What the newspapers say: July 5, 2006

The son of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Valentin, claims compensations for the use of his father’s image in a mobile telephony ad, while a recent case of collaboration with Ceausescu’s political police is reopened.

President Basescu may receive yet another invitation to the White House after his push not to withdraw Romanian troops from the White House, when the government still faces trouble because of PM’s request to bring the troops back. All in Romanian newspapers today.

Valentin Ceausescu, the son of late Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, has learned the lessons of capitalism well, Evenimentul Zilei suggests. The newspaper reports he is calling for compensations from Telemobil over the use of his father’s image in a piece of advertising for the company’s mobile telephony services Zapp.

The case raises a series of legal issues related to who owns the content of documentary recordings depicting the Communist dictator, but also a weird question for Romania these days: “how much does the Ceausescu brand cost?” – the headline of the Evenimentul Zilei report.

The ad shows a young man from the era of mobile telephony attending a Romania Communist Party congress. His mobile is ringing while Ceausescu delivers a speech and the man has to leave the room.

The spot concludes with the famous “Hello! Hello!” line that Ceausescu used in an effort to calm down the spirits of the crowd when a Communist meeting in Bucharest sparked the revolt of the Romanian capital in the December 1989 revolution.

The news comes as Ceausescu’s deeds have come back to limelight for several weeks as the leader of the Conservative Party – PC, a junior member of the governing coalition, was charged with collaborating with the ex-dictator’s secret police, the Securitate.

PC leader Dan Voiculescu’s attorney, Sergiu Andon, challenged the verdict in this regard applied by the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives – CNSAS.

The idea of the appeal is that Dan Voiculescu did not informed the Securitate about various persons, as CNSAS claims, but only provided explanations requested by the Securitate from any state employee, according to Jurnalul National, a newspaper owned by Voiculescu’s family.

Evenimentul Zilei uses the opportunity to recall that Dan Voiculescu has promised to publish the notes he had signed for Securitate under the codename Felix, as he said it would prove his innocence – but he failed to do so so far.

Elsewhere in the newspapers, the effects of a recent scandal involving a Liberal Party request – carried by Defense minister Teodor Atanasiu and PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu – to withdraw Romania’s troops from Iraq still draw significant interest.

Minister Atanasiu was grilled over the case in the Parliament on Tuesday, trying to explain what all the fuss was about with a telegram he sent to military attaches in Western embassies to Bucharest recently.

What Cotidianul understands from this event is that PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu, Atanasiu’s boss, has threatened the secret of state codes when he quoted parts of that telegram – related to the troops withdrawal from Iraq – for the media earlier this week.

Gandul, meanwhile, quotes Washington sources who say Romanian President Traian Basescu would be received at the White House again later this month after he pressed against the withdrawal of Romanian troops in Iraq.

The sources say Basescu would meet President George Bush himself, as well as top officials from the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Congress.

And Cotidianul notes how President Basescu and PM Tariceanu tried to dodge each other as far as much as they could at the 4th of July reception thrown by the US Embassy to Bucharest yesterday. The only moment that saw the two together was Ambassador Nicholas Taubman’s speech for the occasion.