Pro-European presidential hopeful, Crin Antonescu, the candidate for the ruling coalition reported on a friend who tried to flee communist Romania it was revealed on Tuesday.
Mr. Antonescu said he had no option as he was summoned by the communist secret police, the Securitate, to give a statement on his friend who made two attempts to flee Romania and was ultimately successful the second time.
It was unclear whether the disclosure would harm Mr. Antonescu’s chances in the May election, 36 years after it happened.
But the man who he reported to immediately rushed to Antonescu’s defense, calling allegations of collaboration “a dirty calumny.”
Ştefan Costache said Antonescu was the only person he trusted to tell he planned to escape Romania.”I haven’t the slightest suspicion he was an informant,” he said.
An official at the council that holds the Securitate files confirmed Antonescu’s version of events, suggesting there were no further damaging files in the archives.
However, the revelation was a reminder that Romania has still not come to terms entirely with its communist past and many key figures still have secrets from that era.
Forced to come clean about the incident, Crin Antonescu, a former sports minister who has a chance of making it to the May 18 runoff, said that the council that houses the archives, the CNSAS, does not officially consider him a collaborator under its rules.
Antonescu, now 65, gave his statement to the dreaded Securitate which kept tabs on Romanians for any sign of dissent against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1988.
“I have never, in any way, been a collaborator of the Securitate, I had no relationship with the Securitate except as a wanted person,” Antonescu said on Tuesday at a press conference.
He explained how he came to give a statement to the Securitate.
“In 1987, a very good friend of mine…an engineer… went on a trip to Bulgaria and from there he tried to go to Austria but failed to do so and was captured by the Bulgarian law enforcement agencies and brought to Romania,” he said.
“When he left, he left behind some personal belongings for three or four very close friends. All three of us, because he had left objects with names, with labels, those objects, we were summoned to the Securitate to give statements about this…. I gave a statement in which I did not provide any special information except that I was a friend of that person, that I knew that he was going on a trip to Bulgaria, that I did not know what his intention was, which was true and that and nothing more,” Antonescu said.
Antonescu explained that the following year his friend managed to flee communist Romania and he was the only one who knew this.
“Very interesting is that the person in question the following year, in 1988, had a new attempt, this time he managed, fortunately, to leave the country. I was the only person who knew about his intention. He trusted me so much that he told me what I should do, he let me tell my parents, which I did. The man crossed into Yugoslavia, stayed in the camp for a while and then went to Canada, where he still lives today,” Antonescu said.
He said he considered himself a victim of the Securitate, not a collaborator.
“I have absolutely nothing to hide, I was a victim of the Securitate, not a collaborator, and I didn’t infringe people’s rights,” he said. “I tell those who don’t know or remind those who know, who lived through those times, that it was not optional to present yourself if you were summoned to the Securitate and this is probably in the Securitate files with very clear explanations,” he said.
