The parties have started the competition for "the best warrior for social protection" Traian Basescu is the most trained criticizer of his cabinet fellows. Valeriu Stoica, Andrei Marga and Smaranda Dobrescu are the last ones on the minister of Transportation's black list. This week, the aim of Basescu's diatribes was the minister of Labor and Social Protection, Smaranda Dobrescu. The democrat vice-president showed his concern to the pension fund that may have been "ransacked by the compensatory payments". He added that there was no money to re-correlate pensions as the Labor Ministry wished to and he sharply criticize especially the rescheduled outstanding dues to the pension funds of some state-run and private companies. Basescu has placed himself on a comfortable position. He knows Mugur Isarescu doesn't like the idea of the rescheduled debts (strongly rejecting the Finance Ministry's proposals in this respect) and he objects to the reorientation of some funds to fill out the pension funds. In this scandal, Mrs. Dobrescu's voice, who asserted that the minister of Transportation mixed up everything and the pension funds were OK, appears to be lost in space now. In plain English, Basescu has marked again, knowing well that he has Mugur Isarescu on his side and the Labor Ministry's policies are disputable. It is obvious now that the stake was of political nature. Moreover, the stake in the Basescu-Dobrescu dispute is the idea of social protection. Both the president Constantinescu and the Social Democrats through the Labor minister publicly pledged to re-correlate pensions. This means a 40% pegging of incomes for those who had retired before 1998. The Social Democrats' and the president's actions are seriously affecting the Democrats' position who introduce themselves in the electoral campaign in 1996 as a party of social protection. This is expected to be part of the