National Press Review, 27 May

Băsescu is forcing Isărescu’s hand, the Jurnalul Naţional reads and explains: The Head of state attacked at Radio România Actualităţi the NBR officials, about which he says they are teaching the Government lessons, but does not assume executive responsibilities.

The last ‘lesson’ had come just one day before from the NBR Governor, Mugur Isărescu, urging politicians not to promise things they cannot accomplish.

Emil Boc’s reaction came last night in an interview given to Reality TV, the Jurnalul Naţional also reads.

The NBR officials don’t want to take over the Prime Minister job because in times of crisis good news are not announced and the personal image is affected, this way being easier to comment from the sidelines than go out on the playing field, Boc claimed.

Starting 2013, Romanians will become electronic patients, the Adevărul reads. In less than two years we will be able to get treatment based on electronic cards only, we will receive electronic recipes and we’ll have the medical file into a computer. Initially, health care authorities announced the date of January 2012 as the one when we will be able to use the card.

However, the steps of computerization are being slowed down by bids that need to be made for every inch of the system. Thus, according to the President of the National Health Care House, Lucian Duţă, the actual manufacturing of the cards will start in July-August this year, their distribution is estimated for January- February 2012, and a month later the pilot-experiment will start on a county which will be then chosen.

The Adevărul as well exclusively publishes the first part of a three article series dedicated to General Ştefan Kostyal- about whom he states is the spy who created the plot of the Revolution.

In today’s article, journalists from the Adevărul write about the controversial biography of the general, who in the 60s was degraded to the rank of soldier and excluded from the Communist Romanian Party for ‘immorality’.

About other exclusivity we read in the Evenimentul Zilei, who publishes an interview with Florin Streteanu, the only Romanian judge who took part in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) complement.

He declared that the European instance has noted, I quote, ‘what we all knew’: that the trial in Romania takes too long. Furthermore, he states, it is Romanians’ business to solve the files on the Revolution, which cannot be prescribed, as the Court also appreciated.
Streteanu replaced, in 2009, in this case, Corneliu Bîrsan, the Romanian judge in ECHR, as the latter also has the witness quality in the case of the Miners’ revolt in 13-15 June 1990.

In the România Liberă we read that the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) is a shock for Brussels. The approach of the three Romanian MEPs, a so-called ‘representation of the Secuiesc Land’, has sparked heated criticism from the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) and the National Union for the Progress of Romania (UNPR).

Surprisingly, the leaders of the opposition haven’t had any reaction, the journalists in the România Liberă write.

The Representation of the Secuiesc Land would be inaugurated in the capital of Belgium on June 1st. The approach is not very well seen by the government partners of UDMR, the democrat-liberals, and the vice-president of the Senate, Cristian Diaconescu, considers this approach as ‘an affront to the democracy of Romania’.

Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University