Thursday morning, on public radio, a listener from Bucharest offered to take in one of the children in the flood stricken areas till the childâs parents were rebuilding the home they lost.
The caller and her husband were people of few means and had an eight-year old child; they hoped their own child will play with the one they wanted to invite into their home for a while. "When he or she will go back home we will give him some clothes and bed sheets and a mattress," she said.
This was just one example of the million gestures that we came to call lately with an overused word: solidarity.
It goes without saying that millions of Romanians were touched by the television broadcasts which put them in touch with the plight of the tens of thousands of other Romanians struck by the devastating floods.
Loathed by politicians, looked down upon by its owners, the journalists were at the top of their profession (reports of Pro TV private station, for instance, could stand easily in any world anthology of television news). The news casts showed the disaster left behind by the floods, but also the humanity of people helping other people in distress.
Because of reports sent by young reporters on the ground the victims did not feel alone and millions of their countrymen felt connected to them.
One man alone seemed to have escaped all this, like living in another country, or better yet, on another planet. The man is our own President, Traian Basescu.
He locked himself up in the presidential office and for days it looked like he was not aware of the disaster. Total silence was his only reaction.
We got a few glimpses of him though: once, when he showed his interest in the last ruling of the Constitutional Court and, a second time, at the opening of an art exhibition.
On Friday evening though, we understood that Basescu knew all th
