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The former president of Romania, Ion Iliescu, said on Sunday, in the podcast of former minister of Culture Ionit Vulpescu that he regrets, looking back, some episodes from the first years after the 1989 Revolution, but considers that "what happened was inevitable, what did not happen was impossible".
"No one can heal from traumas until they recognize them. And Romania had to recognize them, describe them and educate itself to overcome them. This moral transition was also important for me, not just the economic one. Because a healthy democracy requires forgiveness not forgetting and truth not mystification. In retrospect, I regret certain moments, episodes, situations, events from the first years after the Revolution, but, as someone said, what happened was inevitable, what didn't happen was impossible," Ion Iliescu said on the occasion of his 94th anniversary.
He deems that the greatest achievement of his presidential terms was related to the modernization of Romania in three steps: "a Constitution tailored for a country that can be integrated and integrated into the EU and NATO".
"The challenge, in the first stages of post-December Romania, was to overcome the suppression of oppression in forms of social violence and economic non-cooperation. When people move from a regime in which they do not matter and do not exist to a form of perfectable democracy, the first temptation is that everyone should be for themselves. I wanted Romania to be reconciled with itself. That's why I tried to make the relationship with King Mihai a natural one, inviting national reconciliation, I paid tribute to the enormous role that Europa Libera had it under communism, and we established the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, headed by Elie Wiesel, for the preparation of a final report," the former president added.
