THE ARTICLE "THE COUP"; PUBLISHED ON SATURDAY, CONFIRMED ON MONDAY The freedom of the press - a nightmare

On Saturday night, we put up a scenario on our website, in which we imagined Traian Băsescu reacting to the threat to overthrow his regime, a threat which sees his political opposition, the unions and the mass-media coming together, by revealing information on a plan to stage a coup d"etat, planned by Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, who has ties to the leaders of the opposition, of the unions and of the press.

On Sunday night, Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu was admitted into the Emergency Hospital of "Floreasca", without any other details arising around this matter (except for the fact that he is having heart troubles, which is pretty likely, considering the pressure that he has apparently been living under since his arraignment for "abetting the offender Nicolae (Viorel) Popa", as well as considering the double bypass surgery he had about two years ago in Vienna).

Also, on Monday, the Mediafax press agency (connected to PRO TV, the TV channel that had hosted an interview with Traian Băsescu, the morning before), released some of the shorthand transcripts of conversations involving Vântu, which are included in the evidence to the file built against him, thus fully confirming the scenario published by BURSA on its website.

I quote from the text of the scenario:

"Băsescu will claim that about 80% of the journalists of the major media groups (and he will not confine himself to the employees of Vântu"s Realitatea group - he will produce a list including an assortment of notorious media personalities) were working under orders from Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu (and that there are records to prove that statement), in which he dictated the list of guests that they were allowed to have on their shows and they were told who to attack in the media."

The scenario only has two inaccuracies: 1) it would seem that Băsescu did not come out and make such statements himself; 2) for now at least, it doesn"t look like other journalists would be involved except for those employed by "Realitatea" (however, the transcripts are far more numerous than the ones that were released to the public).

Other than that, the release of the transcripts just seems to fit with the scenario that we had imagined.