Suppose Ion Iliescu's decision to withdraw from politics is sincere and 'compulsory'. If so, we need an analysis of the Iliescu era, a brief, still a thorough one. Ion Iliescu was not only the 'KGB servant' or 'the daddy of the coal miners' attacks'. He was the man who generated the imperfect democracy system after 1989, still a system that got Romania in the NATO and the EU. He was the man who left room for alternative at times when his advisers would tell him to the cannons ready out in the streets. The imperfect Ion Iliescu, much indebted to his Communist past, ruled over the most difficult and 'nervous' period in Romania after the 1989 Revolution. So there are many misdeeds and few good deeds. But maybe the few good deeds were more important than the misdeeds. History will record them. And the fact that he relates himself to history is an advantage for Ion Iliescu. His withdrawal is raising two fundamental questions: Why is he withdrawing? What will follow afterwards? First of all, the reason for his decision is not a strictly biological one. Even if his age doesn't provide him with enough physical energy for a campaign of the uninominal kind, I am convinced that he can find a senatorial board to win in due to more than 50% at any time. This is why I think the more profound reason for his withdrawal is related to more profound symbolism. The disappointment with his party's achievements, the mathematical failure of all his dolphins, the perception according to which political leaders are worse than his generation and that his so-called political pragmatism killed all ideology and political beliefs and values can be one explanation. The values Ion Iliescu embodies, values many of us haven't shared and will never share, made him credible for two decades and this is why people voted for him. What follows after Ion Iliescu lacks the depth, many times malefic, of the 'granny'. The 'caviar socialism', the expensive cars and the luxury at the state's expense are replacing 'cryptocommunism' and his 'poor, but honest' socialism. The second question concerns what comes after Ion Iliescu's withdrawal. The real change will not become visible when we please, not at once, not all of a sudden. The future always defeats the past, even if not very fast. But this is the only evolution possible on an average term. Ion Iliescu's exit is the moment when the 'power networks' inherited from Communism, but out of control at once, will dismember step by step. The spiritual father of 'balance' and 'consensus', concepts by means of which he protected, recuperated and integrated in the power system the 'reliable employees' without a master in the first years of the 'genuine democracy' will blow them up with his own hand. Even if they look autonomous, powerful, related to the civilized world, these power networks are growing more and more addicted than they themselves think to the symbolical resource called Ion Iliescu. Given this idea, the announcement about Ion Iliescu's "withdrawal" can be a serious threat against some and good news for others. But to judge it in moral terms such as good and evil is absurd. It is not always that the good wins and the future sounds well. P.S. These are true even if Ion Iliescu insinuated it just to make the local branches of the Social-Democrat Party kindly ask him to run as candidate, to let things flow naturally. His candidacy under such circumstances would but consolidate his present position even more.

Horia MIHALCESCU