Remember Adrian Paunescu

Born in Copăceni, Bălţi County, in what is now the Republic of Moldova, Păunescu spent his childhood in Bârca, Dolj County. He did his secondary studies at Carol I High School in Craiova. His father was a member of the pre-war National Liberal Party and was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Communist authorities for "anti-communist activities" (for the same reason, Adrian Păunescu was barred from entering university for some years).

Păunescu studied philology at the University of Bucharest and became a writer and journalist. He was an influential public figure throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Sporting leftist ideas inspired by the Western 1960s movement, which he opposed to the more stolid Stalinist ideals of the ruling elite, he fashioned himself as an "inner circle" dissenter. He opposed the communist regime, criticising it and the dictator through Cenaclul Flacăra shows. Some Romanian people consider that he is a sycophant for the way in which he praised the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
[edit] Flacăra

A member of the Union of Communist Youth between 1966 and 1968, and, between 1968--1989, of the Romanian Communist Party, Păunescu gained control over a major weekly publication, Flacăra and became the producer and host of the only itinerant folk and pop show in the country, Cenaclul Flacăra, founded in 1973. He was a member of the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee and "court poet" of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

In 1985, during his show, held at a stadium in Ploieşti, a heavy storm started. The electrician of the stadium warned him that the sound system was not properly protected against water and it would be better to stop the show. Păunescu replied that he would assume the risk, telling the crowd that "We, the Cenaclul Flacăra, can defeat anything, even the storm" and asking that the gates be closed. Due to the storm, water infiltrated the electrical installations and created a short circuit, leading to a blackout in the stadium. People rushed to the exits, which were however closed. Since nobody knew how to open the gates, a stampede was triggered. Several people died and a few dozens were wounded. The number of victims is unknown mainly due to the secrecy during the Communist era: at the time, no newspaper mentioned the event.

On June 16, 1985, he received a "warning" from the Communist authorities for causing the accident.
[edit] Political career

After 1989 Păunescu pursued a political career, aligning himself with socialist and then social-democratic political parties.

In 1996, he ran in the Romanian presidential election but received only 87,163 votes (0.69%). He was a senator from 1992 to 2008, representing Dolj County (1992--2004) and then Hunedoara County (2004--2008), first of the Socialist Labour Party, and later of the Social Democratic Party of Romania. He received the most votes in his district at the 2008 election, but failed to win a seat after the votes were redistributed pursuant to the MMP system used.
[edit] Death

Aged 67, Păunescu was hospitalized on October 26, 2010 in the intensive care unit of the Floreasca Emergency Hospital in Bucharest, with problems of more vital organs caused by pulmonary edema. Păunescu had subsequent renal, liver and heart failure. He was declared dead at 7.15AM, on November 5, 2010.[1].

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