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The enemies of Traian Basescu hurried to condemn the new involvement of the President in the local elections for the Liberal-Democrat Party, which is compared to Nicolae Ceausescu’ Communist party more and more often these days. Their position is explained by a weakness present in the entire political class in Romania: the weakness of being manipulated by a closed-circuit television, bought and supported by Sorin Ovidiu Vantu during his trade with Traian Basescu. "I offer you a toy with cameras and analysts and you will let me proceed with my FNI-type schemes. I will support your toy with this illegal money.”
The enemies of Traian Basescu hurried to condemn the new involvement of the President in the local elections for the Liberal-Democrat Party, which is compared to Nicolae Ceausescu’ Communist party more and more often these days. Their position is explained by a weakness present in the entire political class in Romania: the weakness of being manipulated by a closed-circuit television, bought and supported by Sorin Ovidiu Vantu during his trade with Traian Basescu. "I offer you a toy with cameras and analysts and you will let me proceed with my FNI-type schemes. I will support your toy with this illegal money.”
Like any other news channel, Realitatea TV can be called a closed-circuit television, because it doesn’t go beyond the narrow circle of the politics-related people: party leaders and members, journalists, members of the civil society. From the fact that they pay attention to all the things broadcasted by Realitatea TV from dusk ‘till dawn, the politicians reach to the conclusion that millions of Romanians do the same. Bullshit! The small rating numbers of this television shows that there are 100,000 Romanians watching the channel at a time at most. However, they hurry to react as if Realitatea TV would influence millions of people.
On Sunday, the 18th of May 2008, we saw another electoral maneuver of Traian Basescu. It would have been much more efficient for the politicians and journalists to reveal the cheap tricks that created the new political manifestation. Numerous inhabitants of Bucharest went to Cotroceni out of a simple curiosity. A simple poll would have shown that the people that came to Cotroceni weren’t only admirers of Traian Basescu, but simple curious people as well. A lot of the visitors came there simply because it was Sunday and they were offered a new free entertainment. A visionary President would have treated the event on Sunday as a strictly pertaining one. However, Traian Basescu is not such a President.
He is a Presidnet obsessed of being an authoritarian Leader in a Romania that refuses the Balkan authoritarianism. This is why the President thought to transform the Open-Gates Day into a new instrument of proving to his political enemies and to the obedient institutions that his is more than a Ship Commander. He is the People’s Commander.
Therefore, using Realitatea TV, Traian Basescu tried to change the real reasons for which the citizens came to haunt the Cotroceni Palace. The trick used by Sorin Ovidiu Vantu’s machinery is simple: only some of the members of a group are selected to make statements and they are only those that state what the President wants to hear. This is how they try to convince the public opinion that the ones that came to visit the Palace did it only because they like the President so much.
Things didn’t stop here. With the help of Vantu’s analysts, the great number of visitors was seen as a sign of solidarity of the people with the President for his confrontation with the Parliament. This is what they did to complete this diversion: Traian Basescu set the Open-Gates Day on the 18th of May 2008, a year after the Referendum, and made an anniversary day out of it.
Realitatea TV installed a mobile studio in Cotroceni and many FNI analysts hurried to that studio in order to talk about the things that happened a year before. From the point of view of the Adevarul newspaper, there is no organic connection between last year’s Referendum and the festivity that took place this year. A respectable media institution would have treated this event as a proof of the democratic transparency. By following the presidential directions, Realitatea TV made it an anniversary. Therefore, the high number of citizens that came to see the Palace was seen as an expression of the Romanians’ hostility towards the Parliament. Sorin Ovidiu Vantu will remain in the history due to the FNI deal. A deal in which many many people appeared as winners when they were actual losers. By taking over the mechanism of the FNI fraud, Traian Basescu showed several thousands of Romanians as teammates of his for his battle with the Parliament, when they only came there to gape.
