What the newspapers say: April 22, 2008

Liberal PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu seems to avoid endorsing the party’s candidate for local elections in ealy June, one newspaper reads on Tuesday. Public opinion in Italy fired up after Romanian illegal immigrant Ion Rus raped an African diplomat’s daughter. Last but not least, Romanian famous literary critic and dissident Monica Lovinescu passed away in Paris.

Gandul reads that Ludovic Orban, the Liberals’ candidate for the Bucharest Mayor seat in local elections due in early June, is avoiding Liberal PM Tariceanu as he appears to be in the middle of a political competition with him. The newspaper reads that even though PM Tariceanu denies this hypothesis, he did not take part in the official ceremony presenting the candidate on Sunday.

Ludovic Orban announced that PM Tariceanu is away in the country but sources within the party said that he was actually shopping with his family in Bucharest. Moreover, it seems that Ludovic Orban is actually purposefully avoiding PM Tariceanu on grounds that the latter is not popular in Bucharest.

Moreover, studies show that even the Liberal party might be an impediment for Orban’s candidacy since Liberals are losing electoral capital. Thus, Orban strategically prefers to spend his public time with the more popular names within the party, like Defense minister Teodor Melescanu.

Elsewhere in the news, Romanians in Italy are again in the spotlight, as illegal immigrant Ion Rus raped and stabbed an Italian citizen, Evenimentul Zilei reads. Both politicians and police officers took matters into their hands.

On the one hand, serious raids were organized in the well known illegal camps set up by Romanians while politicians include the issue onto their political agenda as the last vote for local elections is to be cast.

Ioan Rus was accused to attempted murder and rape but he denied the charges, arguing in front of the judge that he did not remember doing anything to that woman, the Italian Il Tempo reads, quoted by the Romanian newspaper.

Romanians in Italy declared that all they wish is for the law to be applied, and they hope a distinction will be made between illegal immigrants committing murders and those who are hard working and serious in their demeanors there.

It seems that Ion Rus left for Italy together with his wife, Delia Adriana who says that they came to earn some money in order to offer their daughter, Anca Alexandra a decent living. Delia Adriana declared that she left Italy last week and she found about her husband’s deeds from her sister.

Last but not least, Cotidianul reads that famous Romanian journalist and literary critic Monica Lovinescu passed away in Paris on Sunday to Monday night. Monica Lovinescu, 85, daughter of Eugen Lovinescu, Romania’s renowned literature critic, was one of the strongest Romanian voices to write in exile about Romania’s culture under the communist regime.