Complete silence was the reaction of the most important leaders of the state, almost 24 hours after PressOne published a journalistic investigation showing that the Minister of Justice, Radu Marinescu, had plagiarized more than half of his doctoral thesis.
On Monday morning, after PressOne published the investigation of Emilia Şercan, he was free to opinions, conspiracies, doubts, questions, attacks.
I learned that PNL does not have a clear position. It was also difficult for the liberals to position themselves categorically against Radu Marinescu: in 2022, the then president of the party, Nicolae Ciucă, was also accused of plagiarism. Following the press investigation, a whole kompromat mechanism was set in motion against the journalist Emilia Șercan.
PSD attacked the author of the investigation
PSD, the party to which Radu Marinescu is a member, reacted harshly, impermissibly from my point of view, to the address of a journalist. But I am subjective, because I am, in turn, a journalist. In the press release of the social democrats, they attack the author of the investigation and call her an impostor. I attribute everything to the already all-too-familiar idea of the type: “There are big interests in the middle”.
The AUR leaders have not made up their minds. They say that Radu Marinescu should resign, but not because he is accused of plagiarism, but for other reasons. If he plagiarized or cannot determine only the Ethics Commission of the University of Craiova, he considers the main opposition party.
I learned something from USR, but initially it was only the opinion of deputy Alexandru Dimitriu, who said in the dialogue with HotNews, from the very beginning, that there is still no unified opinion of the party. Next, explained the deputy. Then, in the evening, the Minister of Defense from USR, Radu Miruță, said on Antena 3 CNN that if it is plagiarized “it is complicated”.
UDMR leader Kelemen Hunor also had a reaction: “Theft is theft. On the other hand, it's the man who says he didn't plagiarize. I'm not the one who has to give the verdict,” he told G4Media. He said that if it turns out that journalist Emilia Șercan is right, then Minister Marinescu “has a problem not necessarily political, more in the academic area”.
We may or may not agree with anything the above or others have said on this topic. The important thing is that there were reactions, positioning. Further, depending on these, the public decides who they believe and possibly who they vote for or not in the next election.
What do I convey to the electorate?
What we don't know at the end of this day is what three important leaders of the country think: President Nicușor Dan, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan and USR President Dominic Fritz.
We do not know the reasons why the three chose to remain silent on such an important subject. But we can intuit. Probably Bolojan wants us to believe that he was so busy in the government that he had no time for such “nonsense”. President Dan the same, this time from Cotroceni, and Fritz on the same note, but in Timisoara.
Their silence is resounding, however, even to their electorate. Those people who voted for them, some for fear of the “greater evil”.
Did Bolojan, Dan and Fritz think about what they were conveying through their silence to the people who put their hope in them? Not. They thought about how to do it in such a way as to pass the tide and not upset the PSD partners.
Today, Nicușor Dan, Ilie Bolojan and Dominic Fritz had a choice between upsetting their coalition partners and having a reaction, whatever it was. They preferred to remain silent. Or, as political leaders like to say, they preferred “stability”, whatever that means today.
