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03.15.2003

CNSAS
A possible failure
on unlimited term

We can not have a future if we don't know and assume the past. Accepting this idea it means our future is precarious, because the immediate past was brutally repelled by the Romanian society after 1989. It has been discussed only a little, in a serious manner, about communism. The anti- communism has remained usually a vague speech, a way of hiding an ambiguous past or excuse for a too uncertain resistance to the communism; generally speaking, the communism has been seen as a phenomenon foreign to Romania and the Romanians, a kind of an arbitrary curse which come to wrong the country for a while and then can be removed just by getting away some dictators. Unlike the German society after the second war, the Romanian society has not appeared too interested in assuming - individually first- the past. This is one of the reasons why the second echelon of the nomenclature took the power so easily after the Revolution and why it has been blocked the forming of a professional political class , getting further to a deeper discord between Romania and Europe, both Western and Central.

An important element of knowing and assuming the past is to uncover those who did political police.

It is essential yet, to specify exactly the reasons why this step is necessary. The "uncover" doesn't have to be seen through the angle of the revenge, as regulating counts: then it was their time, now it is ours, then they oppressed us, now we oppress them. Our reasons when we ask for uncover those who did political police are strictly moral and pragmatics; the moral ones overlap very little or not at all with the psychological mechanism of the revenge, because we have in sight laws, refer not to persons, but to facts.

It is moral as each one to be responsible by his facts, individually. We accuse morally the Security as such, in block, but legally can be accused only those who, serving the Security, destroyed some people are lives. They are the ones who have to assume the responsibility for what they have done, moreover the ones who want to say something in the country leadership. Otherwise we will never know who the ones are leading us and what can we expect from them. Here, the moral reason is immediately doubled by the pragmatic one: those ones who have done political police without as their serious immorality to be public sanctioned will feel free to action also in the future just in the virtue of their obscure interests, and make by "the simple citizens" a "simple maneuver mass".

Of course yet, almost any of those in cause didn't recognize their past; at the most, some of them did it with pride. The law for uncover them, hardly adopted, has functioned for a while, even defective, and now is in danger to be completely paralyzed by subordinating the institution who had to apply it by the PSD. Not surprisingly at all, the manner in which the PSD tries to block the function of the National Council for Studying the Security Archives (CNSAS) is similar to the Security methods and generally to the communism: as the official propaganda pretended that the Security defends the Romanians and that we live in a free and prosper country, as the PSD pretends it doesn't want something else than to ensure the CNSAS functionality.

As perverse is this pretension it's immediately seen from the real situation: the CNSAS function is blocked by the group loyal to the government party, who refuses to participate at meetings, getting the polemics tone lower to a preschool level. The conflict's big stake is also obvious: it's about the CNSAS project to uncover 5.000 Security officers, which PSD and PRM try to block it. And about the reminded type of methods, the PSD does not hesitate to manipulate people and ideas to reach its goal. At the manifestation of sustaining the present CNSAS Collegium's , the PSD has gathered participants with the districts City Halls' trucks , and their declared goal - the one of sustaining the CNSAS function- was hiding the attempt of replacing the present Collegium's with another one, who would stop follow the initial law objectives.

Certain, things are not as simple as they seem, and this case is not an exception. Often it seems that the opposite parts are clearly separated, but it's not quite like this. Neither the group of those who suffered in time of communism was not so compact as it should, and maybe also in PSD, beyond the diversion meant to change the sense of the CNSAS sustaining manifestation , there are some deputies who think that PSD does not proceed right, and who support the present form of the CNSAS Collegium's. This relativity of the opposite groups should be asserted and encouraged, as the alleged ideas to count more then the political affiliation when we estimate a statesman positioning face to uncovering those who did political police. Of course, this means it would be necessary as the pro-uncover group to urge the own members with delicate past to speak, and the anti-uncover group to let those having different opinions to speak; unfortunately, it didn't really occur like this.

As the generations change, the interest for the uncovering problem decreases; after 10 years, perhaps only a few people will debate it enthusiastically. But this doesn't mean anyway that it will be then a past problem. On the contrary, if the Romanian society will not succeed now, in this decisive moment when it's deciding the CNSAS fate , to get to that miraculous therapy which is the true , after 10-20 years it will be the same troubled and less efficient as it is now. Even if the problem of those who has been security officers will be not of the interest for almost nobody, the consequences of the failure in facing the past will be drastic; especially it will be a society in which the individual responsibility will not function. But, the European culture and civilization are impossible to be thought without this cardinal value.