Former President Ion Iliescu, who died on Tuesday at the age of 95, will remain associated with the chaotic transition from Romania to democracy, before seeing his image tarnished by accusations of “crimes against humanity”.
Hospitalized for lung cancer in early June, Iliescu followed his treatment at the Bucharest hospital, where his general condition had been deemed “critical” last week.
Born on March 3, 1930 of a Buandière and a railway worker in a modest communist environment in Oltenita (south), he followed engineering studies in Moscow, before quickly climbing the ladder and occupying the post of Minister of Youth under Nicolae Ceausecu.
After the arrest in December 1989 of the dictator and his execution in opaque circumstances, he seized power as a providential man, at the head of a front of national salvation (FSN), promising to stabilize the country.
His opponents, however, accuse him of having “diverted” the anti -communist revolution by orchestrating violence which will make more than 850 dead and thousands of injured.
It is triumphantly elected in a context of multipartyism in May 1990 at the head of the State with 85% of the votes cast. Close to the last president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, he opposed any policy of lustration, aimed at prohibiting former senior communist officials from presenting themselves to public functions.
“Poor, but honest”
He will arouse the dread a month later around the world by encouraging thousands of minors from the provinces to violently break the student movement who blocked the traffic of Bucharest to protest in particular against his managers.
Re -elected in November 1992 (61%), it is credited to have oriented Romania to the market economy. He was beaten in 1996 before returning to power in 2000, then accompanying his country towards membership in NATO and the European Union, while dying this Atlanticism of a paradoxically antiliberal rhetoric.
In 2004, he was elected senator before being dismissed from the presidency of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) by reformers, becoming a tutelary figure appreciated for his personal probity and the discretion he cultivated over his private life.
“I’m poor, but honest,” he used to throw, brave.
Handling very well the French, pleasant, Ion Iliescu had married Nina, met at university in the Russian capital. The couple had no children.
But his role during the transition catches him late. In 2017, his summons by justice will be his last public appearance.
He was subsequently returned to trial for “crimes against humanity” twice, in order to establish his responsibility in bloody troubles in December 1989. But the hearing has never taken place and his file returned to the prosecution, where he is still.
He was also charged with the same count for his role in the repression of the 1990 demonstration, which had left four dead.
“A shame”
Ion Iliescu swept the allegations, calling prosecutors as “national shame” and taking very badly the suspicions weighing on him, when he “played an important role in the democratization of the country”.
Remaining popular in the countryside, where we appreciated his simplicity and saw in him an old -fashioned “little father”, reassuring in an era of deep upheavals, he was however despised by intellectual circles.
His rivals saw in him the incarnation of a “neo-communism” causing the old clientelist system to pluralist varnish, tolerating corruption and consequently mortgaging the place of Romania in global competition.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ATS / AFP