Romania Outlaws Communist Party : East Europe: ‘It is against the national spirit,’ the president declares. He announces a referendum on the death penalty for secret police.

Confronted by thousands of angry protesters who had come together for a day of national mourning, interim President Ion Iliescu declared Friday that the Communist Party of Romania has been outlawed.

Speaking from a balcony at the Foreign Ministry in Bucharest, where the new government makes its headquarters, Iliescu said, “The Romanian Communist Party is outlawed, considering that it is against the national spirit and our ancestors’ law.”

“Down with communism! Down with Communists!” the demonstrators shouted. Some set fire to a Romanian Communist flag, and others threw Communist identification papers on the flames.

A wave of popular outrage has erupted at the number of Communist officials still holding positions of influence three weeks after the ouster of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Ceausescu, 71, and his wife Elena, 70, were executed Dec. 25 by a military firing squad.

Two days later, the National Salvation Front, headed by Iliescu, a former Communist official who fell out with Ceausescu a decade ago, announced that the death penalty was to be revoked and that the Ceausescu executions would be the last in Romania.

But on Friday, the crowds in the capital protested that decision, calling for the execution of members of the Securitate, the secret-police unit and presidential guard that is believed to have killed thousands.

“Death to the Securitate!” and “Death for death!” the protesters shouted, referring to people killed in the fighting that raged across the country between Dec. 17 and Dec. 26, when the announcement of the Ceausescu executions finally brought the fighting to an end.

Iliescu, who was shouted down repeatedly by the crowd, said there will be a national referendum Jan. 28 on the question of whether to reinstate the death penalty for members of the secret police, whose trials are under way.

Iliescu said the referendum is necessary “for the adequate punishment of those guilty of crimes against the people.”

Romanians have become increasingly angry in the last two weeks with the performance of the National Salvation Front, a hastily formed alliance of former Communist officials and dissidents who, as individuals, accounted for the only opposition allowed in Romania under Ceausescu. The former dictator kept his opponents under house arrest and continual surveillance.

Now, many officials are uncertain about what should be done with the thousands of local party and Securitate officials, some of whom are seeking positions in the interim government.

In the regional capital of Brasov last week, the general heading the local committee of the National Salvation Front acknowledged that the heads of the Securitate units there, along with top party officials in the city, have not been taken into custody.

“They are free to move about,” Gen. Ion Flora said. “We know who they are.”

In the euphoria that followed Ceausescu’s downfall, the public raised no clamor for retribution against the hated secret police. But pressure has mounted steadily to punish not only the Securitate but also people in the corrupt upper ranks of the Communist Party.

The National Salvation Front, and the interim government appointed to run the country until elections scheduled for April, are finding it difficult to decide who in the state and national bureaucracies should be excused for collaborating with the Ceausescu regime.

Under Ceausescu, virtually all government positions of any significance required membership in the Communist Party. Management personnel in all state enterprises were also required to be party members. Moreover, there was at least one Securitate member in every government office and every major department in every industrial concern.

The interim government has little hope of making the country function without relying on Communists, or former Communists, and it is hard-pressed to know which of them should be deemed guilty of aiding and abetting Ceausescu’s police-state excesses.

The newly appointed prosecutor general, Gheorghe Robu, said Friday in remarks carried on Romanian television that all leading members of the Communist Party are under arrest and that their roles in the Ceausescu dictatorship were being investigated.

He said Ceausescu’s children and his brothers, arrested in the first days of the revolution, will be brought to trial soon. He did not say whether Communist officials outside the capital are included in the arrests and investigations.

Prime Minister Petre Roman and other members of the National Salvation Front met with boos and catcalls Friday as they tried to speak from the turret of a tank parked at the entrance to the Foreign Ministry.

Iliescu told the crowd that “you are right in your requests, but we should avoid chaos because chaos cannot lead anywhere but to another dictatorship.”

Earlier, he had told the crowd that the Securitate officials will be tried and sentenced “according to the laws.” He said the trials will be open to the public and shown on television.

Iliescu was interrupted repeatedly by people who grasped the microphone and hurled questions at him.

Augustin Pora, who said he was painter and a leader of an “anti-Communist alliance,” said, “Do you agree that the front should represent all the parties and that they should all have at least three members (on the front’s council)?”

“I agree, I agree,” Iliescu responded. “The front is representative of all the democratic forces in the country.”

An unidentified woman screamed at Iliescu, “Who is Mr. Iliescu, and what has he been doing the last five years?”

“I have been head of the National Council for Water,” Iliescu replied. “I am the son of a worker. I have been in prison. In 1971, I was fired from the leadership of the party. I have spoken out against communism.”