EDITORIAL

It is a severe deed when Justice makes incorrect use of a good law and commits mistakes that turn into real dramas or are simply fatal and have innocent people as victims. It is an even more severe deed when a normative document is imperfect. Even if the right institutions use it the fair way, large categories of citizens may be unfairly affected. This is exactly the debate on the lustration law, taking place in corners instead of in the open. A few days ago the Senate passed this law. Invoking older versions and points that didn't actually pass, for they would have widened too much the circle of people to be affected by this law, various "specialists" from the communist repressive regime have tried a diversion move and they have partly succeeded. They have managed to persuade those people who won't actually be affected by this law into thinking that they will be affected. And it has not been difficult, since not everyone did a careful reading of the phrase signed by Senate president Nicolae Vacaroiu after the meeting held in April 10, 2006.

In such a scenario, one of the people that could have been affected by this law is Adrian Severin. Had it happened so, it would have been outrageous. I am using Severin as example to show how dangerous is the diversion haunting Romanian society at present. Razvan Ungureanu is one of its victims. In December 1989 he was 21 and he couldn't possibly have entered one of the categories listed in the law, on people banned to get elected or named in official state positions for ten years. Tariceanu expressed opinion too, although he hadn't read the law.

Here is one of the versions on the grapevine: because he taught commercial law in an institution where he shouldn't have, he was supposed to be affected by the lustration law. Had it been so, the law would have been imperfect and the reality it triggered would have been outrageous. Adrian Severin was a minister of reform in the first democratic government after Ceausescu's fall. When trying to speed up the reform, he got into dispute with the hard, pro - communist group in the ex FSN (Front for National Salvation). The coal miners were asked to come and Roman's Cabinet, Severin included, were kicked out in September 1991 by unconstitutional means. He was also a foreign minister of Romania in the CDR (Romanian Democratic Convention) government. Then he was elected president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, honorary president of the same structure, the first politician in Central and Eastern Europe to front a pan-European organization. He still is president of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly in the Council of Europe. He was awarded the Pro Merito award from the Council of Europe twice. He was elected rapporteur of the Council of Europe for the lustration law and the destruction of the remains of totalitarian systems, UN rapporteur for human rights in Belorussia, vice-president of the Juridical Commission and Human Rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and Euro-observer of the European Parliament. He is a prominent personality at national and European level.

Well, in the version set by diversion authors and released to the market, the lustration law was to be applied in his case too, because while the communists were in power he was an eminent jurist and taught international commercial law in the Faculty of Economic Studies for a while. But then the course got transferred with the latter school to Stefan Gheorghiu Academy. If the version on the grapevine was true, then Sevrin would be sacked. One more detail: when talking to him on the phone once when he was in one of his missions abroad, I got to think he had been fooled too.

But he is not the only victim of such cheating. In the last 2-3 days thousands of people have thus been manipulated. Many of them are remarkable personalities, enjoying great trust from civil society and from the people in their fields of activity. It is easy to imagine that if they instinctively disapprove of the lustration law the Senate passed, the latter law may be discredited or even sacked.

This is why I have decided to express this warning. Even if it has come so late, the lustration law has not come too late. Given the historical condemnation of the communist system, it is normal and just that those people with decisive contribution to the preservation of dictatorship in Romania for half of century should no longer have the right to fool citizens. Those who destroyed millions of people and harmed millions of families, restraining fundamental human rights and freedoms, must no longer promote such principles by means of free elections or by getting key political and administrative positions, for only ten years.

Articol disponibil la adresa http://www.ziua.net/display.php?id=197820&data=2006-04-13