The CPUN anniversary would have been a great opportunity to discuss the problems that Romania dealt with in the first months after the Revolution. The CPUN anniversary would have been a great opportunity to discuss the problems that Romania dealt with in the first months after the Revolution. It wasn’t like that. The public opinion focused on a minor incident that took place at the anniversary manifestation. One of the problems that appeared at the CPUN confrontations is still valid: the one between authoritarianism and parliamentarism. On the 18th of February 1990, I gave this title to an article I wrote for the “Expres” magazine in which I commented the session in which the rules of CPUN had been established. Next you will find fragments from that commentary.

Even though a less spectacular one than the previous, the session of the Temporary Council for National Union (CPUN) on the 13th of February 1990 emphasized once again the two opposite tendencies that appear in the new organism of the state power. The parties are making efforts to transform this council in a mini-parliament. This is what caused the complicated procedures proposed by certain representatives of the parties, the fact that they insisted on the secret vote, the battle for every word present in the project, the request for the right to have legislative initiative. The second tendency, represented by Ion Iliescu, who was more or less subtle, and by the former members of the front, who are independent at the moment, says the organism should be prompt and efficient. This is why Ion Iliescu and the former members of the front insisted on the open vote expressed by standing up, on the limitation of the legislative initiative and on concentrating the council power in the hands of the Executive Bureau. The two major opinions confronted even when it came to this session. Mr. Ion Iliescu c