A week or so late, here is Bucharest Life’s Review of the Year that was 2009.

January

A new government, led by Traian Basescu and Little Emil Boc, installed following parliamentary elections at the end of 2008, introduces, amongst other moves of sheer political genius, a compulsory profit tax for small companies (even those that lose money) which leads to the immediate bankruptcy of thousands of small businesses. By the end of June more than 81,000 companies had closed their doors forever.

February

Romania’s blonda mondena of a Tourism Minister, Elena Udrea, launches a new international marketing campaign designed to persuade foreigners to travel to Romania on holiday.

Complete with a cheesy slogan (Land of Choice) and an even cheesier anthem, the campaign ran throughout much of the summer at great cost on Eurosport and CNN.

March

Bucharest City Council tried to go green with a half-hearted attempt to get the city’s inhabitants to begin selectively disposing of their rubbish. We suggested that a campaign to first encourage the good people of Bucharest to start using one bin might be more likely to succeed.

The council also – to the horror of many – approved the construction of the Dambovita Centre. We have our doubts as to whether the project will ever be finalised.

Skint, the Romanian government was forced to put its cap in its hand and head off to the International Monetary Fund to ask for a few pennies to see it through until pay day. The IMF agreed to a loan, though at great social cost: it demanded massive redundancies in the public sector, and a freeze in pensions and salaries. It was the first of many U-turns.

April

In a visit to a Hungarian-dominated area of Romania (part of the Szekelyfold, where Hungarians are in the majority), president Traian Basescu said that the Szekelyfold would never enjoy any kind of autonomy.

Later in the year the main Hungarian political party, the UDMR, would join Basescu in forming a government.

Romania got some international press, including an awful ‘isn’t poverty wonderful‘ piece that appeared in the Austrialian daily WA Today, and two woefully inaccurate stories about Bucharest in the Independent.

May

The city partied all month to celebrate Bucharest In Your Pocket’s 10th birthday.

June

Bucharest Life got its five minutes in the spotlight when an editorial published in Bucharest In Your Pocket (in which we had lovingly nicknamed Tourism Minister Elena Udrea as Romania’s Pitzipoanca-in-chief), was discussed on a political chatshow on Realitatea TV by a hysterical Andreea Cretulescu and her guests.

Cretulescu’s show was ditched by Realitatea later in the year (the two events were not connected).

We also in June officially backed the wrong horse in the Romanian presidential election.

July

Romanian footballer Adrian Mutu is ordered by sport’s highest international court, TAS, to pay €16 million to former club Chelsea for breaching his contract by taking cocaine in 2005.

Bucharest Life took a holiday, but not before finding a real gem of a Bucharest travel guide (and accompanying map of the city before the bulldozers) in the attic.

Metrorex renamed a Bucharest metro station that does not actually exist.

August

The Basescu/Boc government decides that in order to save money, all civil servants (including teachers and medical sector workers) would have to take ten days compulsory unpaid leave before the year’s end.

Madonna came to Bucharest.

September

RATB, the company that operates Bucharest’s surface-level public transport services (trams, buses and trolleybuses) celebrated its 100th anniversary with a parade of vintage trams. Though a success, the event could have been even better had RATB told anyone about it in advance.

October

After a creditable 0-0 draw in Paris against France, Romania’s football team lost a crucial qualifying match against Serbia, in Belgrade, 5-0, thereby missing out on qualification for next year’s World Cup in South Africa. Coach Razvan Lucescu pledged to build a new team, without rapidly fading star Adrian Mutu.

November

The Bucharest metro celebrated its 30th anniversary just a few days after its workforce – amongst the highest paid non-skilled workers in the country – had staged a three day strike for higher pay that caused chaos and brought much of the city centre to a standstill.

December

In the presidential election Traian Basescu narrowly defeated challenger Mircea Geoana in a run-off. So narrow, in fact, was the margin of victory, that Geoana had initially declared himself the winner, after three exit polls had shown him to hold a two point lead over Basescu.

Indeed, Basescu won fewer votes in Romania than Geoana. The difference was made by the Romanian diaspora, which voted in huge numbers for Basescu. More than 100,000 people voted for the president abroad (and less than 30,000 for Geoana). Basescu’s final winning margin was less than 70,000 votes.

Basescu immediately disappointed many of his voters by appointing Little Emil Boc to once again be his muppet of a prime minister.

Elena Udrea (whose Land of Choice campaign was such a disaster that the number of foreign visitors to Romania actuall decreased by more than 25 per cent in 2009) was given an enlarged ministry, now including the regional development portfolio, which will oversee the distribution of more than €4 billion in EU funds.

Ker-ching!

Romanians go to the polls on Sunday in the first round of voting in the country’s presidential election.

That much you probably know.

You probably also know that just three of the candidates have any chance of making the second round a fortnight later. They are: current president Traian Basescu; PSD leader Mircea Geoana; and Crin Antonescu, leader of the PNL and all round nice guy, with a daughter at our son’s school.

No prizes for guessing for where our vote will be going.

When we say our vote, that will of course be Mrs. Bucharest Life’s vote. Being British, we don’t get a vote, you see.

Unfortunately, unless the opinion polls have been very inaccurate, it is unlikely that Antonescu will make the second round. Instead, it looks a sure bet that Basescu and Geoana will make round two, and that Geoana will win.

Much will depend on the turnout, however, expected to be the lowest in post-communist Romanian history. In a desperate attempt to sure up his own support Basescu has tagged a pointless referendum (something about reducing the size of parliament) onto the ballot paper, though even this looks unlikely to boost turnout: we will be shocked if more than 45 per cent of the electorate turns up. (Although expect there to be plenty of people voting twice to try and boost the numbers of one candidate or another…)

To those 55 per cent who will not vote, we say: ‘Good on you.’ If there is one thing we hate it is the idea that people have to vote, that it is their patriotic duty to vote. That revolutionaries died in 1989 to give people a vote. (Ergo they have to exercise that right).

All mistaken. The revolutionaries died to give people a choice: I can vote for the candidate I choose to support, or I can choose to stay at home and vote for nobody. The idea that anyone should feel obliged to vote is ridiculous and – quite frankly – as undemocratic as the one-candidate elections that went on in these parts before 1989.

Indeed, our dream result (not just for Romania on Sunday but for any election) in fact would nil points all round, as in nobody turns up to vote. Not a soul.

A weekly digest of news, business and sport from Bucharest and around Romania

Basescu defends record before parliament

Traian Basescu, Romania’s president, defended his record in office on Wednesday in front of a generally supine parliament. Representatives of the main opposition parties left well before the close of Basescu’s speech.

Basescu said his main achievement had been to oversee ‘unprecedented economic growth,’ and was quick to praise the current government of Emil Boc,  a member of Basescu’s Democratic Liberal Party (PDL).

Basescu heavily criticised the government of Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, with which he uncomfortably cohabited for the first four years of his term.

Romania’s presidential election will be held on November 28. Basescu is expected to officially confirm that he will run for a second term of office within the next few days.

PSD agrees to stay in coalition

Romania’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) stated this week that it will not pull out of the government despite its opposition to a package of reform bills put forward by the centre-left coalition.

Some local political commentators had said in recent weeks that the PSD may leave the coalition because of disagreements with their centrist partners, the PDL.

” I believe a government that exists and functions right now is better than a political crisis,’ PSD leader Mircea Geoana said. ‘Had we opposed these reforms, the government would have collapsed.’

The reforms focus on three areas: education, civil service salaries and civil service jobs. If passed, the bills will lead to as many as 9,500 Romanian civil servants losing their jobs over the next few months.

The opposition PNL has asked for a vote of no confidence on the issue of the reform bills.

Romanian National Bank spends €4.5 billion on propping up the leu

Romania’s national bank, the BNR, has spent €4.5 billion this year on propping up the country’s currency, the leu. The claim was made in a report published by ING, a bank.

The leu, which had traded at or around 3.50 to the €uro for some time, fell sharply at the end of last year as investors fled Romania. The BNR stepped at the beginning of 2009 to prevent further falls. It has since steadied, trading at between 4.20-4.30 to the €uro

The ING report claims that the BNR has enough foreign currency reserves to protect the leu ‘for a good few years yet.’

The leu closed trading on Friday at 4.264 to the €uro.

Energy Minister claims progress in gas pipeline talks

Romania is in advanced talks with Asian states to secure supplies for a planned natural gas pipeline designed to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russia by transporting gas from the Caspian and Middle East from 2014.

“We are in talks with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan … to import gas for the Nabucco pipeline,” Deputy Economy Minister Tudor Serban told an energy seminar.

Nabucco’s shareholders are Hungary’s MOL, Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz, Turkey’s Botas, Germany’s RWE  and Austria’s OMV. The pipeline is seen pumping as much as 31 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually, but its viability has already been questioned because of limited supplies and infrastructure.

Visa free travel hints at Romanian-Moldovan detente

As of today, Romanians can travel visa-free to the neighbouring Republic of Moldova. The move to offer Romanians visa-tree travel was one of the first acts of office taken by newly elected Moldovan president Mihai Ghimpu.

Ghimpu, though officially only interim president, is keen to move quickly improve relations with Romania, which became extremely strained under the regime of his pro-Russian predecessor, Vladimir Voronin.

Urziceni beaten in Seville

Romania’s only representative in this season’s UEFA Champions League, Unirea Urziceni, were beaten 2-0 by Seville, in Spain, in their first group match. Urziceni coach Dan Petrescu said after the game that the better side had won, but that he was disappointed with his team’s performance.

In Europe’s second-string competition, the Europa League, there were wins for Dinamo Bucharestand CFR Cluj, while Timisoara held Ajax 0-0 in Amsterdam.

Steaua Bucharest drew 0-0 at home with Serif Tiraspol. Coach Cristiano Bergodi was sacked immediately after the game, allegedly for not allowing the team’s owner, Gheorghe Becali, into the dressing room at half-time.

Misc

The new Romanian school year began on Monday, though a number of schools around the country were not passed fit for purpose, and welcomed pupils in dreadful conditions. Well-organised criminals made off with 240,000 lei in cash (around €56,000) in a daring raid on a security van in the remote Gutai Pass, in the far north of Romania. Prime Minister Emil Boc visited Italy. A 17-year old from Bistrita was voted Miss Romania:

Traian Basescu, Romania’s president, appeared before the country’s parliament yesterday to defend his record in office, and to list his substantial number of outstanding achievements.

Amongst a number of moot points, Basescu claimed that ‘nobody can deny Romania has moved forward these past five years,’ and that ‘economic growth had been incredible.’

Both true, of course, but as Romania is a country that has been very much on autopilot for the past decade or so, you could probably have had a monkey at the tiller and still got much the same result.

No. For real achievement, you have to look elsewhere. Far too modest a man to say so himself, we would suggest that Basescu’s real achievement these past few years has been his galvanising effect on the less fortunate members of Romanian society. People who, without him as a guiding light to look up to, may never have risen from secretary to cabinet minister in just four years, nor have gone from Romania’s fashion catwalks straight into the European parliament.

So the question of the day is:

Which Elena is Basescu’s greatest achievement?

Is it Elena Udrea (left), a woman who may not have had such a stellar political career if somebody else had been president, or Elena Basescu (right), a part-time model who managed to get a seat in the European parliament (and who calls the president Daddy)?

Vote now for the most successful Elena: Udrea or Basescu?

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.