I was born in 1955 in Sascut (Conţeşti village), situated in Bacău county. My grandparents and parents were rich peasants (the Romanian term is "chiaburi", meaning bourgeois), and they had to endure the hardship suffered by people in this position under the communist regime. The primary and gymnasium school I graduated in the native village. In 1974, I graduated from "George Bacovia" High-School in Bacau (after 1997 National College "Ferdinand I"), and in 1977, The Military School of Infantry Officers, "Nicolae Bălcescu" in Sibiu. Upon graduation, I received the rank of Lieutenant, and I was assigned to a military unit in Bucharest. For almost eight years I fulfilled duties of Platoon Commander and Company Commander. Afterwards, until the end of 1989, I worked as an administrator in the area of logistics and labour protection, as well as in a military detachment of construction in "the national economy". Between 1982 and 1987, I attended the courses of the Faculty of Law at the University of Bucharest.