President Traian Basescu seems to have become director of such scenes. He’s making us laugh, but he is making the opposition look for solutions.

On Tuesday the opposition parties’ leaders went to Brussels to complain about the state of democracy in Romania in front of European liberals and social-democrats. The labor minister Sulfina Barbu and other ruling democrat-liberals also attended the talks. Anyway, by the time a press conference had been organized in Brussels by the two opposition leaders, president Traian Basescu was holding a press conference in Bucharest! The timing was right, so that TV news channels had to make a choice in broadcasting live either the opposition or the president.

On Thursday the situation was more or less the same. The opposition leaders were holding a press conference at the end of their meeting with the head of the IMF delegation presently in Bucharest. But, surprise! At the very same moment president Traian Basescu took the chair during a meeting hosted by the foreign ministry celebration five years within the European Union. Basescu’s speech was long enough to ‘cover’ the opposition’s statements.

Facing this odd situation, the opposition is looking for new strategies. Social-democrat leader Victor Ponta stated later on Thursday he noticed Traian Basescu is on the watch for the opposition to organize concomitant press conferences. As a consequence, the opposition decided to call press conferences at a certain hour, but hold them at a different time. (!) “We’ll try to keep secret the time for conferences, as we notice Basescu is on watch,” Ponta said, adding that they need to trick Mr. Basescu…

Just after the statement, the social-democrat party’s press bureau announced another press conference for 15.00 hours. I believe everyone was looking to the presidential palace to find out if another press conference was to be held at the same moment.

Wouldn’t Mr. Basescu be a perfect film director? He’s surprising us every time.

Maxy