Romania’s President Traian Basescu, who faces impeachment by parliament, is a former sea captain who portrays himself as a fighter for reforms but his opponents call him a tyrant.
Elected in 2004 for the first time, he steered his country into the European Union five years ago, an historic step for this former Communist dictatorship.
Re-elected for another five-year term in 2009 in a surprise run-off victory, he pledged to “modernize Romanian society”.
He acknowledged then that his planned reforms of the state would run into stiff opposition.
“It is much easier to steer a ship because at least then everything works according to the rules,” he told AFP.
The centre-right Basescu himself is no socialite, or even a conventional political operator: he seems more at ease among crowds of people than among fellow heads of state.
He was born on November 4, 1951 in Basarab, close to the Black Sea.
For years, as the representative of the Romanian merchant fleet in Antwerp, Belgium, he was a member of the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.
But he scored points with voters when he became the first Romanian president to officially condemn the regime’s crimes in a famous speech in December 2006, despite being heckled by some deputies.
After the fall of the dictatorship in 1989, Basescu became transport minister and then mayor of Bucharest, winning two terms before being elected president in 2004.
Basescu says that as a president he has pushed the justice reforms demanded by the European Union, including the independence of the judiciary. Foreign diplomats usually praise his commitment to the fight against corruption.
For his second term, he pledged to continue to reform the state, even at the expense of the political class, which he never fails to criticise for its desire to hang on to its privileges.
But critics have accused Basescu of doing as he pleases and of polarising society at a time when Romania, a democracy for just over two decades, needs stability.
Some of the intellectuals who supported him in 2004 have backed out, disappointed by the feuds he sparked.
“He did not act as a mediator between the different institutions”, lawmakers of the centre-left majority told parliament on Thursday, accusing him of improperly assuming powers the president should not hold.
The Liberal Crin Antonescu, who is expected to succeed him if the impeachment — which has to be confirmed in a referendum — goes through, called him a “tyrant”.
Since 2007, when he won a first impeachment referendum, his popularity has plummeted, notably because of austerity measures he enforced in 2010 in agreement with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
“Basescu is somebody who lets his personality guide him,” said Daniel Barbu, a political science professor.
Last winter, he pushed one of the most respected Romanians of the post-Communist era, Raed Arafat, the founder of the emergency service, to resign because he did not agree with him on one issue of a vast health reform.
The move triggered thousands of people to take to the streets and Basescu was forced to admit a “blunder”. Arafat was taken back into the governement.
He also acknowledged having lost support when his younger daughter Elena was elected to the European parliament in June 2009, triggering rumours that she had received large support from her father’s former party.
The media dubbed her the “Paris Hilton of the Carpathians”, after the US socialite best known for her privileged, hedonistic lifestyle.
