The answer given by Ion Iliescu to the question “Are you afraid of death, Mr. President?”, In the last interview before hospitalization

Former President Ion Iliescu states that “it is important for everyone to feel and know that life is worth living not only because you have given you, but because you have a debt to it – to personalize it, to make it your life, not life, simply.”

Iliescu was invited to Podcast Avangarda, the interview being conducted, a few weeks ago, by his collaborator and former counselor Ionuț Vulpescu, before the hospitalization of the former head of state.

In the interview, hosted by Ionuț Vulpescu's website, Ion Iliescu was asked: “Are you afraid of death, Mr. President?”.

“I was not afraid of life and maybe that is what death relationship is to be a decent one. (…) I lived life with many speeds, ages, vocations. No one decides for itself as long as I lived. These, ”said the former president.

“You are afraid of death when you live frustrated that you did not want what you wanted and you have no time to save something from what you thought of for yourself or others. But I did everything in my power for Romania and I have no bad opinion that I did not offer a Euroatlantic and democratic road. On the contrary. Round, “added Iliescu, quoted by Agerpres.

In the opinion of the former head of state, “the recipe is not to have a fabulous and happy life to pursue with the imagination, but a pragmatic life and as lucid and satisfying, to build with reason.”

What Ion Iliescu says:

• “I want to thank those who have accompanied me throughout life, with good and bad. Who stayed with me and when it was against them. To those who remained friends and when we did not hold the hand from Cotroceni, but from Athens street or from the intimacy of my house, where few passed our threshold.
• I am grateful to Nina, my long road partner. Our life together was not about us, except for this senectute; It was about others, about Romania, about the society we wanted to leave behind, lucid and rational.
• The collaborators and supporters of the well-known and unknown, I wish them all the good and I assure them that I have always felt close.
• It is important for everyone to feel and know that life is worth living not only because you have given you, but because you have a debt to it: to personalize it, to make it your life, not life, simply.
• I do not give advice where I am not asked, but I think it is important to live all our lives.
• The recipe is not to have a fabulous and happy life to pursue with the imagination, but a pragmatic life and as lucid and satisfying, to build with reason. Imagination has made a lot of unhappy people.
• Otherwise, the fear of death is equivalent to the fear of being human. It is part of our ontology. Let us not be afraid to be people.“

He also sent a message to all Romanians and urged him to vote “possible worlds, not fantasies”.

“Some of you were not born when I became the first president of a Democratic Country, called Romania. I am pleased that, although we do not know each other, I left you a world in which you can define yourself and in which you can choose yourself. ever know the pain from the channel, from the gulag and the camp, but you must remember a stake in preserving democracy. We depend on each other, even if we do not know our biographies, lives and traumas, we only know that we live together on a land that means something more than the place we all have to give birth.

“I hope that you will not let democracy be falsified; that 1989 will be, for you all, something more than a highlighted event of history textbooks, but which has made possible the disappearance of Ceausescu's dictatorship and the end of communism in Romania; that you will not consider who has destroyed more, the extreme or the extreme, That you will not be right or left because it is fashionable, but because you have what they mean and choose them with full consciousness and faith ”, continued Iliescu.

What kind of Romania Iliescu says he wants to “leave behind”

Ion Iliescu hopes that Romania's policy will be based “less on taste judgments and more on reason, that the judgments of faith will be done in the name of God, in churches, with full tolerance of people towards people, and political actions will be done in the public sphere, in the name of human dignity”.

“” I would be glad to know that I leave behind a Romania in which the instinct of amateurs to confiscate roles that they do not exist, in which everyone does what he knows and what can, a Romania in which freedom does not mean what I want, but what is necessary. Churches, with full tolerance of people towards people, and political actions will be done in the public sphere, in the name of human dignity, with full lucidity ”, mentioned, in the interview, the former head of state.

“I wish you a world without resentment, the maturity do not hate for your vote and options, the joy of being with as little sacrifices as possible, the gratitude that we are not only a country from the east, but a Euro-Atlantic society, as we deserve and deserve it.

The clinical evolution of Ion Iliescu “is for a slight improvement”, the representatives of the Emergency Clinical Hospital “Prof. Dr. Agrippa Ionescu” announced on Thursday. The information came 24 hours after the SRI hospital announced that the condition of the former president had aggravated and that Iliescu had undergone a surgical procedure.

The patient “is stable cardiac and the respiratory parameters have been balanced. It still needs oxygen administered with the help of medical devices,” officials said on Thursday.

Ion Iliescu remains hospitalized in the Intensive Care section, where he benefits from advanced medical care under the supervision of the multidisciplinary medical team, the medical bulletin published by the hospital said.

On Wednesday, the hospital officials announced that the health status of the former president was worsening.

“As a result of the progression of the basic disease, the general condition of the patient has worsened, with important respiratory difficulties,” the hospital representatives said.

Due to this aggravation, “the multidisciplinary medical team has established this morning the opportunity to perform a surgical procedure to ensure the permeability of the upper respiratory tract”.

On Monday, doctors announced that Iliescu, 95 years old, suffers from lung cancer.

The former head of state is admitted on June 9 to the Emergency Clinical Hospital “Prof. Dr. Agrippa Ionescu”.