National Press Review, 18 April

There are various topics at the beginning of week, in the Bucharest newspapers - geopolitical analysis regarding our country, memories of Chernobyl or speculation about the interests around the ‘referendum for the Capital’.

‘Why Russia and Turkey are afraid of Romania.’ Moscow and Ankara were not very enthusiast about the extension of the military and nuclear power lobby prepared at Bucharest, according to România Liberă.

President Traian Băsescu went on a visit to Azerbaijan today, and this country was on the point of starting a new energy route through which Romanian specialists hope to abandon the Russian gas imports in the future and even to reduce Gazprom’s European market.

Therefore, the România Liberă continued, Russia and Turkey watched with anxiety as these plans as they pictured our country as a military actor, also financially supported by the United States in the wider region of the Black Sea.

Consequently, the Jurnalul Naţional continues its campaign against the constructions in Bucegi, about which the newspaper wrote that they seriously affected nature. ‘Bucegi Plateau, parterre’, is today’s headlline. A cabin built of public funds within the Natura 2000 site opened the way for real estate investors in the Bucegi Natural Park.

The Adevărul started its today’s edition with ‘Curse of Chernobyl’. At 25 years after the plant’s nuclear reactor explosion in the former USSR, many people still have nightmares. The most affected ones have been the soldiers used for what the Soviet officials would only call ‘the fault clearance’, thus understating the situation. In the four pages case of today’s Adevărul we learn about the hundreds of Romanians from Bessarabia forcibly taken to Chernobyl and used as ‘liquidators’ exactly in the radioactive outbreak. All of them remained with serious diseases.

The Puterea newspaper published today ‘All about Capital referendum on 19 June’: where to vote, how to answer (in the ‘technical data’ field), and also (in the ‘Comments’ section) how much the referendum cost and what interests had the politicians.

We conclude by the interview of the day which appeared today in the Evenimentul Zilei. The questions of the newspaper were answered to by the actual host of the event, Ion Caramitru in the day of the UNITER Gala. The actor discussed his artistic development, his relationship with the Securitatea and the mystifications of the 1989 Revolution. Artistically, Ion Caramitru has been in the spotlight, on stage and on set, for half a century. As for 1989, the actor said: ‘My Revolution against the Securitatea did not succeed. The other did.’

Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University