National Press Review, January, 26

The front page topic on today’s newspapers: "Justice, Constitutional Court and Superior Council of Magistracy".

It is an unprecedented situation. The judicial system runs out of leadership because the current one has been declared as unconstitutional.

The Gândul points out that President Traian Băsescu has been warning the members of the Superior Council of Magistracy since January, 5 to wait for the decision of the Constitutional Court.

The same daily reveals that Traian Băsescu is accused by Victor Ponta for having tried to take control over the Superior Council of Magistracy too and that the liberal Eugen Nicolăescu asserts that Traian Băsescu’s politics is created by political commissars (politruk, Russian) from the Constitutional Court.

Yesterday, the România Liberă wrote that "the old guard was sacked out from the Superior Council of Magistracy!"

The România Liberă explained that there were reelected three magistrates for the new term even though it was forbidden by the law.

The other three magistrates’ terms had expired by the election and the spokesman of the civil society was in an inconvenient situation which led, according to the Adevărul, to a "complete obstruction inside the court".

All in all, the Jurnalul Naţional writes: "the Constitutional Court stumps the Superior Council of Magistracy" and the Evenimentul Zilei reveals that "the Superior Court of Magistracy is fighting against the Constitutional Court".

Otherwise, the dailies, such as the Gândul, outline that last year, ministries and public companies spent a lot of money on laptops, all-terrain vehicles, mobile phones, furniture and candles. Did I say candles?!...

Sorin Ovidiu Vântu declares both for the România Liberă and the Adevărul:businessmen’s diseases have been examined by attorneys; I mean the Prosecutor’s Office investigates the medical documents that Vântu uses in order to get rid of the process.

The Adevărul observes that the medical report which urges that one’s kneecap must be operated on is signed by a cardiologist.

Moreover, we have indeed in one daily’s front page, a football player’s image, both bored and boring who shouldn’t be there since a long time ago.

More dailies, this time, reveal on the front page the image of an old president.

The Evenimentul Zilei writes about "Ceauşescu’s youth" the same way it appears in some files created by the Interwar Security.

The România Liberă adds the way Ceauşescu took revenge on his guards.

Shocking surprise: he threw them in jail on August 23.

Then, as time went by, Nicolae Ceauşescu made his own house where he hired a Hungarian nursemaid as written under a half front-page photo in the Jurnalul Naţional.

So what?!...

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