During the electoral campaign, we repeatedly said that, if he got the power, Traian Basescu would take us from one scandal to another. Because this is how his entire political career was built. There were scandals with Ciorbea, with the unions, with Petre Roman, with Dan Ioan Popescu or with myself. Traian Basescu behaves in such a way that he manages to annoy all his messmates right after the hors dâoeuvres in such a way that the waiters will be fighting each other during the main course. (I wonder why I thought of an example involving a restaurant.)
At that time, there were many people that thought I was making up dangers that hadnât existed in order for them to see me as the better solution. However, I have to admit that reality went beyond my predictions, but I am not happy about this. I actually wanted to live less "interesting" times. I wanted to be able to travel through Europe without having to use my fingers to cover the word "Romania" on my passport.
We are in the place where we were expected to be. We enter the EU the way we are: a state that has only scandals to offer right now. A state that exports scandal, that forces Europe to take part in a lame scandal.
Do you think this is a simple metaphor? Letâs take a look on the official numbers. As compared to 2004, the deficit of our commercial balance with the countries in the EU during the first months of 2006 is double and reached 4.3 billion euros, from 1.5 billions, as the Government I used to lead left it. This means we import more and more from these countries, but we are not able to increase the exportsâ level.
The reason for this fact is probably the inexistence of an international scandal market, which should dictate the prices for this almost unique Romanian export merchandise. If we were paid for the scandals we generate, we would be rich. We would have orange gold a
