Communists Not Banned From Romanian Elections

Romania’s interim government said today the Communist Party will have the right to participate in elections scheduled for April and defended its decision to keep party members in their posts.

A member of the interim government said he expected the National Salvation Front--the 145-member governing body formed since the Dec. 22 ouster of President Nicolae Ceausescu--would become a political party.

No political organization has registered with the Romanian courts.

Shops were closed in Bucharest for the third day of the extended New Year holiday, but many Romanians were out on the streets, strolling and visiting makeshift memorials to the demonstrators shot and killed by Ceausescu’s secret police during last month’s revolution.

At a briefing for reporters, Aurel Dragos Monteneau, the new head of Romania’s radio and television networks, said the Communist Party, like any other political organization, could register and run candidates in the planned elections.

“The Communist Party has the right to exist,” he said.

Monteneau defended the new government’s decision to keep Communist Party members in their posts.

“We want to keep alive the economic and administrative apparatus,” Monteneau said.

He said party members who kept their jobs had “good moral standards (and) were not involved in any wrongdoing” under Ceausescu.

At the same briefing, Sergiu Nicolaescu, a well-known Romanian filmmaker and member of the National Salvation Front, said “there are lots” of Communist Party members in the National Salvation Front, but he did not say how many. There are 3.8 million Communist Party members in Romania, a country of 23 million, he said.

“We’re almost obliged to have them,” he said. “The important thing is what they are now and whether they took advantage (before). Everything will be judged by the people.”

In a related development, a Greek newspaper reported today that the security chief at the Romanian Embassy in Athens was shot and killed by its staff after Ceausescu was ousted.

Government spokesman Pavlos Pavlopoulos said the Public Order Ministry was investigating the allegation. He would not elaborate.

The newspaper Eleftherotypia said the unidentified official, a member of the dreaded Securitate security police, was killed “in a dramatic confrontation” with the embassy staff, which sided with the revolution.

Romania’s envoy to Athens, Nicolai Ecobescu, described the story as “fantasy” to reporters within an hour after the newspaper circulated in the Greek capital.

Ecobescu was one of the first ambassadors to publicly denounce Ceausescu after the dictator was ousted Dec. 22.