Ion Iliescu states that, looking back, he regrets some episodes of the first years after the revolution, but believes that “what happened was inevitable and what did not happen was impossible.” The former president also says in his first interview in many years that Romania is “still a post-Decembrism, post-communist country” and that “the brand of the country that gives an identity profile is different from the Romania that came out of communism.” needed

• Ion Iliescu, 94 years old, first interview in a long time: “I know the Internet is full of memes with me, that hope dies next to last”

Former president Ion Iliescu, who turned 94 on Sunday and has not appeared in public since March 2017, when he turned to the Prosecutor General’s Office, in the Revolutionary Dossier, made the claims in an interview with his adviser Ionuc Vulpescu. , former Minister of Culture PSD and current deputy.

“Populism has gone viral in modern Romania”

Asked what he believed to be the big risk for the country today, Ion Iliescu said that “populism has gone viral in today’s Romania.”

• “He gave birth to a great moral pandemic in our society, to which society has not developed antibodies.
• Emptiness was interpreted as cynicism, circus as playful spirit, demagoguery as providential messianism.
• For these reasons, even political parties began to compete for populism, and the electorate began to look at who is willing to give more, rather than who can do more.
• Some confuse things and equate populism as a set of government measures to support vulnerable social groups, traditionally part of the discourse and actions of the left, and populism as the art of political yarns that seduce the electorate and lead to the end of the term without delivering anything that they promised .
• Over time, the electorate became like this, and therefore a dangerous phenomenon for representative and representative democracies appeared on an alarming scale: absenteeism.
• Civil society’s neglect of the political scene fuels class tensions because there seems to be no one to bridge these gaps, and then people choose to live today for tomorrow and take justice into their own hands. In this regard, these mistakes have created a fertile ground for radicalism and polarization, for xenophobes, eccentric nationalisms, anti-systemic discourses,” said Ion Iliescu in his first interview after many years.

He also said that “the fact that the system is guilty for some politicians has become a veil of refuge: a heavy inheritance weighs on all”: “What have they inherited? Free Romania. Forms of freedom that many did not fight for, but that everyone received. The fact that populism has grown in recent years is not surprising: it is a consequence of the lack of political will to build something.”

Ion Iliescu also argued that “Romania lacks an identity profile that would help it overcome fierce populism” and that “it is still a country of post-decembrism, post-communism”: “Some people don’t like post-decembrism, they must become allergic to it. OK: then let’s create a country brand that gives an identity profile, apart from Romania, which came out of communism more than 30 years ago.’

“Political opponents are respected less. They feudalized the spheres of intervention”

When asked about what Romania looks like today, Ion Iliescu said he left “a modern, free Romania and an open society”, referring to the efforts made to integrate into the EU and NATO:

• “There is something about the way Romania is today that suggests that it has fallen into some sort of stagnation. Simply put, her political modernization initiatives have stalled because what would be extremely difficult, but not impossible, at the party table today is a Snagov consensus, i.e. cooperation between political rivals, beyond their temporary vanity, for the long-term good of Romania . (…)
• I think it is morally important that political opponents are less respected these days. They feudalized the fields of intervention, they underestimated the ability to dialogue, they lost professionals. I see many artisans, not political masters. And this means the political vulnerability of our society. If Romania had successes and failures, political successes and miserable failures, it is not a matter of an individual, but of society.”

“A healthy democracy requires forgiveness, not forgetting, and truth, not mystification” / I regret certain situations

Ion Iliescu was asked by Ionuc Vulpescu what he considers to be the biggest achievement during his mandate, but also the biggest failure, he said he prefers “history to reveal that balance”:

• “History, not history textbooks, are written according to the likes and dislikes of their authors.
• The greatest achievement of my mandates is related to the modernization of Romania in these three steps: an appropriate Constitution for a country that can be integrated and integrated into the EU and NATO. (…)
• When people pass from a regime where they do not matter and do not exist to a perfect form of democracy, the first temptation is to be every man for himself. I wanted Romania to come to terms with itself.
• That is why I tried to make relations with King Michael natural by inviting national reconciliation, I paid tribute to the enormous role that Free Europe played in Communism, and I established the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, headed by Elie Wiesel, to prepare the final report.
• No one can heal a trauma until they acknowledge it. And Romania had to recognize them, describe them and learn to overcome them.
• This moral transition was also important for me, not only economic. Because a healthy democracy requires forgiveness, not forgetting, and truth, not mystification. Looking back, I regret certain moments, episodes, situations, events of the first years after the revolution, but as someone said, what happened was inevitable, what did not happen was impossible.”

In an interview published on his 94th birthday, Ion Iliescu also talks a lot about his start in communist politics and his relationship with Nicolae Ceausescu.

Iliescu has not appeared in public since March 2017, when he went to the Prosecutor General’s Office, which prosecutors cited in the Revolution case, which brought him to trial for crimes against humanity. In the meantime, the case was transferred between the Military Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court, which on 24 February 2023 decided to refer the case to the Bucharest Court of Appeal on the grounds that it would be within its competence, as Ion Iliescu was not the President of Romania at the time.