In the summer of 2002, in an editorial from "Cotidianul" ("The Iron Guards, today"/ “Legionarii, azi”) I was trying to draw attention to one of the main risks caused by the inadequacies of Romania`s political elite, especially the public`s growing acceptance for political radical formulas. It was a period when, at least in Bucharest, "The Iron Guard Movement" was proving to be more active than any time after 1989. I was writing in my article that, ignoring the rise of the "The Iron Guard Movement" did not solve the issue at all, on the contrary. At the same time, I reminded those who wished to reorganize the "Iron Guard Movement" of a few "questionable actions" their predecessors had in the history of Romania. Few days after the publishing of the text, the "22" magazine cherry-picked, in a tendentious way, a few passages, and also commented upon them out of context, suggesting to the reader that I had Iron Guard sympathies. By right of rebuttal, in which I drew attention to the fact that I could appeal to Justice, I requested the entire, uncut publication of my article. Two weeks later, the magazine complied with my request, sadly with the same ill intentions, by publishing only the parts that hadn’t been published the first time, accompanied by even more ill intended comments. The "sleights of hand" and the insinuations of the "22`s" editorial staff were reiterated, shortly after, by Michael Shafir, who did not hesitate to declare me a defender of the Iron Guard (Mr. Shafir wanted to punish me because I had criticized him when – wanting to settle some old scores – he had the lack of inspiration to talk about Paul Goma as a person who "was part of the communist system"). I hope the website, in its current form, will be able to re-establish the truth in such cases.
In the autumn of 2004, the team from "Academia Catavencu" weekly magazine (owned by the businessman Sorin Ovidiu Vântu) took over the editorial control of the newspaper "Cotidianul", a paper I had been a contributor to for over six years. It was the moment when I was completely cut out from our country`s print media. At the same time, the publication`s electronic archive was also eliminated. On this website I posted articles from that period. More information on the saga of the successive removal from several national publications can be found on the “Biography” page.
The sections Biography and Documents contain the information – including a number of documents – that seemed thematically relevant to me. Because they contain a number of detailed biographical facts, I also posted the texts of two legal actions I initiated following defamatory allegations made against me, in two of their volumes, by Romania`s former President, Emil Constantinescu, and by the publicist Dan Pavel.
An article I wrote recently, "Activitatea publică consemnată în presă" / "Public activity in the media", published on the Documente/ Alte documente page, has both biographical relevance as well as helping correlate the information from various sections of the website.
Over
time, I have been systematically vilified by people from various
governmental and civil society groups – from Vadim Tudor to Emil
Constantinescu, from Ion Iliescu to Gabriel Andreescu, Dan Pavel or
Ioan T. Morar. In the autumn of 2005, for example, journalists from
"Cotidianul" wrote that, while I was head of the
Government’s Control Body, after a medical exam carried out at the
Bucharest Municipal Hospital, I "backed down" from
criticising the activity of the hospital`s director Sorin Oprescu,
member of PDSR [Social Democracy Party of Romania]. The journalists
also wrote that, a year later, I was a patient of the Municipal
Hospital`s Manager, who understandably gave me proper treatment in
exchange for "backing down". These allegations are dirty
lies and insinuations from beginning to end. I sent the necessary
reply to the chief editor - Carol Sebastian (subsequently proven to
be a collaborator of the "Securitate"). It was not
published and there was no statement in the newspaper about this. The
former BBC journalist was acting in the same way as Vadim Tudor, who,
two years before, also refused to correct similar fake allegations –
he wrote in "Romania Mare" that I used my position in the
Government to facilitate my son`s transfer from one school to
another. Another example, from the autumn of 2005, is the text "On
the climax of absurdity. A
One of the public issues I systematically dealt with, was the profoundly corrupted and abusive behaviour of the State`s high officials. I have had to defend myself at least five times in court for publicly criticizing these people; I hope the correlative information published on the Documente page will be useful, inclusively to those who are involved in future legal cases involving State officials suing persons who criticize them for their public activity and behaviour.
The pages Biografie and Argument from the site are translated into English and, beside these, a series of materials which I have considered to be more relevant in relation to the more general topic, which is more consistently treated there: the situation from Romania (rule of law, fundamental rights and liberties etc.) during the pre-adhesion, respectively during the post-adhesion at the European Union (EU) and at the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)2.
Finally, with the purpose of defending my constitutional and legal rights violated by the public authorities and institutions, but also because I wanted to see (test) whether the right to a fair trial and access to justice are respected in Romania, between 2002 and 2020, I have initiated a number of 40 contentious administrative matters and civil trials; I have made this more substantially and systematically after Romania joined the European Union. The outcome of these trials can be found on the page Documente/ Alte Documente, starting with the document „Cauza Stan împotriva Serviciului Român de Informaţii".