucks a day.

Simple!

He was the first to open a shop in Bacău. He was from Roman by birth.

He hired a venue in the centre of Bacau, and opened a shop, Royal Boutique.

I remember what it was called.

"Royal Boutique, the arbiter of elegance in Bacău" was the tagline.

When they were restocking, people could kill for it:

clothes, knitwear, slippers, purses, watches, gold, cigarettes, anything.

It was a bazaar, basically, this Royal Boutique.

There was nothing "royal" about it.

I had only one thing in mind at the time: to make money.

Nothing else!

The merchants bringing goods from Turkey weren't the only ones to make money in the early 1990s.

In communist Romania there was a small group of people who knew the rules of capitalism,

and after the Revolution they exploited Romanians' naivety and consumerism.

One of these people was George Pădure, who opened the first appliance store in Romania, Gepa.

We had 40,000 items.

I made a boom here.

Crazy.

VHS's and TVs sold really well.

TVs, refrigerators, cars ...

Everything that the Romanians lacked during communism.

And the boom started.

Those were happy times.

There were times when, obviously, a lot of money was being made.

Remember, there were margins of up to 6000%.

Just so you know what we're talking about.

Well, think about it now

you buy that vase for 100 euros and sell it for 6000 euros.

You didn't pay corporate tax, you didn't pay anything.

That's a profit of 5900 euros in your pocket.

Like George Pădure, in communism Viorel Catarama worked for a private company in the West.

This was almost impossible without having some connection with the Security.

I started living well since 1988

when I became the employee and manager in Eastern Europe for Belco.

We bought furniture from Eastern Europe to sell it in the Benelux.

Mr. Viorel Catarama is among the few

who, prior to '89, worked in foreign trade.

They were the only people who had the list of foreign clients.

He used his contacts. So did most people in these kinds of jobs.

Right after the Revolution, when the law was passed to allow private companies,

quite a few of the people involved in foreign trade registered private companies,

and took over the network of external customers

who were now trading through these new companies.

Viorel Catarama was one of those who used this method.

Immediately after the Revolution, he left Belco and founded his own company, Elvila.

After 1990, the company Belco became the client of Elvila.

And instead of buying furniture from Tehno Forest, it would buy furniture from Elvila.

The company owned by a former foreign trade officer became the middleman between state-owned companies

and foreign companies importing from Romania.

On one side, they were dealing with the international contract.

At the same time, they were handling the domestic contract and had full bargaining power with the domestic supplier.

Which had no leverage whatsoever!

Many who worked in foreign trade were Security officers,

and they would pull the strings of export-import relationships.

Yes, they were profiteers. It's true.

There are many former Security officers

who have become businessmen

and who operated,

in ways which indeed were threatening to the Romanian state.

I never denied and I'll never deny that

I've been labelled in certain ways for the past 25 years.

Like being a Security officer.

I don't deny it!

I would only be denying what is a matter of record.

Iliescu made a pact then with the Security.

He brought them back in and opened the gates of business for them.

I don't remember ever having contact with a Security officer.

I might have, but without my knowledge.

And I found out later that my boss, Dragoș Diaconescu, had ties to the Security.

Colleagues, employees of the Chamber of Commerce, of the Argus Office.

Look, I was in those 20, or 10 people, the 2%, or 0.2% that were not (part of Security).

From businessmen to foreign trade officers,

the first capitalists of the post-communists Romania exploited the circumstances

and profitted hugely.

It was the beginnings of certain types of wealth which now allows some individuals

to look down on us.

30 years later. Themselves, their family, their descendants.

It was then, in 1990.

I made a lot of money!

It's just a fact.

Money in the bag. Some in carrier bags, some in briefcases.

There were many anomalies.

But this was life, it was beautiful.

It was a start.

So money, profit making, co-financial economic indicators

the business plan, the revenue and expenditure budget were secondary.

We were young!

Life was beautiful!

At the end of 1990,

I had a 4 room flat.

Somewhere in Roman.

I managed to furnish three rooms before the Revolution,

the fourth room, the living room, wasn't furnished.

At the end of 1990,

I had in the unfurnished room $100 million in cash.

I celebrated with my wife back then

by drinking a bottle of champagne

and making love on $100 million cash.

Despite the increasing number of Romanians venturing into business,

most of the population was still employed in factories and plants.

But the desire to feel the benefits of democracy were just as great.

There was a lot of pressure to have an extra non-working day a week (Saturday), like the West.

People worked less, produced less, and still wanted higher wages.

That's when I said: "We can't make a living if we don't work!"

Petre Roman, yes, is right.

After the Revolution, the workers said:

"We are finally in charge now"

"The dictatorship is over!"

"And this is our factory, mister!"

"We do what we want with it!"

So we had months when

the economy, the businesses were fending for themselves.

I went to Tractor factory in Brasov.

And people had some demands.

And they were expecting me to give them

some words of encouragement.

And then I said, "Fellows!"

"Do you wanna know how we're doing?"

"Look, I'll tell you how we're doing."

I'll tell you exactly what I did.

"This is how we're doing."

And then I did this.

"That's how we're doing."

"Empty pockets."

At the end of 1990, the gross domestic product collapsed by more than 10%

The left overs from the communist regime were dwindling every month,

and transitional measures to a market economy were inevitable.

We needed to transform the super-centralized economy

into a free economy, into a private economy.

Basically, in Romania you had to start building.

And to build, Romania needed foreign investments to modernize communist factories.

Roman truck factory from Brașov

was the first with a chance to get out of the deadlock of this period.

The opportunity for the truck factory in Brașov was

for a big player in the industry, like Mercedes, or Volvo,

to come in and do what Renault did for Dacia.

In april 1990, Werner Niefer, the General Director of Mercedes, came to me

and said: "Mr. Prime Minister,"

"Look, Mercedes doesn't make buses or trucks outside Germany."

"I'm ready to come and make them in Romania."

And what did we do with it?

"Our country's not for sale!"

"Our country's not for sale!"

"Don't let others come and privatize things, we know better! "

Nationalism and the revival of these patriotic feelings had a direct effect.

This is how some thinking patterns were created

which later would be difficult to dislodge.

"Our country's not for sale!"

This slogan still works today.

It was that wretched chant that destroyed these companies.

They don't exist anymore!

Our country's not for sale!

But the chant wasn't coming from the workers protesting in the streets

but from a group of experienced communist ideologues.

Most notably, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, who was part of the Government since the 1950s.

In 1990, he became head of the Senate and advisor to President Iliescu.

Politically, this was a group of Marxists.

That is, they didn't trust the market economy. As simple as that.

It's easy to throw out phrases like

'immediate privatization'.

But we need to understand its social cost.

Unfortunately, Iliescu was heavily influenced by this group.

And then he had his own doubts, because he was himself

a product of that era and regime, of that system.

The issue of privatization and openness to foreign investors

caused an irreparable rupture between President Iliescu and Prime Minister Roman.

Before the second half of 1991,

it became clear that two main characters of the Revolution couldn't lead the country together.

In August 1991, I passed the Privatization Law.

Bârlădeanu was the president of the Senate and from the FSN.

The Roman Government was a FSN Government.

The evening I passed this law,

Bârlădeanu went and destroyed it on TV.

Because this law already had provisions for privatization.

One month after I passed the Privatization Law, the miners came.

On September 25, 1991,

over 10,000 miners from the Jiu Valley took over several trains

and went to Bucharest to ask for higher wages and better working conditions.

And will be granted a fixed amount, not subject to taxation!

I was next to Miron Cozma, when he gave the order to attack the Government building.

The law enforcement tasked with defending the building stepped aside

and the miners plundered Victoria Palace.

In Parliament, the resignation of Prime Minister Petre Roman is being announced.

In a conversation with Mr. Iliescu,

He confirmed that Mr. Petre Roman requested to withdraw.

"The Prime Minister has resigned!" Which at that time was a blatant lie!

A despicable political maneuver, meant to prevent the reform. Which it did.

It really did.

But the miners were not aware of the political maneuvers.

Having absolute power,

Miron Cozma's people decided that overthrowing the Government wasn't enough.

Out with Iliescu!

After they managed to overthrow the Government

a large group of miners, probably uncontrolled,

joined with disgruntled citizens and marched to besiege Cotroceni Palace.

To get rid of Iliescu while they're at it, not just of Roman.

And there, unlike the Romanian Government,

which at that time didn't even have a fence,

Cotroceni Palace had a tall wall.

And then three characters appeared.

Two with rifles

and one who would hand them bullet rounds.

They were shooting pellet shots.

They fired straight into the crowd.

A few minor injuries were reported. It was hard to kill anyone from that distance.

And in 15 minutes the square was evacuated. They all ran off.

After the danger was removed,

Ion Iliescu sat down with the miner's representatives.

...In order to end this conflict and this degeneration of the protest.

Miron Cozma discussed with the President of Romania from a position of power.

We request for you to acknowledge the current issues, which we'll discuss shortly.

Under the following conditions, we are willing to return home:

The resignation of Prime Minister Petre Roman and the entire Government.

When Miron Cozma arrived,

he signed a pact, a kind of document with Ion Iliescu.

Ion Iliescu, the elected president of Romania,

and Miron Cozma, the head of the bandits, in lack of a better term.

I'm sorry you have to bear the brunt of the actions of an arrogant and self-centered man.

From that moment on,

all the openness we had with the West was blocked.

Helmut Kohl's first statement was:

"At the moment, all relations with Romania are frozen"

Ciao! We'll be back!

We'll be back again!

Chapter 4: The Stagnation

After the Mineriad of 1991,

the country is ruled by a coalition government led by Theodor Stolojan

There is a way out of the transition period

and this stage could take anywhere between ten,

fifteen, maybe even twenty years.

FSN, the party elected after the revolution, splits in two.

The progressive wing, led by Petre Roman, keeps the "FSN" name,

while the conservative wing, gathered around Ion Iliescu,

founds a new party FDSN (the Democratic National Salvation Front)

(chanting) Long live Iliescu, make Romania flourish!

In the autumn of 1992 new elections are scheduled

and Ion Iliescu starts as the favourite against Emil Constantinescu.

On the first of October, between the two voting rounds,

Michael Jackson arrives in Bucharest.

Romanians show a preference for Western music, but not so much for Western politics.

On the eleventh of October 1992, Ion Iliescu is elected president for the second time.

The worst thing to happen to Romania during those years

was Ion Iliescu's win in the 1992 elections.

That was it.

If Emil Constantinescu would have won in 1992, with the Democratic Convention,

Romania would've moved forward four years .

These were the years when we missed all our opportunities.

Nicolae Vacaroiu was the prime minister of Romania during those years,

an average economist who worked in the State Committee of Communist Planning for twenty years.

Of course, my naming as prime minister took me by surprise.

I didn't know Iliescu personally until then.

He probably said, "Things are so bad that

we need a man who knows the economy well

who can save us and get us through the winter."

His government went through the parliament with the support of the so-called "red four",

a political bloc consisting of parties such as Gheorghe Funar's PUNR, Vadim Tudor's PRM

and Ilie Verdeț's PSM, former prime minister during Ceausescu.

They all had their origins in the Communist Party.

That was it!

The return to a way

of running the economy centrally.

Running a centralised economy meant

retaining an industry that was in an advanced state of decay.

However, no one wanted to accept this reality.

What do you mean, close a factory?

It was unheard of!

"We need to build, to improve our products".

You couldn't make any kind of improvements. Why?

One thing that was true and which frightened Roman:

the Romanian industry was a scrapheap.

Yes, it was. Outdated.

You know, we've inherited a fountain with no water

as well as the lie that there's water in the fountain.

Because Ceausescu had stopped all technology imports.

Romania was one of the world's top manufacturers of oil equipment.

Where did we lose touch with the industry?

Right when electronics and the oil equipment industries merged.

We kept using ...

...manual labour,

while the West embraced this symbiosis and we, at that point, began to lag behind.

Come!

Be careful!

Our working conditions ...

... I wouldn't be exaggerating if I'd compare them to 1900.

Maybe worse.

Because if we take a closer look...

...Looking at the past few years... So, thirty years ago,

the machines were the same as they were...

30 years ago, but now they're 30 years old.

I don't know if I was clear enough.

I was working at FEA, the Factory for Elements of Automation.

It was on the Pipera platform.

That was a factory built by the Japanese in the 1970s.

Very modern at the time.

I was working in a department called "Power supplies"

We were making voltage-stabilising power supplies for the computers of that time.

When the Japanese were running it, the workshop was making 25 power supplies a month

25 of which worked.

After the Japanese left and towards the late '80s, when I was there in '89,

the workshop would make 100 sources a month, out of which 2 or 3 were working.

This phenomenon describes the entire socialist economy: production for the sake of production.

Production of equipment, tools, anything. Which, at best, were not in demand.

And more commonly, they didn't even work.

There were many products in Romania,

where the cost to make them was higher than their market value.

They were made, for example, to be exported. But you wouldn't export them to France or Germany.

You would export them in the Comecon system (The Mutual Economic Aid Council).

We would supply ball-bearings to Poland, and they'd supply us with lighters, for example.

Even if we didn't need them.

And that was Comecon.

These things didn't work anymore after the socialist system collapsed.

Comecon didn't exist anymore, the Russians weren't buying anymore.

The other countries were becoming democracies.

Clearly, such a system couldn't last forever.

As long as it was designed not to make goods, but to make jobs.

That was the band-aid that socialism put on these countries.

The illusion of having a job and no problems whatsoever.

For 4 years, the biggest concern for Ion Iliescu and the Văcăroiu government

was to keep this band-aid, which sustained a great illusion:

job security.

Of course, the fundamental idea was:

"Don't upset the workers!"

That's how Iliescu saw it at the time,

but as long as no one would buy those goods,

the money came from the state budget or God knows where from.

The money wasn't coming in the natural way:

you sell some goods and get some money.

Of course, companies making a loss were being subsidized.

But not just one, many! Even the larger ones.

Workers were going to work for nothing. That's the main point.

People had this feeling:

"We go in, we work and we make things."

They were making to stock.

Finished products were made, but nobody would buy them.

That's not how it worked..

While I was prime minister, I didn't make anything to stock.

When you start a process like this,

you don't just close the factories overnight.

Imagine I shut down the factories and fire 2 million people.

How do you feed people if they're not productive?

During those years, the Văcăroiu Government stimulated a supply which couldn't turn a profit.

Often of questionable quality,

the Romanian goods had another handicap.

Even when it was competitive, it was warehoused, because there was no one to sell it.

There was now another myth, another mental barrier to overcome: supply vs sale.

We had good engineers.

And that was it. They were good at making things.

We didn't have people in marketing, in investments,

we had no economists for sector analysis.

We didn't have anything like that.

Can you imagine the mental shift

to accept the idea that sales are more important than production?

Because, in fact, that's the revolutionary capitalist idea:

I, the buyer, come to you, the manufacturer.

You don't manufacture whatever you want!

You manufacture what I ask you to!

I come in and say:

"Stop making those sandals because they don't sell!

You're going to make red flip-flops, these are going to sell! "

Something like that, in 1990,

to accept the idea that sellers are more important

than those who work hard, who make things, the ones who bend the matter?

For this kind of idea, you could get beaten up.

The leaders at the time didn't want to overcome these mental barriers.

They left them there in order to help them stay in power.

Let's not forget the difficult social situation we're in.

Making this transition abruptly,

sacrificing people's living conditions,

using sacrificial curves, so to speak, for a large part of people,

it's something we need to consider carefully and responsibily.

The attempt of Iliescu and his regime, the Văcăroiu government

and its famous stagnation, to keep these dinosaurs operating

costed the Romanian people greatly.

There was absolutely no stagnation.

Everything was done by the book.

Things are going, we'd say, well.

The government does nothing but deliver on the plan that was agreed upon.

And, of course, the rest ...

The rest of Romania remained sad and gray, led without a strategy and avoided by foreign investors.

Remember, for years, foreign investors were cautions about us.

I mean, Romania was always a red flag.

What's the red flag doing?

"Well, the miners come in from time to time and they beat you up."

There is still a lot of reluctance from foreign investors, for a variety of reasons.

Please allow me to avoid elaborating on these reasons.

I think you know them well and debated these at length.

Why would they come here? To negotiate with whom?

With Nicu Văcăroiu and Florin Georgescu?

They were sitting like this on the Romanian factory:

"Let's defend our Romanian assets with all our might!"

Everyone from abroad

were sending us all kinds of experts.

And they even taught us what laws to create.

Do you get me?

They didn't necessarily do it

to raise Romania to the top. Let's be serious!

Their plan was to transform Romania into a retail market.

Race horses, jockey, racecourse. Images familiar to the people of Ialomita.

While foreign investors kept away from the Romanian capital,

the scalpers of the transition graduated to the next level, posing as big businessmen.

They exist because of the well-known company Hermes in Slobozia.

Which, through its owner, Mr. Ilie Alexandru, approached with understanding, with passion

this prince of the planes: the horse.

Ilie Alexandru bet on the people's fascination

with the West, with everything they missed out on during those years.

In these images is brought together

Hermes' desire to do something different, something unheard of.

These were all thieves.

Everything Ilie Alexander built was with the money he took from Bancorex

which he had no plans to ever pay back.

He borrowed some millions of dollars.

and didn't pay a single penny back.

That's how the largest Romanian bank at the time was robbed.

Bancorex was the former Romanian Foreign Trade Bank,

through which the communist state was running its international operations.

In the 1990s, it reported losses of over two billion dollars,

due to loans taken by people connected with the state.

When they were asked:

"Well, mister, you have to pay this money back or you'll be arrested"

What would they reply? "I create jobs!"

Everyone was saying: "I create jobs"

I only find one thing important here: what I did in this country,

the thousands of jobs we created

are not there to benefit me.

The problem, after all, is not that you earned a lot of money fast

The problem is whether you can also keep the business alive after you got rich.

Or develop it.

Because, in the end, for the Romanian state

it's important for the business to work,

to pay salaries and taxes.

The Iliescu regime encouraged the rise of these so-called cardboard millionaires.

It allowed them to bankrupt banks, it enabled fraudulent privatizations

and supplied them with favourable laws.

Back then, they made targeted laws.

Government orders for 2-3 months, for one or ten people.

That's how we got the 72% tax for TVs.

I would pay them, but that meant my price was doubling.

Copos was selling for half the price.

What was I going to do? I couldn't fight him

The law said that:

"...TVs supplied with an infrared remote control system".

Copos would take out the remote and sell it separately.

He'd tell you: "For the remote you have to go next door."

He got a lot of help.

It's true that through the laws that were passed

We fought only for the development of local capital.

So that we don't become the colony we are today!

I remember very well that there were a couple of

Government orders which lifted customs duties for 24 hours.

Simply: "ball-bearings are exempt from custom duty between 27 and 28 August."

The Government order would be published,

the bearings would be loaded from the ships into trucks.

And that's it! No customs duty.

Then the duty was reinstated after 24 hours.

Just long enough for that friend of the prime minister to solve a problem.

People wouldn't even hear about these things.

These things were done and that's it.

They'd take - or split- the money, and the people knew nothing

I knew the only way to develop my company was through investment.

I decided to invest in transport.

I bought 5 trucks from the Brasov Truck Factory.

And because fortune favours the bold,

the day after I bought them, their price has tripled.

It became a problem when these people

wanted to gain political influence.

And to combine the two aspects.

And this was the route of Dumitru Sechelariu, who in '96 became mayor.

From the position of mayor, he began to serve, without any shame, his own financial interests.

Dumitru Sechelariu, a businessman turned PDSR (former FDSN) party member and mayor,

wasn't an exception, but a norm that would define Romanian politics in the coming decades.

The ones who got rich during the transition were present in all parties.

In the 90s, I went to Radu Campeanu and told him that I, citizen Viorel Catarama

like the ideas he brings into public debate

and I want to support the National Liberal Party financially.

Without me getting involved in politics. I'd only provide some support.

Viorel Catarama supported the party financially, and later became its vice president and part of the Government

No law prevented me then to be a minister, general manager, and shareholder.

In parallel

The direct link between politics and business was becoming a norm.

I became a PDSR member

despite seeing my self a small businessman, who only wants to be a bigger businessman.

I didn't see any issue with running these things in parallel

The attitude was different then.

I was only interested in how much I earn.

And I don't think anyone was losing. Who was losing?

In the new oligarchic Romania made up of politicians and businessmen,

the ones losing were millions of Romanians, captive in the bankrupt industry of the 1990s.

The illusion that was sold to the people was wearing out.

Everything was a sign of collapse.

Abandoned children, hyperinflation, endless strikes.

Thieves! Thieves!

It hurts us that in His light

The earth holds a bad world

In the mines, God is with us ...

For more and more Romanians, survival became the main concern.

My pension is the equivalent of four kilograms of salami. That's it.

That's it

I don't even know if it's enough for that.

... yes, I have just enough.

But then I still have to pay for gas, electricity and maintenance.

Some people were shuddering, frightened...

Nobody cursed at me during that time and I went to all the protests.

Huo! Huo!

Thieves! Thieves!

I remember, there were strike after strike after strike.

And an inflation of 290% or something.

It was incredible!

We are starving!

Thieves! Thieves!

These were very difficult times for Romanians.

It was terrible, yes, terrible.

And with many collateral damages among regular people.

With what you'd pay for a car in 1990,

in 1995 you'd only buy a motorcycle, for example.

And many lost their savings by not knowing about inflation, or mechanics of economy.

They lost their life savings exactly like this.

Besides inflation, the Romanians' savings were exposed to other dangers of the transition.

Pyramid schemes, like the famous Caritas,

harmed hundreds of thousands who believed the magic formula of getting rich quick.

Deposit one million, wait a few weeks, get back eight million.

At my age of 86, going on 87, I didn't have that much money.

How much did you deposit here?

Well how much ... about two million

This combination of naivety, despair and poverty which reigned in Romania in those years

reached its peak in the villages throughout the country.

The abolition of the Cooperatives put peasants in a difficult situation.

They got their lands back, but having no machinery to work with,

they went backwards by 100 years.

What do you work the land with? Do you have any tools?

We don't have any! With the hoe, look!

We have no tractor, no horse, we have nothing.

This is how we struggle with the hoe all summer, dear.

When did you sell the land?

I sold a piece of land.

How much did you get for it?

About two and a half million.

Money has devalued, what will you do next?

We keep seling. I got the property title, we keep selling, there's no other option.

After working their whole lives in the communist collective farms,

The peasants woke up to some pitiable pensions.

I'm even embarassed to hand the pension to many people.

I feel sorry for them...

I take the pensions to some pensioners who get something like 40,000 - 50,000 lei

But when I go to the one with 4,000, I feel bad to even count that.

Because I'm used to counting 30-40,000 upwards, like with the others.

It pains me to give them 4,000 lei (approx 2 dollars in 1994)

The Romanian state seemed to have abandoned these people.

Only some random MP would write them the occasional poem.

Request.

We'd like, if possible

To ask of our new masters

To maybe pay us in instalments

the two-cent pension

The pension of the Romanian peasants.

You stole our land,

You tied our ankles and our hands

Cooperatives are all impoverished

All I've ever given is gone forever.

The lives of Romanian peasants

We have no bread, firewood and dishes

We're hungry and naked like dogs

Chapter 5 Towards Europe

Mister president, distinguished representatives.

The spectactulare evolutions in the area of Eastern Europe.

And the firm determination of Romania to have a market-oriented economy.

Needs the support of industrialised countries.

After 5 years of the economy collapsing, and with people barely making ends meet,

the leaders of post-revolution Romania are forced to accept the failures of the original democracy.

Those who urged Romanians not to sell their country

were now telling them that the only solution is looking to the West.

"Guys, we have Carpathians, Danube. We, the Romanians, can make it on our own"

Look, it doesn't work!

We have to work with Europe and others.

Are we heading towards the EU? Let's make a statement then.

On June 21, 1995,

representatives from all political parties, the unions, the Academy and the Church

took part in the signing of the Snagov declaration,

a document that united everyone towards a goal for the next decade:

Romania to join the EU.

Shall we start? Let me now, yeah?

I think today is an important political moment.

It's about expressing the unequivocal will of the parliamentary parties

to accept as a major objective ...

..the integration into European structures.

A good, necessary step was taken.

The Great Romania Party always assumed

that Romania was in Europe even before the birth of Europe.

Do you think they just caught the EU fever?

Do you think they had Western values in mind?

Do you think they wanted economic regulation like the West?

No!

At that moment, our great friend, The Soviet Union had broken up

So we didn't have much to guide us and going it alone was impossible.

Basically, those in power looked at the global situation and said:

"Ok, we have to take this route, otherwise we'll have Ceausescu's fate."

That is: no food, serious economic issues and everything collapses again.

The Snagov meeting symbolized the departure from the original democracy,

which was masking a combination of democracy and dictatorship.

The suffering has passed, what matters is that the future provides something good for the country.

The rest is no longer important.

Also in 1995, a few months after the Snagov Declaration,

another event proved that Romanians began to understand their past mistakes.

An inexplicable phenomenon occurred.

Sometimes, things like these happen..

The huge lines behind Corneliu Coposu's funeral.

A sort of a revelation.

It's like they went there to tell him: "Forgive us!"

That was the feeling: "Forgive us!"

Part of the Romanian democracy died.

It's a shame, it's a great shame. For us, but particularly for you.

He showed the kind of character that few would be able to after 50 years

of struggles and unhappiness.

Corneliu Coposu, the man who thousands of people tried to lynch in Bucharest in 1990,

became post-mortem, the symbol of morality in Romanian politics.

Through the disappointment that overwhelmed Romania during those years,

people were looking for hope to carry them forward.

The political opposition, civil society and a growing share of the population

began to believe in a word which for a long time seemed unacceptable: Change.

We need to put our finger on the wound. and find out where mistakes were made.

But also, who made mistakes.

The man who attracted all this energy was Emil Constantinescu,

a university professor who was going to to run for election in 1996 against Ion Iliescu.

In '96 the change came from

the alliance of the parties which represented an ideal.

I support and we support Mr. Emil Constantinescu.

I don't think Iliescu imagined that it would come to this,

but the moment I signed an agreement with Emil Constantinescu

and campaigned for Emil Constantinescu,

he understood that there was no way back.

Iliescu for president!

Somehow, Ion Iliescu didn't want to win those elections that badly.

As if he wasn't up for it anymore.

Out with Iliescu!

I understand the concerns, the dissatisfaction, disappointment of many people

regarding the difficult situation that the national economy is going through.

But we have to understand the context of this situation.

In 1989 a system that could not hold anymore collapsed,

both in Romania and throughout this area of Europe.

This idea was popular in PSD:

"We can't close factories! Because we can't"

"We're the Communist Party, the working class party, we can't close factories."

"Let's leave these guys in charge for a few years"

"They'll compromise themselves, people will curse them, right?"

"Let them close the factories."

The change was also encouraged by the head of the Romanian Intelligence Service.

A pillar of the Iliescu regime, Virgil Măgureanu announced he'd vote for change.

I was able to know if this should happen or not. Change, that is.

I was able and I did it.

The change occurred in November 1996.

It was a time when more and more Romanians

were aware that the country needs new leadership.

I will vote for Emil Constantinescu.

I vote for Emil Constantinescu.

I voted and will continue to vote for Mr. Emil Constantinescu,

because I trust him.

After the ballot box was opened,

Ion Iliescu had to acknowledge his defeat.

To fulfill their commitments and promises ...

Victory! Victory!

When the results were announced, people went out in the streets.

Hey, Iliescu is gone!

God was brought to life for us! God in the skies!

This was a turning point, because it was the first time in the history of Romania

when a head of state was changed through a vote.

Out with communism! Out with Iliescu!

I was told that the people were gathering in the University Square,

Spontaneously, no one called them there.

I walked around it, to not succumb to the enthusiasm of the crowd,

I went on the balcony, I didn't have a speech ready.

We're all here again to say that Romania will become a dignified, prosperous country

The free country that we all wanted!

That together we will prove that we're able to rebuild this country

And all this time, I felt a chill.

I realised that these people had immeasurable hope.

Soon it was winter and the hopes of Romanians were hit by reality.

The price of gas increased four times, and that of petrol doubled.

I'm holding it in my hand, what can I do?

And while people were panicking,

the new prime minister promised them everything would be fine.

Moving to another internal state of affairs,

the population's welfare,

Romania aligning with the global financial system...

The Democratic Convention won the election with the promise to bring into the public institutions

15,000 specialists able to reform the state from the ground up.

But, when forming a government,

it was difficult to identify a single specialist able to be prime minister.

That's how Victor Ciorbea came to lead of the Government,

a former union leader, recently elected as mayor of Bucharest.

The CDR (Romanian Democratic Convention), didn't have any truly prepared people.

They were unable to name a prime minister! They had to get Ciorbea,

who wasn't the best fit for this job anyway.

So that's true.

People really had hope at that time.

And believed the promises from those parties:

"15,000 specialists. We have 15,000 specialists ready to go!"

Some people in the media started to make jokes for weeks on end

that these specialists are Ciorbea, Ciorbea, Ciorbea and so on.

The idea of the 15,000 specialists

came spontaneously and it was real.

In all the counties in Romania,

people representing historical parties were at the forefront

There was a change everywhere in the country.

I remember the leader of the Peasants' Party in Bacau

Mr. Cornita, who had been a political prisoner.

A nice old man, with common sense, but clearly unremarkable.

How can I put this? I think it was one big party in all the institutions and ministries.

They were laughing their heads off, saying "This poor guy, let's set him up!"

I'll never forget, Ion Diaconescu, a star in the Peasant's Party, said something really stupid

It shocked me how much these people lived in the past.

He said: "We want to rename the Government to 'Council of Ministers'. That's what it was called back in my time"

Meaning the 1930s.

And he was told "You can't do that because in the Constitution it's called the Government."

Was this a priority?

But the biggest challenges for the CDR government were when they had to adopt

unpopular measures, postponed by the Iliescu regime.

That meant mainly closing the bankrupt state-owned enterprises.

It was well known that the economic and financial situation was very serious

and we knew we had to take some dramatic measures!

Structural reforms concerning engergy-intensive companies, who had huge losses.

The independent administrations...

None of this was done yet!

When the Ciorbea Government tried to close the first 15 companies,

the workers went to the street and said: "No way!"

Out with the Government!

It's a reality that, almost daily, we had protests, rallies, marches, strikes.

Victor Ciorbea resigned today,

after, for the past few months, he was challenged by his coalition partners.

I didn't delay the reform, or the privatization, but I had to start with the basics.

The one who set this change in motion was the Minister of Transport, Traian Basescu.

In an interview for a national newspaper, he accused Ciorbea

of being incompetent to implement a harsh, accurate and quick reform.

Apart from these issues, street protests demanded for the prime minister to resign.

They were all screaming, left, right, all televisions, radio stations, and so on:

"Ciorbea is to blame!" Ciorbea...

Maybe my attempt of being a different prime minister was premature.

That's how it was meant to be.

One year after winning the elections,

the Peasants' Party was again in a difficult position.

They needed another expert to be a prime minister.

They chose Radu Vasile,

a university professor who joked around when asked about reform forecasts.

So in August there will be a large eclipse...

And we hope, and I predict it will be on August 11th.

Come on, quit it with those questions!

He was utterly incompetent.

A nice man, but utterly incompetent.

He was teaching the history of the economy at the ASE (Academy of Economic Studies).

He was clueless!

I think so too.

God rest his soul, but I think so too.

He was a kind man, member of the Peasants' Party.

From the opposition, right? Against communism!

We finally have honest people, right?

I was going to interview him,

because we had serious issues with the economy,

And he was playing chess.

May he rest in peace, he played chess on the computer, in the Government office.

I'd say: "I have to ask you about this ..."

He'd say "Just a minute, I have a thing here..."

And he kept on playing chess.

It's true.

But it wasn't chess, it was computer games.

The man had no clue about economy.

Romania was in economic crisis, I showed him all the defining factors of a crisis,

looking at what was happening, with numbers, in the economy

and he'd refuse to acknowledge it.

He'd say: "No, sir, that's not true, actually!"

In this context, it's appropriate to show that slowing down of reforms,

in the second half of 1997, had the effect

of lowering the country's rating by Moody's, Standard & Poor's.

Romania was then on the verge of default. Because, under Radu Vasile,

it wasn't badly governed, it wasn't governed at all.

That was a critical moment

The Mineriad of 1999 happened on the backdrop of people's disillusionment.

Brothers, our patience has come to an end!

In January 1999, determined to ask for higher wages and to stop the closure of underperforming mines

15,000 miners went, once again, to Bucharest, led by Miron Cozma.

At the Cotroceni Palace

The owl sings

The goatee and his mates

Are in deep trouble!

In Costești, Vâlcea county, they were met by the Gendarmerie.

Go ahead!

Numerically superior, the miners broke law enforcement's wall and took hundreds of prisoners,

including the Vâlcea county prefect.

The President declared a state of emergency,

and a march was organized in Bucharest against the action of the miners and in defense of democracy.

The country was on the verge of civil war.

If the violence of the miners will continue,

Romania will have no future ahead.

Jiu Valley, are you happy with this response, yes or no?

Noooo!

At that time, Emil Constantinescu was hated!

These people in government were detested, hated, by the vast majority of the population.

This is what Miron Cozma counted on

when he brought the miners to Bucharest.

Obviously, in agreement with the PRM (Greater Romania Party) of Vadim Tudor,

in agreement with the PSD (Social Democratic Party)

On behalf of the PRM group, senator Corneliu Vadim Tudor.

If in 1989 it was an anti-communist revolution,

in 1999 we are dealing with an anti-mafia revolution.

With the miners advancing towards Bucharest,

Prime Minister Radu Vasile gave up and made peace with Miron Cozma's people.

Hello. The talks have started five to six minutes ago

between the government delegates led by Prime Minister Radu Vasile

and the leaders of the miners at Cozia Monastery.

The Prime Minister essentially surrendered to a group which undermined the state.

And accepted all their claims.

The mines were no longer closed

and continued to operate at a loss for many years after that.

Now, looking towards West,

Romania reflects upon itself.

Romania rediscovers its identity.

Despite the huge domestic issues,

the CDR government and Emil Constantinescu's term left some positive things in history.

Following the 1996 elections,

Romania's foreign policy followed consistently two main objectives:

becoming a member of NATO and the EU.

It was ... "the Americans had finally come."

And I think it was Pro TV saying:

"Let's look towards the West every night!"

And the idea was: "We'll join NATO, because Clinton came here and said: Stay the course, stay the course!"

And people said: "Yeah, we want to join NATO and we'll do anything! NATO, NATO, NATO..."

Let's do it together!

Only together we can succeed!

Romania wanted to join NATO, but NATO was telling us we're not ready.

In 1997, at the Madrid Summit,

we were told there's still much progress to be made,

and the most important was reforming the Army.

Even so, history was on our side.

Dear compatriots, together with the Romanian Government and with the will of the people,

I follow with great care and natural concern

the evolution of the conflict in Kosovo.

In 1999, the war in Kosovo broke out and NATO reached out to Romania, as backwards as it was.

NATO's planes needed the approval of the Romanian state

to transit the airspace and reach former Yugoslavia.

I had to go to Parliament to be granted the flyover for NATO.

In reality, for the USA.

Emil Constantinescu did this

despite public opinion in Romania being pro-Serbia.

And because of that, in the fall of 1999,

Tony Blair came to Bucharest.

And then I said, "Tony,

thank you for coming, it's important for NATO,

but we in Romania have a saying:

if someone gives you a finger, you ask for their whole hand."

And I said "we know what NATO is now, this isn't our main issue anymore."

"Our key issue is becoming a member of the EU".

And he said, "Okay."

We joined the EU thanks to the people who died in Yugoslavia.

Until then, Iliescu had been toiling with Mitterrand,

talking to the socialists in his circles.

Nobody paid attention to us! They didn't even consider it!

The EU was even more difficult than NATO!

We had no support from anyone in the EU.

Absolutely no one! And Tony Blair came

and within a week, Romania was on its course to join the EU.

That's the real story of what happened.

We weren't allowed to join the EU

because we were beautiful, charming, faithful,

or because we had great politicians who got us there.

Chapter 6 Sleep peacefully!

I sold my flat and I deposited the cash just for the three months

and now I was supposed to get it back!

And when I wanted to withdraw the money, this happened.

At the beginning of 2000, Romania was facing yet another social and economic shock:

the collapse of the FNI (National Investment Fund).

My boy sold both the truck and the trailer.

He sold the cow and the calf.

So he could buy a tractor at some point.

I put it (the money) in there! There it is!

A nation of romantics. Full of dreams.

The FNI was the latest invention from a long series of scams

who lured Romanians in during the transition years.

The ads became more attractive, but the recipe was the same:

people deposited money in the Fund

and were expecting returns up to four times higher than any regular bank.

Sleep peacefully while FNI works for you.

The National Investment Fund. It's part of your life.

Behind this scheme was Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu

who, in the meantime, graduated from smuggling goods from Turkey

to much more complex operations.

Why did they call you in?

For the accusation of ...

...money laundering.

As expected, the FNI collapsed.

Over 300,000 people realised that while they were sleeping peacefully,

their savings evaporated.

All they could do was take to the streets and shout their despair

Thieves! Thieves!

Damn you all!

You should all go to hell!

70% are retired and poor!

It took many years for Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu to pay for his actions.

In prison, he met people who lost money through the FNI.

Many..

And I showed them how not to get scammed by institutions like mine.

The crash of the FNI occurred during the last six months of the CDR governance.

It was the final blow to the huge hopes Romanians had in 1996.

People didn't expect any miracles,

but they were expecting more...

honesty.

So people were very generous

with that coalition and trusted them with their vote,

but the coalition didn't know what to do with it.

The worst thing was the moral bankruptcy

of the opposition that came into power.

What do you mean? Why? What happened then?

I don't see where,

I would need to understand how my administration failed morally.

The FNI scandal.

At the heart of this scandal was a certain Camenco Petrovici,

head of CEC (building society), and member of the Peasants' Party.

That man made a deal with Vîntu that on those taglines with

"Sleep peacefully, FNI works for you", the CEC symbol would also appear.

CEC was a brand.

We want our money back!

The CEC guaranteed the payments.

Vîntu said: "You get the money, I'll get you a satisfactory profit."

And the CEC said: "Yes, that's fine, I'll guarantee this!"

That's what happened there: a state-owned bank became guarantor for a Ponzi Scheme.

And this was done by a member of the Peasants' Party.

That's one example, indeed. It was a...

... an act signed by Prime Minister Radu Vasile.

It was a completely wrong thing to do.

The first decade of democracy ended in an atmosphere of despair.

The young people who made the Revolution happen were no longer young,

and there was nothing left of their passion.

There isn't a child who died in the revolution

who wouldn't say, "Mother, did I die in vain?"

They'd be turning in their graves.

I ask for forgiveness from all those who hoped they'd live better,

but continued to suffer.

Before the 2000 elections,

Emil Constantinescu announced that he won't be running for a second term

and opened the door to the most unpredictable electoral struggle after the Revolution.

The Romanians were once deceived,

but this won't work a second time,

this manoeuvring of those in power.

At the end of 2000, Ion Iliescu was back in full energy,

while the parties on the right proved incapable of building a coalition to support a candidate.

Me, Isarescu, Melescanu, Roman...

...who else did I mention?

Me, Isarescu, Melescanu, Roman. Whatever.

And while some were counting their candidates, the voters' attention was focused somewhere else

Vadim, get the country out of trouble, Vadim!

Vadim! Vadim!

He had a nationalistic aggression that was out of the ordinary.

He would connect with all types of nationalist feelings.

WE LOVE YOU VADIM

And, for a people who lived 40 years in total political illiteracy, this was effective.

Come on man, not only I'm a communist,

I was born and raised in the communist spirit, for Christ's sake!

I had a home, I had everything.

Now I'm starving, fuck them!

After 10 years, people started to lose their patience.

And then they said, "Go on then, let's go with this guy"

"At least he's loud, determined."

People turned in 2000 towards determined people.

And Vadim seemed like someone who talks and points to this ...mafia!

The country was largely run by gangsters.

And I have the courage to say that.

They stole with impunity, with four hands, like a Rahmaninov concert.

They stole and moved the money abroad.

Vadim didn't just bring his own electorate,

but he also brought a lot of young voters

who said, "I'll vote for him because he's crazy!"

I confess that in 2000 I voted for Vadim

exactly on those considerations.

What were the reasons to vote for Corneliu Vadim Tudor?

His extremism. I appreciate it.

He's got guts.

I like the nationalist style.

Rather than having any relations with European countries,

to join the EU,

better to stay in Romania, to have our own salary.

He thinks like I do.

"I VOTED FOR HIM BECAUSE HE'S CRAZY"

Over three million Romanians used the the same logic and voted for Corneliu Vadim Tudor

who went to the second round with Ion Iliescu.

We're strong!

This is an earthquake!

For the whole world, not just for Romania!

Romania shocked the western world again.

A candidate full of communist nostalgia and with extremist speeches,

was one step away from becoming president.

Romania can only be run with a rifle!

He wanted machine guns on the stadiums,

"I'll execute them with machine guns on the stadium, no problem."

He was making lists, he made a list:

"people who will be shot as soon as we come into power."

More than a decade after the Revolution,

Romania was once again considering Ion Iliescu a saviour.

Iliescu is fair!

The press and civil society united against the danger of Vadim Tudor,

urging people to choose the lesser evil.

I welcome the gesture of solidarity

in the face of threats to democracy ...

Ion Iliescu won the elections by a landslide and became a president again.

It's time to reconcile. It's time to unite.

Four years followed in which Ion Iliescu took a step back

and watched over the rise of his political successor.

Adrian Nastase, the new Prime Minister of Romania,

came from the young wing of the communist structures

which, after the Revolution, joined the FSN and later Iliescu's PDSR.

He was seen as a man able to reform the party,

and in the early 2000s he took this role seriously.

He changed the name to PSD, surrounded himself with youth,

and set for his government objectives which suggested the party finally broke with the past.

The new PSD is the only force capable

of building the new Romania.

Determined steps were being taken towards NATO and the EU,

and foreign investors were encouraged to come to Romania.

The so-called cardboard capitalists, the first big investors

had proven incapable of managing anything beyond a family business.

And it was necessary to join the structures

of globalization, foreign investments, and so on.

Foreign investments also meant privatizing large state-owned companies, such as Petrom and Sidex Galați.

I'm glad that the privatization of Petrom

is not just a regular transaction of selling state assets.

It's very important to emphasize that this isn't just a stock sale,

today's contract is, firstly, a partnership

with a reliable investor.

Basically, Sidex had losses of a million dollars a day,

which represented unpaid wages.

Of course we could've kept doing that, but the EU said:

"Well, this is a subsidy, right? We can't agree with that."

Same with Petrom and so on.

Many complain because we privatized Petrom,

but when I privatized it, it had a debt of 30 billion lei.

Foreign investments weren't just about controversial privatizations.

On buildings in big cities, logos of western corporations start to appear.

In the early 2000s,

Romania sees it's first economic growth after the fall of communism.

The world saw Adrian Nastase as a guy who's in control.

And after the democratic government which was a total chaos

and when no one seemed to be in control of anything,

he became a landmark.

He stabilized the economy, inflation went down.

What was wrong, of course,

was the Nastase Government enabling the corruption.

In terms of the level of corruption the 90's now seemed fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm.

Someone, at one point, wanted to come and count my chickens,

I suggested, they'd better count my eggs (euphemism for testicles)

Under the Adrian Nastase government,

corruption became so visible that it couldn't be concealed anymore. And he knew it too.

The slogan "Năstase, Four Houses", it's when these things started ...

It's true that I owned four houses, but not at the same time.

Basically, no fraud or major issues were found.

They found issues with the PVC windows that I, presumably, received as a gift.

Electoral posters or hats.

Or Mitrea painting a flat or something.

These were different times, different attitudes.

I was leading the Prime Minister's Control Body.

In 2001-2004,

nobody really knew what integrity and transparency meant.

They all had companies, contracts, uncles, cousins.

There was a statement from Miron Mitrea,

who was looked into later on, because someone repaired his mother's house.

And Mitrea rightly said:

"At that time, not only it was legal for some company to repair your home for free"

"but all companies wanted to repair my mother's home."

That's when the local barons began to appear.

Mischie was a beacon of corruption. In Gorj, I think.

Why do you have this reputation?

Because, not by coincidence, many people start with Mischie when they talk about local barons.

Please explain that, honestly.

The explanation is clear: because, in Gorj County

I identified my activity with the activity of the whole county,

of the entire population.

Yes, nothing moves without Mischie!

No, it's not "nothing moves"! Stop referring to the past

It doesn't mean, that if you have authority, everyone needs to fall in line.

The PSD had a character like him all across Romania.

I have the honor and the pleasure to invite you to take a virtual tour

to introduce you to the county of Vrancea

so dear to me.

The barons ruled the counties and secured votes for the party.

In return, the party supplied them with protection from the Justice Dept.

It didn't exist back then, the idea that a politician can be tried or convicted.

I remember, the story then was that politics controls the justice system.

At the top of this system,

Adrian Nastase found himself with no apparent way forward.

He needed the local barons' influence,

but, at the same time, he committed to taking Romania into Europe.

So he found a Romanian solution.

Adrian Nastase tried to reconcile

two elements that are somewhat irreconcilable.

Externally all appeared in order, we have laws, institutions that function properly,

we have a separation of powers within the state, an independent justice system.

But, domesticaly, he was faking all these things,

either through the people he placed at the top of the system,

or through his design of legislation.

In the fall of 2002,

The Nastase Government seemed to not tolerate corruption and established a dedicated institution.

30 prosecutors, 170 Judicial Police officers and 45 specialists,

form the National Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office of Romania.

The NAP was set up at EU's request.

And Nastase accepted it and said: "Yes, we'll set it up."

But it had no substance and, worse, it had ulterior motives.

Of course, the West figured this out and said:

"Big fish aren't getting caught, they're still getting away with it!"

Yes, they really thought they could trick them. That's what Nastase did

He tried to give the appearance of a normal, functioning society,

but in fact, he damaged it as much as he could,

with the manoeuvres he was doing behind the scenes.

They say I didn't love NAP, I had no fondness towards it.

Let's be serious, these are jokes.

The NAP was built to hand out DPs (Don't Prosecute),

They blocked criminal prosecution for all the big fish.

We cannot, at this stage, deal with mid and large scale corruption

because this institution is already at capacity.

The institution was in early stages and I don't think we could've expected extraordinary results.

After four years at the head of the Government,

Adrian Nastase created the image of an almighty leader,

the man who decides everything, who everyone had to obey.

- Who's the goalkeeper? - It's me.

Florin!

Make sure you don't catch the ball!

Did you choose your corner?

With claps on demand and always surrounded by admirers,

Adrian Nastase paraded unchallenged around Romania during those years.

The next step in his political career was obvious and seemed within reach.

I'm absolutely convinced that I'll win the presidential election.

His path to Cotroceni seemed to be without obstacles.

Decimated after the failures of the Constantinescu period,

The opposition now rallied in a "Justice and Truth" coalition,

and was gambling everything on a candidate who seemed at the end of his rope.

It's an alliance that declared zero tolerance for corruption.

He was sick, he was depressed, I don't know for sure ...

But, he simply couldn't deliver a speech to the end.

How I ended up in this strange situation ...

At the end of 2002, I had a very difficult surgery during which I lost a kidney.

I had to go through recovery, I didn't really do it properly.

Then it was 2004, and I was in a state of exhaustion

both physically and mentally.

Unfortunately, my journey in the presidential race ends here.

My health prevents me from pursuing this further.

The start of the campaign was only a few weeks away,

and, suddenly, the presidential elections became unpredictable.

To replace Stolojan, enters a character more gifted for the demands of an election campaign.

Dear Stolo ...

Of course, this was all an act, so well played, that he fooled everyone

"Dear Stolo...

Thank you!"

That's it, "Dear Stolo."

Yes, yes, with tears, wiping them with the back of the palm ... tricks!

If your spirit will stay with us,

The Alliance will win.

Thank you!

A politician who can be such a good actor is very difficult to stop.

We were dismayed.

"Wow, Traian Basescu is crying? What..."

I think it was the first time when he was emotional in public.

I believe those tears were sincere.

Basescu is an emotional guy. He cried several times.

Especially when reciting his own poetry.

He's a kind of an...

... emotional thug.

And so I think those tears, were a bit stimulated for effect,

but I think, for the most part, they were honest.

Yes, he's a sensitive man.

He's been through a lot in his life, but he had a moment when...

Look, I also tear up sometimes... I don't know...

I don't remember exactly, but, during one of those tear-jerker movies...

You felt like you were about to cry...

Ah, Love Story, right? Love Story ...

I felt embarrassed when I saw that, in fact, he didn't have any health issues,

because I gave him a call then, after the episode with Basescu's tears,

and I was genuinely concerned, I thought he had cancer, he has to go abroad for treatment.

From a human perspective, I felt sorry for him.

Then I realized that it was just a television show

and that made me sad about him.

I regret that I am forced to see, once again,

how low Traian Basescu can go to achieve his political aim.

From being a definite winner,

Adrian Nastase found himself in a competition with unknown rules.

A campaign of fighting to the death followed.

Romania, wake up!

Nobody does anything, And we're living in poverty now

Traian Basescu!

President of the Social Democratic Party, Mr. Adrian Nastase!

The bunny Traian is wandering through the country and shouts:

"Where's the bear so I can eat his ears?"

I'll take this bunny by the ears and I'll slam him to the ground.

Burn the corrupt and the liars with your vote!

Adrian Nastase, my heart!

He has good judgement and does everything well.

I only trust him and no one else.

He has beauty and a power given by God to lead the people.

My hope is bound to Traian Basescu's nomination.

Basescu is a man who really cares about people,

and people feel it and love him, in return.

The confidence he inspires makes many see him as chosen, a saviour, and to say:

To me, he is like a knight of justice.

I don't know, he simply inspires trust.

Live well!

I was campaigning with him and I noticed the impact he had on people.

I got rid of the mafia!

I had other ideas about what it means to be a leader.

Of course, I was criticised for not being out in the streets, to shake hands with people.

During the campaign, I did that too.

But I think that a leader, firstly, has to be in the office,

go to the command posts, to build.

But people said:

"Well, he is very arrogant, very arrogant!"

Or to be voted by the people

you have to be empathetic,

you need leadership skills and be able to talk to people.

How could you go and kiss old women?

To be relatable, to promise things?!

Nastase was stiff, uptight.

Do you know what Basescu was?

He was the wise guy of the 80's.

In the '80s, there were these wise guys

who were part of the system,

but were not party apparatchiks.

These were usually Security collaborators who knew what was going on.

More "liberal" guys, with quotation marks, who had a bit of foreign currency and so on.

That's why Basescu was much more versatile than Adrian Nastase.

You don't do autographs, do you?

Yes, ma'am, I do, but they're useless.

If that's how I feel like ...

Basescu had human defects:

he liked to drink, he liked women,

he'd talk to people in their own language.

There are urban legends he got into a fight in a market.

That's it, Romanians wanted a president like that. What could I do, contradict them?

Basescu was the man who could infuriate Nastase.

I couldn't.

My dialogue with Nastase would've been something like:

"You promised you'd build 100 km of highway and you didn't, right?"

And isn't it how it should be?

Was it better to fool around and...?

Go!

Live well!

Exceptional!

OK, I told you I'm smart?

At one point, Basescu was on a talk show.

And the host asks him: "What are you going to do to Nastase if you win?"

Basescu replied:"I'll catch him and I'll slam his head against the walls!"

Which Romania the next day found really funny.

He had this thing I didn't have.

If I were to say that, it would've sounded terrible.

And he was saying: "I will impale him in Victoria Square! I'll slam him around!"

Some empty words with no substance.

But they were working!

A wretched system that destroys the political opponents of the Power,

Well, guys, you won't destroy me!

In Victory Square with spikes, after November 28th!

The last fight between Nastase and Basescu

was the debate before the second round of elections.

Basescu proved once again the most versatile politician,

when discussing the most sensitive issue at the time.

We both have a big problem.

On my word of honor, let's discuss this honestly.

How cursed can this nation be, that in the end,

it has to choose between two former communists?

Between Adrian Năstase and Băsescu.

In 15 years, there wasn't one person who came from this world instead.

Who wasn't tainted by communism, or tained in some way.

What kind of curse could this be?

On my word, I feel sorry.

That was a sketch.

Mr. Basescu's main concern before this show

was to find the silver bullet.

and he thought that this would be the silver bullet, right?

Those cheap theatrics, right?

Of a stale countryside

"Can you imagine Adrian

how cursed this nation has to be to have to choose ..."

As in, he had this dilemma, he was wondering.

In front of the people, he was torn by this question.

He couldn't care less about he people and communism and all that.

But he thought: "Let's see how I can make this difficult for him?"

And then I sometimes looked

in the mirror. I look at myself, and say:

"Do you respect the Romanian people, Basescu?", I was wondering.

I say, "I do!"

"I look in the mirror, dear Adrian, and I wonder, sometimes ...", you know?

Almost like a character from cheap play.

It was like we were living in this theatre production.

A two-cent rhetoric, a circus.

The drama is that

we're not allowed to have the same mindset after

15 years since communism no longer exists in Romania.

I hope...

And you convince me every day

that you're unable to understand that these institutions need to be independent.

Nastase showed his from the old generation, uptight, rigid.

He couldn't handle the situation.

So that's where he lost, he clearly lost.

I admit I didn't consider it to be very important because

of course, I could've easily replied:

I was a party member, one of the four million,

while you were actually a party apparatchik.

Because, basically, you got your title with Elena Ceaușescu's signature in Antwerp.

Some would say it wasn't a choice between a party member

and an apparatchik. They'd say that he was also a member of the Security...

"Dear Petrov", as some call Basescu today.

Perfect equality.

The two candidates, in the second round of the presidential elections

cannot be delimited, with the current estimates.

It's a result for 7pm,

and the polling stations are filled with the Alliance's young constituents.

Adrian, you don't even know how small you start to look!

On the evening of December 12, 2004,

Traian Basescu became the president of Romania.

The result was so surprising,

that Adrian Nastase couldn't avoid the ridicule of a big celebration

which the party had prepared long before.

Nastase! Nastase!

Thank you for being together with us!

I'm sure we will win!

Victory!

Victory! Victory!

Nastase! Nastase!

All this time, the centre of the capital was occupied by Traian Basescu's supporters.

After another eight years, Romanians took to the streets again,

putting all their hopes in one man.

Basescu!

Silviu Brucan said we needed 20 years to reach democracy.

You, with your vote, shortened the term to 15 years.

Romania reached democracy 5 years earlier!

Live well!

Chapter 7 Basescu

I swear to use all my power and abilities

for the spiritual and material prosperity of the Romanian people...

On December 20th, 2004, Traian Basescu was formally accepting the highest title in the Romanian state.

He was the first post-revolution president

to win the election on a promise of a better life,

and a country where the laws will be the same for all,

from the regular citizen to politicians and businessmen.

Basescu was, suddenly, a traitor,

in relation to the world which he came from.

He betrayed his colleagues at FSN and the previous party.

And what did he do?

He noticed that the focus of the public opinion was

the fight against corruption that became a blah-blah for everyone.

But to him that meant this:

the birth of a justice system that could attack, legally speaking, anyone who stepped outside the law.

The fight against corruption

must be fought by the justice system, which must be depoliticized immediately.

He won the election with this speech, so he had to deliver something.

It was Traian Basescu's main concern at the beginning of his term.

At the first meeting of the Supreme Council for Defense,

corruption was declared a national security issue.

At the same time, Basescu would overstep his duties and choose the new Minister of Justice himself.

The proposal to be the Minister of Justice

found me doing the dishes on Christmas day.

My mother cooked and I was doing the dishes.

"Hello, this is Traian Basescu."

I never spoke to him before, we didn't know each other.

The argument that convinced me was the following:

a man from a political party will never be able to

to reform the justice system properly and fight against political corruption.

Because, in the meantime, party members helped each other out.

They could say, "But we made you a minister,

so why am I or them being investigated?"

And they'd interfere with the investigations.

It was best to be someone who knew no one in the party.

After being appointed, Monica Macovei was given the freedom

to bring in new people to manage the most important prosecution office.

Daniel Morar was promoted to the lead of the National Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office,

and Laura Codruța Kovesi became General Prosecutor of Romania.

It was a message that a wind of change was blowing through the justice system.

In essence, it gave some magistrates the freedom to act as experts,

to stop being under political pressure, as they had been until 2004.

When everyone knew that you wouldn't open a lawsuit without the party approving it.

DNA began the prosecution against George Copos,

the general director of the Lottery, Nicolae Cristea,

and one of the Ana Electronics shareholders, Rosa Giglio Giuseppe.

The three are suspected of tax evasion and official misconduct.

Prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation against the then-Deputy Prime Minister, George Copos.

And, coincidentally, the day when DNA announced it would begin to prosecute him

was when I went to see a play in the afternoon.

I've set up my phone to silent and, when I got out of there, after two hours,

I think I had about 50 missed calls.

It was crazy!

I didn't imagine it would generate such an interest at such an early stage.

After all, it was the beginning of the investigations against a man, it didn't mean much...

He wasn't arrested, tried or convicted.

But in the end, it became obvious why there was this kind of interest:

he was the Deputy Prime Minister,

and this kind of thing hadn't happened in Romania before then.

Well, the phone calls were from... everyone.

And the Government meeting was about to start. When I entered the room, everyone was looking at me very doubtful.

Their eyes said:

"We have our Minister of Justice

in our own government and we're being investigated?"

That's what their looks said.

It's something that never happened before.

Tariceanu says: "Monica, I thought we're going after the opposition!"

"That we're going after the opposition ..."

And I said, "We don't go after anyone!

Prosecutors investigate based on evidence."

Copos was shouting at me over the table that he'll never speak to me again

I said "Okay."

If they find anything illegal, they should prosecute,

if not, they should apologize.

Personally, I don't feel startled, I have no fear and no doubt

regarding the outcome of the investigations.

Tariceanu, however, said:

"It's unacceptable for a member of the government to be investigated and for me not to be informed."

"So you need to find a channel through which I can find out in advance."

And then I said, "You won't find out in advance!"

It was a small statement of independence for the beginning of DNA.

It does something that politicians know nothing about.

But the game was not just about politicians.

There were also the big businessmen behind them,

controversial characters such as: Dinu Patriciu, Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu and Dan Voiculescu.

Madam Prosecutor, do you hear me?

Madam Minister Macovei is here with us.

No, I was talking to the prosecutor Macovei.

She's listening,we're hearing you well..

You hear me, yes?

Madam Prosecutor, where is all this hypocrisy coming from,

all this acting?

Like you're some innocent girl, with no sins,

nothing is out of place, you're all clean, you and President Basescu.

We, the oligarchs, are bastards, are evil.

immaterial of how much we've done for Romania, objectively.

Where is the justice reform that you keep mentioning?

Madam Prosecutor Ceausescu.

Mr. Voiculescu, Mrs. Macovei is my guest and she said she feels insulted.

Well done to you, Mrs. Gabi Firea, with your guests and everything...

It's OK, I can handle this.

Handle it, Mrs. Macovei!

And you should stop the acting

because the people of Romania are not stupid.

Owning the most influential newspapers and television channels,

the transition oligarchs reacted harshly to Basescu's anti-corruption offensive.

They all knew that a free justice system would, sooner or later,

investigate how they gained their assets.

I think it already reached some of them. Patriciu was already targeted.

It was in 2005 when Tariceanu wrote the note: "Traian, see if you can do something about this."

The ICA case investigation already begun for Voiculescu,

Vîntu also had enough going on to be afraid of getting caught.

They were afraid, I think, not so much of Basescu instigating prosecutors against them,

but that Basescu wasn't interfering with the prosecutors.

Or would control them on a very small scale, strictly in regards to people around him.

And that he'd leave everyone else out in the cold, at the mercy of the prosecutors.

The hatred he aroused in the political class was enormous.

and Basescu became the number one enemy

of the coalition between businessmen and politicians.

On April 19, 2007, the Parliament voted for Traian Basescu to be suspended.

The initiators of this decision were the ones most troubled by the idea of anti-corruption.

At least one of them, Dan Voiculescu,

presided over the commission that investigated Basescu

and his numerous violations of the Constitution.

Voiculescu didn't even hide that he was the initiator of that suspension.

Traian Băsescu violated the Romanian Constitution

and Traian Basescu is involved

in criminal acts.

One of us will lose

and that won't be me.

Basescu! Basescu!

At the 2007 referendum, Traian Basescu had the citizens on his side.

74% of Romanians voted against the suspension and Basescu returned to Cotroceni.

A term in which the president consistently pursued the great themes of his voters,

even when it forced him to turn against the system which he came from.

I found in this document the reasons why

I can condemn the communist regime.

In December 2006, based on a report created by a group of historians,

Traian Basescu condemned the communist regime in a special session of Parliament.

It was a moment that proved that the ghosts of the past were still haunting us.

What happened in 2007, when he read in Parliament

the speech which condemned communism, was staggering.

I was in the room.

They're threatening to throw us from the balcony!

In that room, a howl of beasts broke out.

They brought in their supporters,

Vadim Tudor was holding protest signs,

howling, everyone was shouting.

This is not GDS (Group for Social Dialogue)! This is the Parliament! Who are you, you pig?

How dare you talk to me like that?

Please help us!

Ceausescu was big compared to you, you are just some poor...

What are you talking about?

We're not afraid of three nobodies!

The communist regime in Romania was illegal and criminal!

Can I continue ...

You tramp!

Someone touched on the taboo issue -

how can they condemn something which themselves represented and still represent?

Leaving Communism behind,

on January 1st, 2007, Romania becomes officially a member of the EU.

Welcome to the EU! Welcome home

6 ...

5...

4...

1...

0!

In the main cities, the EU membership is celebrated in the streets, with music and high hopes.

A better world, more money!

Let alcohol get cheaper for my friend, Giani.

We congratulate the EU for being very understanding with us and for helping us a lot.

It will be a bit worse and then it will be a lot better!

Europe, you are mine!

We're trying to run a small farm, goats and cows.

Now that we're in the EU we hope we can get some funding.

So we can develop this as much as possible.

In rural areas, the peasants began to dream of European funds,

but they learned that EU membership also brought complex issues.

If they want us to do it as the EU wants,

they will ask us to milk a cow in a white suit,

like a doctor entering an operating theatre!

There's no such thing on the field! You can't do something like that!

The European community is not this bottomless bag, where we can open our mouths and keep eating.

On the contrary: it comes with high demands,

it requires work, discipline and order.

There won't be any better living conditions. Gas, electricity, they're all expensive.

We are living hand to mouth.

In the Brussels meetings, Romania was praised for the progress it made to join the EU.

It had new institutions, better laws, was fighting corruption and connecting to Western markets.

But we entered Europe with a problem as big as the continent.

Much of the country was submerged in underdevelopment.

But these issues remained far removed from the political agenda.

The 2009 elections focused on the battle between Traian Basescu and the moguls who wanted to defeat him.

The fate of the elections was not decided by policy,

but by a visit the PSD candidate made to Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu.

I don't like Mr. Vîntu either and it seems that neither do you.

You didn't like him last night?

And, taking into account ...

Mr. Geoană, did you not enjoy your meeting with Mr. Vîntu last night?

Last night, when he learned that Mr. Popa Nicolae, his FNI partner, was arrested?

Did he call you for an emergency?

Mr. Basescu ...

Did he call you for an emergency?

Mr. Geoana ...

Mr. Traian Basescu, please ...

So what happened between me and Geoana, why he came over, is between me and Geoana

It's not for the public.

I considered that, for me, as a citizen, Mr. Basescu is a threat.

I, the citizen, not Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu!

That's why, with everything I had, I entered a fight against Basescu.

He defeated me. That's it.

Mihaela, my love, thank you!

The results in round two were so close that Mircea Geoană believed, for one night, to be the president of Romania.

It's a beautiful night for Romanian democracy!

What do you feel at the moment, Mr. President?

I can't believe it.

What could I feel? Joy and a kind of relief.

Towards morning, it turned out that Traian Basescu was ahead by a few tens of thousands of votes

and was going to rule Romania for the next five years.

I want to summarize the result of these elections:

We won!

Instead of knocking him down, the moguls served him his main campaign issue.

It was the second time when Basescu won the elections

by exploiting the greatest frustration of the post-revolution society:

the enormous degree of corruption.

His second term at Cotroceni meant a DNA that revved its engines further.

The DNA removed many corrupt people from the system, for years in a row.

And it was expected to.

There are people who can't justify their income at all

and their whole lives were part of the system, with access to public funds.

And they can't possibly justify their standard of living.

Properties, cars, holidays, their income.

Sweetheart, no one made their fortune honestly.

That's clear.

It's a reality, unfortunately for Romania.

Do you think you can make a fortune of one hundred million euros?

In any country, in just a few years, starting from nothing?

If your name's Bill Gates or you discover the cure for cancer, OK, you can, but otherwise you can't.

And then, yes, people interested in current affairs, they feel

that there's an injustice here, that these guys are corrupt, they steal from us.

Is anyone ever going sort this out?!

The politician became so callous that someone had to stop this.

DNA ended up doing this and began to seize in droves the products of Romanian corruption.

People who seemed unassailable, intangible.

There was a period when these people were frightened.

And fear is good, it keeps thieves at bay.

And I told them:

"Be careful! I can't see what all of you are doing!"

And if DNA catches you, you can't come to me for help

because I can't do anything about it."

Fear was good.

He is!

In 2012, former prime minister Adrian Nastase was the first of many politicians convicted of corruption.

Unable to accept the guilt and humiliation of imprisonment,

Nastase resorted to an extreme gesture.

Former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase will go into surgery this morning. Doctors say his condition is stable.

He tried to kill himself when the police tried to take him into custody.

I was under a lot of stress and, above all, the humiliation that these actions entailed.

I've been to the Supreme Court 200 times.

But I don't even want to remember. Maybe I became stronger and wiser after these experiences

I realised what's important in life, I realised what family actually means

This type of discourse became unanimous

among politicians and businessmen that went to jail for corruption.

They all claimed innocence, and prison was portrayed as an exercise in dignity against great injustices.

I couldn't believe these things were happening, but then I said, "Well, this is life!"

I was trying to think: "Well, where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong?"

Because I have a pretty good opinion of myself.

Let justice take its turn...

Did you take the 20% commission they are referring to?

Look at me!

After 15 years, someone comes in and arrests me, saying it's because of some bribe.

God forbid!

The former head of the NKVD used to say:

"Nobody's innocent, there are just people we didn't look into diligently enough."

And, indeed, this is what the DNA does: it sets on a certain target and then ...

Well, don't you see? Look here!

You saw this coming!

Why did they accuse you of?

That I took ...

They were political trophies. Remember the way they reported those convictions to Brussels.

The self-victimization of those ending up in the DNA cross hairs

was also enabled by the media spectacle which accompanied the wave of lawsuits.

Transcripts and information about future arrests appeared in the media

and gave the impression that prosecutors are contributing to this spectacle.

Let's be honest, some get picked up by the DNA without us knowing about it,

while others, you knew they'll end up at DNA before that man would wake up in the morning.

In the cold light of day, justice seemed to stop being completely blind.

Because, occasionally, it would keep an eye on people's expectations.

You gave them the satisfaction, yes?

"Look, we caught the big corrupt ones." Blood, blood, circus, bread, blood, blood ...

You have to admit that this strategy paid off.

We were excited to see politicians on TV, with handcuffs on ...

The thieves are free, Becali is arrested!

It would've been nice to be without handcuffs, and the TV stations there, and so on.

But you know what,

I'm human in the end, not a machinery,

a computer that analyzes things for you.

I liked seeing those people in handcuffs, you know?

After, for so many years,

as a journalist, I wrote, I investigated,

I knew and I know very well how sinister these individuals were.

And for years, I haven't seen a single one of them taken into custody.

They were arrogant. They were mocking us.

Everything was in vain, you showed them documents: "Look!"

I remember sending one of our journalists from Adevărul (The Truth) to the Government.

There was one, Petre something, Minister of Commerce,

and he had, while Minister of Commerce, about 14 companies in his name.

Which he would manage while doing his job as a minister.

And I sent the man from Adevărul there, with a printed sheet

and said: these are Petre's companies from the Ministry of Agriculture

Commerce or Agriculture, wherever he was!

And, the result? Nothing!

The man remained in office. "Eh, so what?"

You see? We accumulated a lot of frustration.

Speaking from a human perspective, as a journalist.

So I didn't feel sorry for any of those guys that I saw in handcuffs.

Pushed from behind by these frustrations accumulated in society,

DNA had moments when it seemed to be losing its sense of purpose

and sees justice as a contest in which it must exceed previous performances.

There were sent to court five times more ministers and MPs than two years ago.

A prime minister, five ministers, 16 deputies and five senators.

Laura Codruța Kovesi led the National Anticorruption Directorate between 2013 and 2018.

She refused to appear in this documentary, arguing that she doesn't want to be associated

with the people she investigated.

The results of DNA during her leadership are undeniable

and have been recognized internationally.

But she also led the institution in a vulnerable area, meeting privately with politicians,

businessmen and heads of secret services.

With the passage of time, people came to look at the DNA with more skepticism

and to see more clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the institution.

You see, this DNA approach is not entirely ethical, either.

Because Udrea and Mircea Băsescu were not taken into custody

when Traian Basescu was at the peak of his power. No!

They were taken in when they were declining, when they were coming to an end.

When this fight against corruption got too close to him:

"Eh, this anti-corruption fight ... let's not ...

... excesses, abuses, let's ... however, be more ...

do we want to destroy everything?! "

We know this kind of speech.

Why? Because his darling had been taken away,

Mrs. Udrea, with Paris and so on.

You see, Traian Basescu's quote: "how cursed can we be to have these kinds of politicians."

What happened to him after that is another story,

because the same man who spoke about the great themes of Western democracy

began to talk about the others as a sort of anti-Basescu agenda.

Honestly, if anyone believes Basescu is an anti-corruption fighter, they are very naive!

For Băsescu, corruption was any business he's not involved in.

Through his gang, he tried to slip, and do,

to an extent, what everyone else did before him.

I still have a great disappointment that after

you talk about this mafia Petrache-Bittner-Cocoș,

you see the wife of Mr. Cocoș become an adviser to the president.

In his second term, when Traian Basescu gradually gave up on his role of anti-corruption hero,

people started to remember all the defects they had overlooked him.

He surrounded himself with dubious characters to whom he offered protection,

He pushed his daughter into politics, although she wasn't fit for it.

I voted for myself.

But above all, Traian Basescu many times behaved

not as a president, but as a baron who can break any rule.

He gets drunk as a skunk, and then gets behind the wheel.

People were shocked: "Ooh, our president is drinking and driving ?!

And he said, "No, there was water in the glass."

OK ...

Well, you voted for him! You knew how he is!

It's much worse to be tolerant

with the man you believe in than to be intolerant with your enemy.

People stopped being tolerant of Traian Basescu

when his decisions touched their pockets.

Reducing the fund for salaries

for all public sector employees in Romania by 25%.

Huoooo!

We predict

a decrease

of pensions by 15% ...

We voted for you and you betrayed us!

Out with Basescu! Out with Basescu!

After the protests caused by the income cuts,

a new wave followed in 2012 against Basescu

and the government led by Emil Boc.

We need new ones! So we can at least have some hope ...

Damn it!

Out with the dictator! Out with the dictator!

We have nothing to eat, we have nothing to put on the table, the children left the country,

you can't live anymore!

Romania, wake up!

The protests are not without effect: without political and popular support

Traian Basescu is forced to appoint a prime minister from the opposition, Victor Ponta.

I want to say to the pensioners, I want to say to the redundant,

I want to say to the poor and disenfranchised,

that fighting poverty is a priority for the Romanian Government.

But before fighting poverty, PSD fought to defeat Basescu for good.

In the summer of 2012, the president was suspended again, politicians were against him,

but he kept his seat because the electoral threshold of 50% wasn't reached.

I believe that the honest thing for Traian Băsescu to do was to resign.

Because seven and a half million people voted against you.

And, yes, they're not 50% of the electoral rolls,

but they're seven and a half million people who voted and said you had to leave.

What right do you have to stay?

Basescu remained in Cotroceni until the last day of his term,

ending ten years of presidency

in which he wasted almost any hope that millions of Romanians had

and which they trusted him with in early 2000s.

The former president didn't accept our invite to appear in this documentary,

leaving unanswered many questions and accusations that marked his two terms.

Chapter 8 Freedom is no longer a burden

By exploiting people's anger against Traian Basescu,

PSD is, once again, the most powerful political party in Romania.

In 2012 they took over the government,

and in 2014 they were preparing to win the presidential elections.

The party's strength was still the network of barons from Nastase's term

many harassed by Basescu's anti-corruption agenda, and fed up with EU regulation.

Their frustration pushed the party towards an increasingly nationalist ideology

at the centre of which they placed a young man, Victor Ponta.

This is my country and my Romanian nation,

And this is where I'd like to die,

This is where I want to live, together with you!

Victory!

Where are the tall oaks

The presidential campaign was launched in a megalomaniac event on the National Arena.

on the day when Ponta was celebrating his 42nd birthday.

Of course it was a mistake.

A very big one, of course!

Because we, the people on the stadium, all 70,000 of us, were very happy

while outside seven million were cursing at us.

Do you do politics for the 70,000 on the stadium or for those outside?

It was a big mistake, obviously!

We are many because we are good,

but we are good, my dear, because we are united.

Dragnea told me: "Let's show strength!

Let's show how strong we are, that only we can fill the stadium, and so on"

Victor Ponta managed to upset the people.

Because it annoyed them for a long time

with lies and arrogance and then he did that monstrous thing

on the National Arena and people got very angry.

See? The sun is coming out on our street!

It is!

With such a deployment of resources, Victor Ponta was the great favorite of the presidential election.

His main contender had no experience in top politics

and had spent the last 12 years in a town hall.

I'll call you after lunch, okay?

OK, good.

Klaus Iohannis was a candidate from the National Liberal Party,

with the promise of a Romania heading towards normality.

Only the job done right delivers lasting results.

If you think the same, let's discover together a different Romania, a normal Romania.

Iohannis didn't run a spectacular election campaign,

but he took advantage of Romanians most persistent attitude: voting for the lesser evil.

Let's see what the Romanians say and I ask you, dear Romanians:

Are your lives better since Mr. Ponta became our prime minister?

I think the Romanians answered to this legitimate question of Mr. Iohannis

on November 2, when four million Romanians voted me for president,

If their lives weren't better...

Those who voted for you, I saw them on social networks last night,

they said, "He's a terribly weak candidate, but we'd rather vote for him than Ponta."

It was a vote against me, of course, because ...

How many votes did he get in the first round? 2.8 million, right?

So, 2.8 million people liked Klaus Iohannis and voted for him.

After the second round, he got 6 million votes

Obviously, the rest of the votes are votes against me.

Because of the barons, because "Don't let PSD take everything!", because Ponta is arrogant.

And especially because Ponta neglected something all politicians neglected until then.

Are you leaving the country for the first time?

Yes, it's the first time I leave the country for work. I just finished school.

During the years when politicians pursued only their interests

and failed to modernise Romania,

millions of people, resignedly, had left the country.

The migration to Western Europe began in the late 1990s.

Firs, the men left to save some money and then come back home.

They got used to it, and after a while, they brought their families and friends.

We, Romanians aged 40-50, had a hard time in Romania:

the end of Ceausescu, the beginning of democracy.

We had a hard time in Romania, we have a hard time here, yet we hope things will get better.

There is almost no Romanian who, in the initial stage,

didn't find this very, very difficult.

No one leaves his country because they're doing too well.

Most leave because they are worried about the future of their children.

I think it will be a new lifestyle

and if I have children, even though they'll be half Spanish, I still feel Romanian.

Every year, the number of those who left was growing.

Beyond the borders, a parallel Romania appeared, made up of millions of people.

We're happy, we integrated very well in this society, in Spain.

I spoke with tens of thousands of people from all the countries:

Spain, Italy, France,

I was in Ireland, in the UK.

Do you know what most of them would say?

"The state has betrayed us.

The Romanian state has betrayed us."

A terrible thing to hear.

Terrible ...

But, you see, this sentence sums up all of their pain.

I know many of them are very unhappy.

Because you can't really break this tie.

You can't just get rid of

a good chunk of your life.

Your childhood, your adolescence, it's impossible not to mean anything to you.

The smell of lime on your street, the dust on the street where you played etc.

In reality, Romanians that left never forgot the dust on the street where they grew up.

They went home at least on holidays, they sent billions of euros back

and sometimes they even contributed to changes of attitudes.

These people went West, travelled, have seen another side to the world.

These people are much harder to fool.

Because they are free, they are in touch with Western institutions,

they learn this idea that you have rights,

that you need to claim your rights.

And they're not something given by the state, but something which is yours.

These are people much harder to fool when they come here, to Romania.

They still have relatives in the country,

they send money to the people back home. And we know that, as you inject cash in a country,

there's an increase in awareness of liberties.

So, the emigrants contribute with money, and the values they acquire there

which they communicate to their relatives when they return.

And they ask the remaining families:

"Are you still poor? Still with these guys?

You still have nothing? Still no sewage?

Still no pavements yet? Roads, highways?

I came by train, mom. How can you vote with these people, mom?"

And these are very honest agents of electoral influence

who are very credible, who talk from their direct experience of living and working in the West.

My younger friends, who are, at the moment, in England or France,

they are glued to what's happening here.

Very few of them say: "I left, I closed that door, I'm not interested anymore!"

They have two homelands.

We want to vote! We want to vote!

The 2014 presidential elections

was when the Romanians abroad showed they didn't break away from their country.

Hundreds of thousands of people stormed the polling stations,

while the Government, led by Victor Ponta, was overwhelmed by the situation.

As you can see, there are many in the queue.

Here at the Romanian Consulate in Madrid, the queue is about 100 meters long.

The poor logistics for the elections abroad and the thousands of Romanias who couldn't vote

created a wave of revolt in the country which changed the fate of the elections.

In 2014, it was a second wave of what I called the "enchanted wind".

I couldn't believe it.

I think the hurricane effect

was due to Romanians from abroad calling relatives back home, telling them not to vote for Ponta.

I think that's the only logical explanation

for the reverse of the trend between the first round and the second round.

Huge anger when you're being fooled and you're not allowed to vote.

You don't play with that. They played and they lost.

Johannis! Johannis!

The electorate gave us a very strong message yesterday

and I think we must have the decency

and the wisdom to keep silent, for a while, all of us.

The silence didn't last, and politicians quickly forgot the electorate's message.

Victor Ponta remained a prime minister,

just as arrogant and surrounded by the same characters and their attitude of "masters".

Of these, Deputy Prime Minister Gabriel Oprea stood out,

accused of misusing the motorcade and of having caused the death of a young policeman.

People went to the streets angry with the politicians' abuse.

Ten days later, on October 30, 2015,

the fire at the "Colectiv" club breaks out.

Remove the cars! Fire, fire in the Pioneer factory!

Where, on what street?

Tăbăcarilor 7 street, fire in the Pionierul factory.

Tăbăcarilor 7?

Tăbăcarilor 7, yes, yes!

Tăbăcarilor 7, okay?

Tăbăcarilor 7!

For one night, Romania stood still, shocked by the size of the tragedy.

27 dead and over 100 wounded and hospitalized.

Authorities declare that the situation is under control.

We really don't need anything right now, our doctors can handle the situation.

We've received offers for help from France, Germany, and others.

Will you accept further help ...?

For now, we are doing very well.

In the following days, further information revealed the exact opposite.

Hospitals didn't have enough burn units,

the wounded would die because of hospital infections

and the club where the tragedy took place operated without a fire permit,

and the tacit approval of the authorities.

"We have all the facilities to keep them here. We have everything set up! "

All the politicians have this on their conscience.

And then the stake is not to change the consciousness of the villain.

That's a lost battle.

But to awaken the consciousness of those around them

and say they're enabling them by cohabiting in these decision-making roles.

"Colectiv" made Romanians more aware than ever about how bankrupt the Romanian state is

and the direct effects that corruption has on everyone's life.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

WE WANT TO BE INFORMED NOT MANIPULATED

This is what "Colectiv" has proven: "They are killing us! We can't do this anymore"

Until "Colectiv", people still believed that they can fend for themselves

"Ah, it's fine, they steal, we mind our own lives

We're fine. We do well in school, we work in a corporate,

maybe we get a job abroad, we can insulate ourselves from the villains, from the corruption."

Colectiv proved that we cannot insulate ourselves.

And the situation is so serious, that you can die burning alive, like a rat

because some bastards didn't check and didn't apply the law!

Out with Ponta!

It was real anger. And legitimate, after all.

When you see the young people who died.

I'm ready to take this step that an important part of society is expecting

and, obviously, starting today, I resign as a Prime Minister, and implicitly,

from the Government of Romania.

I spoke with a few people, getting advice about this.

People very close to me and whom I trust.

And I said, "I think I should go."

Not one of them said:

"No, stay there, it's fine, they're paid to say these things..."

Not one of them said that.

Everyone said: "Yes, it looks serious. I don't know if you should leave, but this is how it looks."

Be afraid! The people will rise!

The fire at the Colectiv club changed Romania.

The death of the 64 people

awakened the consciousness of a society starting to acknowledge the burden of freedom.

From then on, the protests become a weapon in the fight for state reform,

and Romanians take to the streets not for tangible things, but for ideals.

At the time of Colectiv I felt that too.

I felt that those people went out in the street thinking

"Whatever happens, we're doing this because we can't stand it anymore!"

That was a moral gesture, I said that at the time.

These people didn't go out to ask for higher salaries and pensions,

or for some other kind of benefit.

No, they went out for an issue that you can't see, touch or smell,

it was for a moral, a spiritual issue.

Dare to believe in Romania too!

My message to all Romanians today

is that it's better for all when we're united.

Let's dare to believe in Romania,

in the strength that everyone has inside them to make his country better.

I have faith and I'm sure we'll succeed.

Happy Birthday Romania! Happy Birthday Romanians!

After a year in which Romania was led by a government of technocrats,

The PSD won the parliamentary elections of 2016 and returned to power.

Liviu Dragnea, the new party leader, came from the faction of local barons,

he had an active sentence and several ongoing prosecutions.

The new Government's first concern was an Emergency Ordinance

to help rid Dragnea of his troubles with the law.

The ordinance was approved in a meeting which finished close to midnight.

Why did you choose to do this now, in the evening?

The timing is set by the Government. Next question!

Does the Leader of your party, Mr. Liviu Dragnea, benefit from this change?

No changes made ...

The change is irrelevant, I asked you if he benefits from it.

Not...

How not to benefit since ...?

You might have information from a government file I don't have specifics from the file.

They're public.

I wasn't interested in this data.

Tramps!

Thieves! Thieves!

Next question, if you have one.

If you were accused, now that it's not possible anymore, right?

Do you have another question?

You wouldn't answer, right?

I answered you, ma'am. Next question, if you have one.

You didn't answer me, yes or no? It's a simple, closed question, yes or no?

I answered, ma'am, next question, if you have one.

Yes or no?

I answered you ...

Thieves! Thieves!

Sir, I've asked you ...

OK, so we crossed the street illegally, but do you know what they did in there?

Go and stop them in the middle of the street instead.

Thieves! Thieves!

Next question.

Thank you!

Thank you! Goodbye!

Come on! Come on! Come on!

Thieves! Thieves!

Florin Iordache is the "Next question" guy.

With his cheek: "Next question! Next question!"

That guy, by himself, kept thousands of people in the Victory Square for days in a row.

And you see him... He's your servant.

He's a minister, "Minister" comes from Latin and it means

"Subordinate, underling, servant", that's what "minister" means.

He's a minister, he's paid from the money that you worked for.

Tomorrow night we'll be a hundred thousand and we'll crush them.

And if you're here, it'll be bad.

Calm down, please.

Pray that won't have to work tomorrow, because tomorrow we will crush them.

The following evenings, hundreds of thousands of Romanians took to the streets

And not just in Bucharest, but across the country.

These were the biggest protests in post-revolution Romania, and ended in a victory.

After a week, the government repealed the emergency ordinance.

A war of attrition began between the street and the politicians

who kept trying to change the laws, but with more subtle methods.

Romanians reacted with unwavering perseverance

and went out as many times as it was needed.

Indeed, we've evolved from this perspective.

There are now in Romania, many more people than in 1990, who take their freedom seriously.

What does that mean?

It means an inner strength to go out on the street of your own accord,

without being manipulated or paid by anyone.

The fact that, on an issue as abstract as Justice,

or the laws of justice, Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Code,

people reacted and understood exactly what this is about,

and so many came out it's an extremely surprising, beneficial maturing.

Belated, in fairness,

but probably it couldn't have been otherwise.

The political class became too stiff,

deluded that it's simply there and no one can take its place.

Relying on the attitude that

serious people mind their own business and don't go into politics.

And we see in politics people who haven't achieved much in their career.

There are many, many people who don't have a profession

and that's why they got into politics.

That was the backup career of the little losers of Romania, not the big losers.

The big losers are tragic figures, like Dostoievski. These are little losers.

What do you think makes you a fit for this seat at Victoria Palace?

My colleagues, and the president of the party made statements in this regard.

What makes her a fit? Viorica Dancila is a civilized woman,

a non-conflictual woman.

She's very communicative.

Liviu Dragnea transformed the fostering of mediocrity into an ideology.

He appointed people without any experience in the highest seats in the state.

I will do everything I can to develop the Romanian economy.

And began to defy Western values.

We joined the EU, very well.

But we shouldn't be forced to eat all that processed food.

Why should we be forced to?

Don't we have good enough wheat?

And be what?

Maybe tenants in our own country, and possibly slaves.

He antagonised the EU.

A narrative emerged that to me, even though I was younger during communism

It reminded me of things like: how dangerous foreigners are,

how dangerous multinationals are,

how the EU exploits us.

Nationalism will always be a weapon you can use to erase your own political blunders.

The more incompetent a regime is, the more probable it is to find an external enemy.

In the spring of 2019, with an open case awaiting sentencing

and a round of elections approaching,

Liviu Dragnea played everything on a campaign with huge rallies, aggressive speeches

and music from the late Ceausism period.

What broke out now with Dragnea is not out of the blue.

No! Nationalist extremism has been around all along in the PSD and in Romanian society.

It was just biding its time.

Like a disease that waits for certain moment of weakness of the immune system.

And that's why it broke out.

The weakness that Liviu Dragnea exploited

was the fear of change in the old generation, who lived a good part of their lives in communism.

Any change comes with fear.

And it comes with fear especially for seniors.

They have a natural fear that you can't criticise them for,

and which we're not addressing either

They're getting older, so they think: "OK, is there going to be any stability?

What about my pension, my everyday life?"

They're no longer active, and can't just change their jobs, or do something else.

And when we talk about change

we have to be mindful and say to those who aren't very excited about change

that there is room for everyone and that no one will be left behind.

If grandchildren would tell grandparents: "Look, I see your perspective and your fear,

but modern Romania means this, and if you care about me,

then be with me for modern Romania, not against it "

There would be a much stronger bond between the generations.

Why did you come here?

I work for people like you.

That I want justice!

What justice? That man you support, does the worst kinds of injustice!

How's that?

I wouldn't believe that!

How could you not believe it?

I wouldn't believe it!

From here I greet all the children of Moldova,

her sons and grandsons,

that have taught us for centuries

what the homeland means!

We all need a homeland!

It was a bending of reality.

Many interpretations and analyses claim that history doesn't go backwards.

Yes, you control the levers of power, but what are you going to do?

For how long can you govern against society?

Each one of those protests has created

even more resistance from people who see what's going on,

you can't lie to them, you can't lie to them anymore.

They saw, they reacted! We had spontaneous, non-violent protests

with each of these rallies.

And, after the PSD supporters were evacuated from the square, because they needed a lift home,

those squares have been re-occupied.

*Romanian birthday song but with years in jail instead of years of happy life*

Rallies, anti-European speeches and the nationalist brew spilled onto the people

proved to be insufficient after all.

Romanians rejected this kind of leadership, not just with their protests, but also with their vote.

PSD recorded in 2019, at the EU Parliament and Presidential elections,

the worst results in its history.

It's a lesson that goes beyond dislike of a particular party.

30 years after the fall of communism,

Romania states that it doesn't accept to be ruled with the methods of the past anymore.

My child, who voted this year,

voted fully aware of who he's voting for, researching, collecting information.

He voted differently.

And he has very high standards for those he voted for, and I like that a lot.

There will be a time, in Romania,

of a revolt of a new generation who has different expectations to mine.

My parents wanted to have food, right?

We had food.

Then we wanted to have a car, a home and holidays abroad.

For my children, having a car, a house and trips abroad is not an objective, they have them already.

They have other goals: contribute to society, gain respect, public office, personal career.

Last time I was in England,

I went with a Romanian Uber driver who was there only because his boy was studying

for a political science degree.

And he said that the boy was studying political science

with a plan to come back to Romania and go into politics.

And I find that beautiful.

Something has changed.

Something has changed in Romanian society.

There were high expectations in Romania, indeed, very high.

But if you look back in time,

it's impossible not to notice, however, that Romania has transformed dramatically.

What, do you want me to be optimistic at my age?

To allow myself that?

What can I say? I dare, reluctantly, to hope

that, finally, I won't be living in the Socialist Republic of Romania anymore.

UNIVERSITY SQUARE DECEMBER 2019

TO THE HEROES OF THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION

My parents lived through communism and told me some things ...

They told me they weren't allowed to talk, they had taboo topics,

not just in the family, but in general, on the street ...

That everything was rationed. And for us it's very strange now

to imagine someone only having a certain ration of bread or milk or ...

It wasn't for nothing ... it changed.

It changed the fact that we are free to choose what we want to do,

which is very important, especially for your career.

We have many more opportunities, like this here, for me to present my ideas.

Before '89 no one would've asked me what my opinion was.

I can't imagine how I could be restricted from talking about what's going on.

For us it was like this forever. Free, entitled and believing we can do anything we want.

But back then it was completely different.

There are a few people who say that during communism it was better, but ...

No, it's not true.