The major challenge Romania is facing is that the winning President won due to a violent, extremist, xenophobe and populist discourse, addressing a certain electorate category who praises such products. Right after his victory, when EU officials were expressing their congratulations conventionally, Basescu proved to be a racist too: he called a journalist doing her job in a public place "a stinky gypsy". It was a few minutes after he had just took her cell phone. This is the kind of conduct that opens the second part of a presidential mandate now famous. And the political war is going on, just as it is spreading. We have got a war reported on in detail, which Traian Basescu waged against the Parliament. He also waged one to the government. The third one is against businessmen who wouldn't flatter Cotroceni Palace. There is one more war against the press that wouldn't be submissive. As for the political class, the PD (Democrat Party) and the PLD (Liberal Democrat Party), now with an improving score due to sentimental, but transient votes, are fighting against the other five parties represented in the Parliament. And the so-called anti-Basescu coalition has also taken up war. The PNL (National Liberal Party) and the PSD (Social-Democrat Party), two most important parties, are opening serious guerilla moves. This is what I am tackling for now. As the resistance against Basescu is growing incoherent and the fight for power inside parties is prevailing over a peril such as Romania's slide to the extremism defined by Basescu's campaign, democracy can get under a deadly offensive. The statement Ludovic Orban made last Saturday is the first clue that fratricide is seizing the PNL. It can break the party's spine, anyway weakened. The Liberals who broke with the party and who are now members of the PLD left the PNL with less votes in the Parliament, but without jeopardizing the party. Not even the ascent of the PLD, due to Basescu's victory, has done it. But here is Ludovic Orban, a main representative of the Liberal right, challenging Tariceanu's Cabinet to join the opposition. And it is only now that the PNL is in trouble. Suppose Tariceanu takes Orban's advice and resigns. The Liberals' transfer to the opposition can dramatically diminish the support the party is still enjoying. History shows it always happens so when a party leaves power. Only under such circumstances is it possible for a significant number of PNL members to join the PLD, hopeful that they will get the power back in a predictable future, under Basescu's umbrella and taking the PD instructions. On the other hand, the Democrats' leave gives Basescu the opportunity to push things to early elections to bring a minority PD-PLD government in. Orban's attitude is complicating everyone's lives. As for the PSD, this party isn't flourishing either. Mircea Geoana is facing the powerful assail of rivals inside the party. It is rivals who didn't help him during the campaign, but who are now critical of him. I will be back on this. For now I am just expressing my disgust at the President's violent and racist insult against a journalist.

Sorin Rosca STANESCU