Last Saturday the son-in-law to be of President Traian Basescu made a statement appealing at the public's sympathy for the tribulations media had subjected him to. Bogdan Ionescu, aka Syda, had been the target of choice for the Romanian media after it became public that he was on a very fast track to diplomatic status.

One that fast, that it curtailed regular exams and regulations. In other words, what was impossible for any other applicant, it became feasible for Ionescu, who passed over three weeks in February two exams placing him in the central administration, or the a diplomatic position in the Romanian embassy in Paris, to be exact. The only glitch was that Ionescu was the only applicant, as he was also the only one interested party informed of the competitions.

Ionescu said in his statement that he was giving up the diplomatic position in Paris, after having been the victim of media lynching, as he put it. He proved thus to have more delicate nerves than his fiancee and the president's youngest daughter, Elena Basescu, who was elected to the European Parliament in spite of her many blunders proving she was inept at using Romanian language, to start with. Elena took up her position as an MEP and stayed there.

One question boggles the mind though: what prompts these children, born into new money families, to pursue careers in public office they are obviously not qualified for?

Are they that bored to make the first page of gossip magazines after their non-ending string of clubbing nights? Is the long list of lovers that put them in the tabloids' columns not satisfying anymore? Or do they want to add to the wrongfully made money of their families the official title that would somehow make that right?

Two decades of post-communist transition brought to the fore the generation of children born into new money fam