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Ion Iliescu
President of Romania
In office December 20, 2000 – December 20, 2004
Preceded by	Emil Constantinescu
Succeeded by	Traian Băsescu
In office December 26, 1989 – November 29, 1996
Preceded by	Nicolae Ceauşescu
Succeeded by	Emil Constantinescu
Personal details
Born	(1930-03-03) March 3, 1930 (age 94) Olteniţa, Călăraşi, Romania
Political party	none during the presidency Social Democrat Party
Spouse	Elena (Nina) Şerbănescu
Profession	Hydroelectric Engineer

Ion Iliescu (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon iliˈesku]; born March 3, 1930) served as President of Romania from 1990 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), whose honorary president he remains.

He joined the Communist Party in 1953 and became a member of its Central Committee in 1965, however beginning with 1971 he was gradually marginalized by Nicolae Ceauşescu. He had a leading role in the Revolution of 1989, being elected as Romania's first post-communist president in 1990. After a new Constitution was approved by popular referendum, he served a further two terms as president, 1992 to 1996, and 2000 to 2004, separated by the presidency of Emil Constantinescu.

Iliescu is widely recognized as a predominant figure in the first fifteen years of post-1989 Romanian Revolution politics. During his terms Romanian politics stabilized, and Romania joined NATO.

Family background

Iliescu's father, Alexandru Iliescu, was a railroad worker with Communist views during the period in which the Romanian Communist Party was banned by the authorities. In 1931, he went to the Soviet Union to take part in the Communist Party Congress of Gorikovo, near Moscow. He remained in the USSR for the next four years and was arrested upon his return. He was imprisoned from June 1940 to August 1944 and died in August 1945. During his time in the Soviet Union, Alexandru Iliescu divorced and married Mariţa, a chambermaid.

Early life

Born in Olteniţa, Iliescu studied fluid mechanics at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute and then as a foreign student at the Energy Institute of the Moscow University. During his stay in Moscow, he was the secretary of the "Association of Romanian Students" it is alleged that he knew Mikhail Gorbachev, although Iliescu always denied this. President Nicolae Ceauşescu, however, probably believed a connection between the two existed, since during Gorbachev's visit to Romania in July 1989, Iliescu was sent outside of Bucharest to prevent any contact.

Iliescu married Nina Şerbănescu in 1951; they have no children, not by choice but because they couldn't, as Nina had three miscarriages.

He joined the Union of Communist Youth in 1944 and the Communist Party in 1953 and made a career in the Communist nomenklatura, becoming a secretary of the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth in 1956 and a member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965. At one point, he served as the head of the Central Committee's Department of Propaganda. Iliescu later served as Minister for Youth-related Issues between 1967 and 1971.

However, in 1971, Ceauşescu felt threatened by Iliescu - as he was seen as Ceauşescu's heir apparent - and he was marginalized by and removed from all major political offices, being assigned vice-president of the Timiş County Council (1971–1974), and later president of the Iaşi Council (1974–1979). In 1984, he was excluded from the Central Committee, and until 1989 he was in charge of Editura Tehnică publishing house.

1989 Revolution

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The 1989 Romanian Revolution began as a popular revolt in Timişoara, but after Ceauşescu was overthrown on 22 December (he was executed on Christmas Day), Iliescu and a few other second-rank communists seized power and created an organization named National Salvation Front (FSN: Frontul Salvării Naţionale). Iliescu was quickly acknowledged as the leader of the organization and therefore of the provisional authority.

Iliescu proposed multi-party elections and an "original democracy". This is widely held to have meant the adoption of Perestroika-style reforms rather than the complete removal of existing institutions; it can be linked to the warm reception the new regime was given by Mikhail Gorbachev and the rest of the Soviet leadership, and the fact that the first post-revolutionary international agreement signed by Romania was with that country.

Iliescu did not renounce the communist ideology and the program he initially presented during the revolution included restructuring the agriculture and the reorganization of trade, but not a switch to capitalism. These views were held by other members of the FSN, such as Silviu Brucan, who claimed in early 1990 that the revolution was against Ceauşescu, not against communism. Iliescu later evoked the possibility of trying a "Swedish model" of socialism.

Some political commentators allege that the Romanian Revolution was in fact not aimed at a full regime change following the catastrophic decades of communist ruling but merely as a change of political leadership in the context of a revised, perestroika-like socialism / communism. They claim Iliescu had in fact organized what they describe to be a coup d'état with the help of high ranking Army Officials and has ultimately managed to manipulate the public anger towards the oppressive Ceausescu regime in his own favour to install himself as a new leader.

After the 1989 Revolution

Presidential styles of Ion Iliescu
Reference style	Preşedintele (President)
Spoken style	Preşedintele (President)
Alternative style	Domnia Sa/Excelenţa Sa (His Excellency)

The National Salvation Front decided to run in the free legislative elections of 20 May 1990, winning over 70% of the votes.

Iliescu and his supporters split from the Front and created the NSDF (National Salvation Democratic Front), which later evolved into the Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR), then the Social Democratic Party (PSD) (see Social Democratic Party of Romania). Progressively, the Front lost its character as a national government or generic coalition, and became vulnerable to criticism for using its appeal as the first institution involved in power sharing, while engaging itself in political battles with forces that could not enjoy this status, nor the credibility.

Under the pressure of the events that led to the Mineriads, his political stance has veered with time: from a proponent of the Perestroika, Iliescu adopted a social democratic position, aligning himself with the Western European political spectrum. The main debate around the subject of his commitment to such ideals is linked to the special conditions in Romania, and especially to the strong nationalist and autarkic attitude visible within the Ceauşescu regime. Critics have pointed out that, unlike most communist-to-social democrat changes in the Eastern bloc, Romania's tended to retain various cornerstones .

The new Constitution was adopted in 1991, and in 1992 he won a second term when he received 61% of the vote. According to Romanian political analysts such as Daniel Barbu or Dan Pavel, his election was based almost exclusively on the rural population and disoriented lower class industrial workers, controlled through manipulation from the state-controlled media (Televiziunea Română, the state television, was the only wide-scale TV channel until 1993). He ran for a third time in 1996 but, stripped of media monopoly, that of virtually all urban citizens and even of some traditional votes, he lost to Emil Constantinescu. Over 1,000,000 votes were cancelled, leading to accusations of widespread fraud.

In the 2000 presidential election Iliescu ran again and won in the run-off against the ultra-nationalist Corneliu Vadim Tudor. He began his third term on December 20 of that year, ending on 20 December 2004. The center-right was severely defeated during the 2000 elections due largely to public dissatisfaction with the harsh economic reforms of the previous four years as well as the political instability and infighting of the multiparty coalition. Tudor's extreme views also ensured that most urban voters either abstained or chose Iliescu.

In the PSD elections of 21 April 2005, Iliescu lost the Party presidency to Mircea Geoană, but was elected as honorary president of the party in 2006, a position without official executive authority in the party.

Ion Iliescu is particular mentioned in the report of the investigator of the Council of Europe to illegal activities of the U.S. secret service CIA in Europe, Dick Marty, as one of the persons, who authorized or at least knew about and have to stand accountable for torture prisons on the military base Mihail Kogălniceanu from 2003 to 2005.

Controversies

Mineriads

Allegations against Iliescu

He, along with other figures in the leading FSN, was allegedly responsible for calling the Jiu Valley miners to Bucharest on 28 January and June 14, 1990 to end the protests of the citizens (mainly students) gathered in University Square, Bucharest, protests aimed against the ex-communist leaders of Romania. The pejorative term used to describe this demonstration was the Golaniad (from the Romanian golan, rascal). The miners descended on the capital, armed with wooden clubs and bats and attacked the protesters. They trashed the headquarters of opposition parties, claiming that they were havens of decadence and immorality - drugs, firearms and munitions, "an automatic typewriter", and fake currency.

Alleged KGB connections

Some alleged he had connections to the KGB, the allegations continued during 2003-2008, when Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who had been granted access to Soviet archives, declared that Iliescu and most of the Salvation Front members were KGB agents, that Iliescu had been in close connection with Mikhail Gorbachev ever since they had allegedly met during Iliescu's stay in Moscow, and that the Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a plot organized by the KGB - to regain control of the country's policies (gradually lost under Ceauşescu's rule). The only hard evidence published was a discussion between Gorbachev and Bulgaria's Aleksandar Lilov from May 23, 1990 (after Iliescu's victory in the May 20 elections) in which Gorbachev says that Iliescu holds a "calculated position", and that despite sharing common views with Iliescu, Gorbachev wanted to avoid sharing this impression with the public.

Pardons

In December 2001, Iliescu pardoned three inmates convicted for bribery, including George Tănase, former Financial Guard head commissioner for Ialomiţa. Iliescu had to revoke Tănase's pardon a few days later due to the media outcry, claiming that "a legal adviser was superficial in analyzing the case". Later, the humanitarian reasons invoked in the pardon were contradicted by another medical expert opinion. Another controversial pardon was that of Dan Tartagă—a businessman from Braşov that, while drunk, had run over and killed two people on a pedestrian crossing. He was sentenced to three years and a half but was pardoned after only a couple of months. Tartagă was later sentenced to a two-year sentence for fraud.

Most controversial of all, on 15 December 2004, a few days before the end of his last term, Iliescu pardoned 47 convicts, including Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners during the early 1990s, who had been sentenced in 1999 to 18 years in prison in conjunction with the 1991 Mineriad. This has attracted harsh criticism from all Romanian media. Many of the pardoned had been convicted for corruption or other economic crimes, while one had been imprisoned for his involvement in the attempts at suppressing the 1989 Revolution.

Decorating Vadim Tudor

In the last days of his President mandate, he awarded the National Order Steaua României (rank of ceremonial knighthood) to the ultra-nationalist controversial politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a gesture which drew criticism in the press and prompted Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, fifteen Radio Free Europe journalists, Timişoara mayor Gheorghe Ciuhandu, song writer Alexandru Andrieş, and historian Randolph Braham to return their Romanian honours in protest. The leader of Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, Béla Markó, did not show up to claim the award he received on the same occasion. The current president, Traian Băsescu, revoked the award granted to Tudor on May 24, 2007, but a lawsuit is ongoing even after Băsescu's decree was declared constitutional.

Awards

Iliescu was awarded with Azerbaijani Istiglal Order for his contributions to development of Azerbaijan-Romania relations and strategic cooperation between the states by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on October 6, 2004.

• Knight Grand Cross with Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic - October 15, 2003
• Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (Estonia)
• Knight Grand Cross of the Grand Order of King Tomislav ("For outstanding contribution to the promotion of friendship and development co-operation between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Romania." - May 12, 2003)
• Order of the White Eagle (Poland, 2003)

See also

• Politics of Romania

Notes

1. Rulers.org
2. ^ New York Times, "Upheaval in the East: A Rising Star; A Man Who Could Become Rumania's Leader", 23 December 1989, p. 15
3. România Liberă. "Gura lumii despre România", May 8, 1990, quoting Paris Match
4. "De ce nu a avut Ion Iliescu urmasi", Ziua, 5 September 2008
5. Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (7 June 2007). "Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report" (PDF). Parliamentary Assembly. Council of Europe. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
6. http://www.avmr.ro/media/Mineriada_Iliescu_1-4.avi
7. Russian dissident who copied the Gorbachev Foundation's archive: Mitterrand and Gorbachev wanted the European Socialist Union, Thatcher opposed Germany's reunification
8. Template:Ro icon Dovada Bukovski
9. Template:Ro icon Presedintele Ion Iliescu a acordat gratieri
10. Romania's president to cancel pardon, pledges to fight corruption
11. Template:Ro iconColaboratorii presedintelui. Opinii - de Octavian PALER
12. Template:Ro icon Gratierea lui Iliescu miroase suspect de la o posta
13. Template:Ro icon Ambasada SUA: Nu a inceput anchetarea puscasului marin] (in the background section)
14. Template:Ro icon Afacere imobiliara cu iz de TBC la Brasov (in the background section)
15. ^ Template:Ro icon Gratiatii lui Iliescu-Nastase: corupti, tilhari, violatori, tepari
16. Template:Ro icon Curtea Constituţională a respins excepţia invocată de Vadim Tudor in procesul privind Ordinul "Steaua Romaniei"
17. "İon İliyeskonun "İstiqlal" ordeni ilə təltif edilməsi haqqında AZƏRBAYCAN RESPUBLİKASI PREZİDENTİNİN FƏRMANI". Retrieved 2011-01-20. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

Further reading

• Vladimir Alexe — Ion Iliescu - biografia secretă: "Candidatul manciurian" (Ion Iliescu - The Secret Biography: "The Manchurian Candidate"); 2000; ISBN 973-581-036-0
• The supplement dedicated to Iliescu (in Romanian), published by Academia Caţavencu, 22 December 2004

External links

• Template:Ro icon Ion Iliescu official biography
• Template:Ro icon Ion Iliescu's blog

Template:Persondata

• Articles needing cleanup from December 2008
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• Misplaced Pages pages needing cleanup from December 2008
• 1930 births
• Living people
• People of the Romanian Revolution of 1989
• Presidents of Romania
• Romanian atheists
• Romanian communists
• Romanian politicians
• Members of the Great National Assembly
• Members of the Senate of Romania
• People from Olteniţa
• Moscow State University alumni
• University Politehnica of Bucharest alumni
• Knights of the Elephant
• Presidents of the Social Democratic Party (Romania)
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• Recipients of the Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana
• Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland)
• Recipients of the Istiglal Order
• Knights Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
• Grand Order of King Tomislav recipients