"I was not lying, I'm only idiot" - scene two of the teachers' salary saga

The story of the law raising teachers' salaries in Romania rolls on. The president, Traian Băsescu, after admitting a mistake yesterday was possibly warned by his spin doctors that it is dangerous to assume responsibility. As a consequence, at the evening he began to manouver in order to put responsibilty on anyone else. According to his new explanation it would have been strange not to promulgate the above mentioned law - even though the government insisted that it is practically impossible to realize, or only with a serious imbalance of the state houshold - while the National Statistical Office and the IMF predicted economic growth for Romania for 2009.

Apart from the usual deception in political communication one can once again highlight the fact how the idea of exceptionalism and singularity prevailed and prevails even over common sense in ECE. Although many "anaylsts'" forecasts ultimately turned out to be quite far from reality, to accept the idea that a country in wich growth depends on consumption based on the money sent home by guest workers in countries heavily affected by the crisis (Great Britain, Spain, Italy!) and on a housing bubble - a classical one, an appartment in a block of flats in Bucharest, built in the '50s was more expensive then a newly built flat in one of the most prestigious areas of Budapest - would not be influenced by the world ecenomy's events was simply idiocy, even if it was shared by so called experts as well. And it was clearly not independent from the fact, that it was tempting to use as a political leverage the fact that the countries seemingly hit by the crisis was "arch-enemies" of Romania and in this sense falling behind the own country, reinforcing the feeling that everything goes right in this state.