THE DEPARTURE OF NOKIA Presidential absurdities

Yesterday evening, the ministers were summoned at the Victoria Palace, for a government meeting which would discuss the decision of Nokia to shut down the plant of Jucu.

The president of the Finnish group Nokia, Stephen Elop, yesterday said that over the last 12-18 hours he has talked to the Romanian government, and has announced its officials about Nokia"s decision to leave Romania.

Ever since Thursday, Prime Minister Emil Boc had told the ministers in the government that there is a major risk of several multinational corporations leaving Romania, because the economic crisis is amplifying the global competition, and that the Government needs to be ready to attract other foreign investors in the country.

On the other hand, president Traian Băsescu yesterday made a relatively incoherent speech:

"Even considering the potential investors we have right now, with whom the deals we have at the moment are certain, whether we are talking about those drilling in the Black Sea or on the territory of Romania for gas, or about those looking to exploit gold, silver, or copper, if we are going to keep wasting their time with our bureaucracy and our lack of courage when it comes to making important decisions, we are going to lose them as well. It is the risk which the Government, will consciously take on if it doesn"t act quickly enough, and it will have to answer, not for what was done, but for what wasn"t".

This statement seems to imply that Nokia actually decided to leave because "they were kept waiting by our bureaucracy and by our lack of courage in making important decisions".

But the Finnish group hasn"t complained at all about our "bureaucracy" or our passiveness.

In fact, I understand that Nokia actually received an extremely favorable treatment.

When it announced that it would shut down the plant of Jucu, Nokia explained it would do so to make the company more efficient and to cut costs, meaning this was merely the result of internal business decisions.

The bureaucracy and passiveness of our authorities are undisputable.

But what do they have to do with the fact that Nokia isn"t doing well?!

All that is missing now would be for president Băsescu to make a statement blaming the Romanian ministers for the world crisis.

I for one could see myself agreeing to that particular absurdity ...