Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
fused to submit, erecting barricades under the eyes of Western journalists in the adjacent
Hotel Inter-Continental. At 11pm the police began their assault, using a tank to smash
through the barricades, and by dawn the square had been cleared of debris and the corpses
of insurgents. Estimates vary, but at least 1033 were killed.
The following morning thousands more
demonstrators took to the streets, and a state of
emergency was announced. At noon Ceauşescu
reappeared on the balcony of the Central Com-
mittee building to try to speak again, only to be
forced to flee by helicopter from the roof of the
building. Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, were
arrested near Târgovişte and taken to a military base there. On 25 December, they were
condemned by an anonymous court and executed by a firing squad. Footage of the Ceau-
şescu family's luxury apartments broadcast on TV showed pure-gold food scales in the
kitchen and rows of diamond-studded shoes in Elena's bedroom.
While these events had all the earmarks of a people's revolution, many scholars have
advanced the notion that they were just as much the result of a coup d'état: the Commun-
ist Party, tired of having to bow down to Ceauşescu, had been planning an overthrow for
months. Communist bystanders quickly came to power following Ceauşescu's fall, calling
themselves the 'National Salvation Front'. Not until 2004 did Romania have a president
who was not a former high-ranking communist.
Following spats between Băsescu and Ponta, the
EU postponed Romania's bid to join the European
Union's coveted visa-free zone, scheduled for
September 2012.
Attempts at Democracy
The National Salvation Front (FSN) took immediate control of the country. In May 1990
it won the country's first democratic elections since 1946, placing Ion Iliescu, a Commun-
ist Party member since the age of 14, at the helm as president. Protests ensued, but Iliescu
sent in 20,000 coal miners to violently quash them. Iliescu was nonetheless re-elected in
1992 as the head of a coalition government under the banner of the Party of Social Demo-
cracy. New name, same policies. Market reforms remained nowhere in sight. In 1993 sub-
sidies on food, transportation and energy were scrapped, prompting prices to fly sky-high
and employment to plummet to an all-time low.
Iliescu was finally ousted in the 1996 presidential elections
by an impoverished populace, who ushered in Emil Con-
stantinescu, leader of the right-of-centre election alliance
Democratic Convention of Romania (CDR), as president. Con-
stantinescu's reform-minded government made entry into NATO and the European Union
(EU) its stated priorities, together with fast-paced structural economic reform, the fight
