Desperate dictator goes shopping. Again

Increasingly desperate to prove that he is a ‘man of the people,’ Romanian president Traian Basescu yesterday went shopping at Carrefour, in a carefully planned and stage-managed attempt to boost his flailing poll ratings, badly affected by the election – which his party arranged – of his daughter Elena to the European Parliament. Perfectly timed to guarantee maximum coverage on all the evening news bulletins, Basescu was seen doing his shopping without any visible security presence, queuing patiently and cheerily shaking hands and posing for photos with other shoppers. We can only assume the televison news cameras were there by complete coincidence, covering another story.

This is the second time Basescu has pulled such a stunt in the past fortnight, and is a further sign that his advisors are keen to see him out amongst ordinary people. If they can’t think of anything better (and more original, and more convincing) then sending him shopping, then they need sacking.

Apropos – in a story not worthy of telling were it not such a stark contrast – about six weeks ago we saw Basescu’s old nemesis Calin Popescu Tariceanu at Budapest airport. The epitome of good manners  he was late checking in and had been assigned a seat some distance from his wife. Even though there were no cameras around, he politely sat down in his assigned seat (in goat class: anyone flying business class from Budapest is irresponsibly wasting their or their company’s money)  and only when the chap sitting next to him turned up did he ask if he wouldn’t mind changing seats with his wife.

A good upbringing. There is no replacement for it.

It would be nice to know how Basescu is off camera, but as he insists on living every minute of his life in front of it, it’s impossible to tell.