Basescu, really stupid or really smart?

You know, even about Bush people have said that he is in reality a very smart man and his obvious stupidity is an act. Could it be that Basescu is the same way? Oh, it seems I need a politics tag for this blog.

Well, Basescu is back in his presidential office, just like Ariel is back in school, and in his very first day as a not-ousted president the very day of the referendum that decides to oust him or not he does this incredible stupid thing. Basically he first goes shopping in a mall (like a normal citizen, mind you) and then he gets annoyed with this reporter woman that kept filming him with her cell phone. So he takes her cell phone. He has no idea how to turn off the phone, so it continues to record, including a conversation between Basescu and his wife in which he calls the reporter an aggressive stinking Gypsy. Then the recording is being analysed by the president's SPP corps (kind of like Secret Service) and the bit about the stinking Gypsy is removed. Little did they know that a recording like that can be restored; and it was and now all this is public domain.

There was great protest against the obvious racist remark, also about the way the president of a country treats a reporter and nobody does anything about it. How stupid can you be to do something like that, right?

But let me bring you this conspiracy theory: Basescu did this on purpose! After the elections he faced a publicity void, one that he either had to fill with keeping his promises (a rather difficult feat for most politicians) or one that had to be replaced with a new stunt. It is already obvious that a lot of the people that voted against his ousting this time are zealots, loyal to Basescu personally, so a little incident like this would not decrease his popularity, maybe it would just show (again) how human and average and of the people our president is. And also shift the attention from the presidential duties to a more common, easy to understand, irrelevant topic. Yet the last thing, the recording that was supposedly deleted then restored, was a stroke of genius. He now got really close to the racist electorate. And, funny enough, the Romanian Press Group decided to boycott the president in the media, thus removing any need of him to do anything. I mean, if you are not on TV or in the press, why do anything? Meanwhile, the press devoted to Basescu would write only the good stuff. And the reporter herself, after receiving an apology note (Basescu is good with notes) and some flowers, decided not to charge the president with anything.

Could this have a hint of truth in it? Who knows but Basescu and his inner circle, but there is this joke circulating in Bucharest about two Basescu supporters. One of them says "Oh, it would have been great for this thing to happen before the referendum". "Are you crazy?", the other one replies, " people might not have voted for him!". "Nah. He still would have been president, but now 75% of the population would get rid of the stinking Gypsies".

The incident can be easily found on YouTube, but I am not going to give you the link, as it is irrelevant.