What the newspapers say: May 16, 2008

One newspaper on Friday reads about the confusing campaign lead by Social Democrats for the June 2008 elections. Still in the Social Democratic camp, Bucharest District 5 mayor Marian Vanghelie plans to invest some 1,400,000 euro only for furniture for a shop destined for the poor. Last but not least, Romania’s national airline company, TAROM, secures its flights against terrorists with its former maintenance personnel.

Cotidianul reads about the Social Democratic (PSD) campaign which seems to lack a single voice and, for that matter, even volunteers to support the campaign. Former PSD PM Adrian Nastase declared that he considers his party’s campaign too calm and non-combative. He argued that Diaconescu, the party’s candidate for Bucharest Mayor should be more aggressive.

However, this is not the strategy put forward by the party’s political strategist Alin Teodorescu who declared that this is precisely the scope of the campaign: to have a campaign centered on programs rather than on political fights.

Nonetheless, Cristian Diaconescu is barely meeting his party’s supporters and concludes that within PSD there’s a communication problem which leads to coordination failures and push for a more active campaign.

And things don’t stop here: it seems that some of the leaders within the party started supporting former PSD member Sorin Oprescu who now runs as an independent against Diaconescu. At his turn, Diaconescu declared for the newspaper that his party leaders should decide who to officially endorse as candidate.

Still in the same political camp, District 5 mayor Marian Vanghelie plans to invest 1,400,000 euro in furniture for a shop destined to offer cheaper food products for the poor, Gandul reads. When contacted by the newspaper, Vanghelie declared that the total construction costs of the building will cost some 2,000,000 euro, a little more than the allocated sum for furniture.

Vanghelie tried to explain his decision declaring that a higher sum was allocated but that does not mean it will be actually used. He says he took this decision to avoid re-budgeting. Moreover, Vanghelie tried to legitimize the high sum of money and added that the building was also destined to cover a part of the local market.

Romania libera reads about Romania’s national airline company Tarom which offers protection against terrorists with its former maintenance personnel. Most agents at Tarom Security are not selected nor trained for the job. Tarom director Gheorghe Barla admits this situation and says that the service will be professionalized as soon as possible.

The situation is even worse since Tarom recently announced it will join the Sky Team alliance which unites other 11 international companies. Gheorghe Barla said that when the service was initially reintroduced in the early 1990s, there were no terrorist threats and thus the security personnel just needed to secure luggage.

However, after 9/11, the job of the security officer required trained expertise and professionalism in order to actually be able to counter any possible terrorist attacks.