The new national security laws are to reach the CSAT (Supreme Council for National Defense) for consent, a reason for the President of Romania and the PM to resume their conflict. President Basescu criticized the projects coming from Victoria Palace one more time. Until the government modified the law projects at stake, the conflict seemed to be of political nature and also related to control over the intelligence services. But that time is over, as both civil society and press showed the protagonists to be wrong. Civil society took attitude and came up with decisive objections against the projects, pleading for the protection of individual liberties. And the dispute got to an issue such as the democratization of the services and their image, of course. Right now Tariceanu's Cabinet has completed changes to the national security laws. The government worked on the version by the Cotroceni staff. The government actually put up with civil society's suggestions and inserted them in the Cotroceni version. Not much has been left of the latter. Therefore we can see a real dispute coming up: the Cotroceni version versus the Victoria Palace one. The former focuses on the intelligence services, whereas the latter focuses on individual liberties. Since President Basescu has proved to be a very skilful political player, he is expected to be victorious. But this time the loser won't be just Tariceanu, since the democratization of the secret services and also the liberties of Romanians are at stake.

Mihai Toader