National Press Review, December 2

The different versions of modifying the maternity leave period in Romania and the row regarding the American secret documents published on the Internet are covered by all today’s newspapers, in Bucharest.

Who is going to use mothers’ money?, the România Liberă asks. Is it the Government or the IMF? The daily adds that the Minister of Labour, Ioan Botiş’s version of diminishing the maternity leave period is milder than what the IMF required.

What the IMF demands is to spend one year at home and to grant a 600-1,000 lei indemnity.

The Adevărul outlines that Boc’s Government blames the IMF’s oppression.
All the propositions made by the Coalition Party foresee the reduction of the indemnity quantum which would determine mothers to get back earlier to their job.

There are five solutions that the Adevărul is writing about; the Gândul calls them ‘five blanks which IMF and the Government prepare for mothers.’

The Gândul explains that no matter the decision, mothers will lose: either their leave period will be diminished or their indemnity will be steeply reduced.

‘The case Wikileaks’, a site that brought on the market thousand of American secret documents, disturbs the slumbers of the greatest people in the world and fills newspapers’ pages all over the world.

At Bucharest, the topic of the Evenimentul Zilei edition is outlined today: ‘the story of the man that revealed the whole world’s mystery'.

The co- founder of the Wikileaks Internet site, Julian Assange, a homeless, thirty nine year old Australian, could redesign the cobweb of the world’s diplomacy.

They have been for two days on the Interpol’s list with the most wanted people in the world not for having committed any cybercrime but for a so-called sexual assault that took place this summer, in Sweden.

As for the document published in Wikileaks, in 2004, in which an European Commissioner said that Romania is a wild state unready for adhering to the EU, the Adevărul asked Ion Iliescu, who was the former president six years ago, to give his opinion about this.

Ion Iliescu asserts that ‘It seems to me such an odd viewpoint for 2004. Romania is ready to adhere’.

Finally, moving back on the worlds’ echoes regarding the case, the forecaster Bogdan Ghiu believes that in the Evenimentul Zilei, the documents although confidential or extremely secret are presented as more …human than properly political.

Their publication made by the Australian has something of a silent movie; it looks like slipping on soap or like pulling the chair under the bottom.

The forecaster adds that it’s a kind of tomfoolery but which draws the attention on the general lack of seriousness and responsibility all over the world.

Translated by: Cristina Anamaria Maricescu
MA student, MTTLC, Bucharest University