Viorel Hrebenciuc is the father of election rigging. Not very much. As much as you need. The first twenty years of freedom bore the mark of Viorel Hrebenciuc. Romania was both democratic, and a little communist, and with a market economy. Offering, smiling, ready to make it a little easier in any situation, madly inventing where the laws did not cover, the country, like Hrebenciuc, was ready for any concession and available for any improvisation.
With some experience from the old party apparatus, Viorel Hrebenciuc outclassed his colleagues and opponents in politics, including in parliament, through intelligence, mobility and creativity. (Compared to him, Mihai Tudose is nothing more than a poor fisherman promoted to a sheep herder).
As in the former communist party, he (Hrebenciuc, not Tudose!) knew that there must be a solution to any problem. And to the conflict with the peasants, and to the problems with the UDMR, and to the scandals with the unions, and to the cancellation of a strike through negotiations, but also through ridicule, including in the elections. Hrebenciuc had a solution to the most complicated situations, including with Budapest or the Council of Europe and the European Union. Culmea, in order to win, knew how to yield. His behavior was based on a simple strategy, simple and apparently common sense.
Follow the goal, but also leave something for the opponent, which you can take away from you. Be nice, tell him a joke and give him hope and try to take him as a partner in the good things, which are also yours and which you are particularly interested in.
Viorel Hrebenciuc had (and I think he still has!) the demeanor of a friendly Devil, with fine gloves behind his words. He would read you in ten seconds and treat anyone as if they were a lifelong friend. Many of the confusions of the PSD in those years were solved with his ideas, as he also put his shoulder to the adoption of many “European” type measures. Many politicians have launched themselves and claimed ideas and solutions as their own without acknowledging or knowing where they came from.
When I met him for the first time, he approached me as if he knew my whole life, everything I wrote, and we had barely parted after a meal in a restaurant with an orchestra. In fact, Viorel Hrebenciuc was a friend of Mihai Cârciog, the main shareholder of Expres and Evenimentul zilei. And Mihai Cîrciog was the kind of man who in five minutes, without speaking any foreign language, befriended a German or an Englishman and had a beer, then a meal and continued with “a long and beautiful friendship”. They cultivated each other, cared for whiskey, and set the country in motion. When I also entered Cârciog’s office, I learned a little more about the behind-the-scenes of Romanian politics and the improvisations of Dîmbovița democracy. That’s how we found out how and when the first important electoral adjustment was made.
To the surprise of many, it did not take place at the same time as Elena Băsescu was pushed into the European Parliament. Everyone is talking about this party operation as the first vote rigging. No way. What happened with Eba was conceived on a larger scale and much more complex. Not only Democratic Party organizations were involved, but also secret services and ministries. SPP officers were assigned to polling stations in the south of Romania to ensure that there were no incidents. They had the mission to report and calm the spirits if someone got caught and started screaming. The SRI also sent people to the field. The Ministry of Youth organized concerts, as did Monica Iacob Ridzi. The town halls provided exhibition spaces for the portrait with big lips. After two weeks, Eba was pulled out of the hat and made the star of Romania. With the 10-15 votes from each organization, the result was a victory for an Ioana d’Arc de Dîmbovița with big problems with the Romanian language and to say something coherent about the battle won. He barely understood what he had participated in.
As I said, this was not the first vote adjustment. It happened long before. More precisely, in the elections of May 20, 1990, on Blind Sunday.
At the end of a longer meal, after a harder-to-count string of “a small whiskey”, Viorel Hrebenciuc and Mihai Cârciog reviewed the cultural personalities from Romania. Which and how it seemed to them. And then, suddenly, Viorel Hrebenciuc came out with a confession:
– Andrei Pleșu does not forget me and does not forgive me. He’s still mad at me!
-Why?
– Because I did not help him in the 1990 elections. He ran as an independent, but did not enter. The only one who counted the votes to enter parliament as an independent was professor Antonie Iorgovan, may God forgive him. If they told me about him, I would help him too. He still thinks that I didn’t want to.
– But how did Iorgovan get so many votes? The teacher was both acrimonious and obnoxious, with no connection to the public.
– How? I helped him. Votes were gathered from all over. You just didn’t want the father of the Constitution to be a pesedist or a peasant or a liberal! He had to be an independent.
So we learned from the one who designed and coordinated the first vote adjustment made in the interest of a democratic sham.
Not much time passed and Viorel Hrebenciuc met Gigi Becali and Fatih Taher and they started working together. Since then, he also started the net of personal businesses, from Rafo Onești (percentages), to the Marriott Hotel (percentages through a company from a tax haven), to the Adevărul newspaper (also with Fatih Taher and in a silent cohabitation with Dumitru Tinu, with Adrian Ursu and Bogdan Chireac and, even more so, with CT Popescu, until he collected double the price for his percentages). The businesses with the forests and many others followed in which Hrebenciuc gave a helping hand to those who asked for it and who today no longer know him and do not greet him. They even gave a helping hand to his conviction.
Source: www.cotidianul.ro
