The Lia Roberts hope

The main suspicion has nothing to do with her being a woman, nor that in the 30 years she spent away from Romania she might have forgotten crucial facts about this country and now be unable of understanding its problems and finding a cure. It has to do with the current moment's obsession - the suspicion that she is nothing more than a puppet in the hands of those that have been running Romania - under one face or another - for up to 60 years. 
Unfortunately, the first steps taken by Lia Roberts cannot do away completely with this doubt. First of all, her link with Virgil Magureanu, former head of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI). Some sources talked about meetings between the two of them which took place in the United States, during one of Magureanu's visits there. Lia Roberts claimed they only met in Bucharest.
Beyond these contacts which may after all be just formalities, there is still Dick Morris, the famous American strategist. The chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party announced her intention to participate in the Romanian election race during the Bucharest ceremony to launch the book written by Dick Morris, when she also said he would be in charge of her election campaign. 
The route taken in Romania by the former White House "guru" has close ties with the one of the most controversial figures in the post-December Romanian history: Virgil Magureanu.
The man who for seven years managed the melting (and most of all covering up) of the communist era political police Securitate into the SRI is the same person who brought Morris here, three years ago, to take charge of the image of another presidential candidate Magureanu took out of the hat: Marian Munteanu.
The news was also shocking back then. Nobody expected a partnership between the leader of the anti-government demonstration in the University Square and Magureanu, a top member of the team that coordinated Munteanu's semi-lynching on June 13, 1990.
The same way some cannot comprehend today the nature of the connection between a rich Romanian woman living in America, who is willing to give up on the comfort of her house in Nevada for taking on her shoulders the reconstruction of Romania, and the slippery character who left his trace in all the shady affairs that took place after December 1989, starting with the inter-ethnic conflict in Tirgu Mures to the oil smuggling during the war in Yugoslavia. 
Another character present next to Lia Roberts is Victor Gaetan, also a Romanian immigrant settled in New York, the man who arranges her meetings in Romania and who plays the role of an assistant. 
Coincidentally or not, Victor Gaetan happened to be involved in an operation very dear to the FSN-ist government: the discrediting of King michael I. Back in 1991, when Iliescu's party was till unaware of other more efficient ways of compromising the Royal House, Victor Gaetan in an article published in the American press described how King Michael when expelled from Romania in 1947 took out of the country paintings from the Romanian Crown's collection. The information in the article missed one detail: the King did not steal the paintings as they had been offered to him by the communist rulers so that he leave Romania more quickly.
The FSN's attempts to discredit the King were nothing that the resumption of an older Securitate operation, with the code name "Duduia", with Virgil Magureanu apparently having had a major contribution to its resumption. 
What is the connection between all this and Lia Roberts? We would like to believe that there is none. But somebody who have reached the top of the American politics, like in her case, knows very well that the ties with a compromised character weigh a lot in an election campaign.
Is it possible that a person working in partnership with Virgil Magureanu play a positive role on the Romanian political scene? I do not thing so.
Romanians keeping their eyes towards the West can only hope that all shady characters who have started gravitating around a promising candidacy are just some auxiliary figures who won't be able to affect or compromise an honourable intention. And that Lia Roberts will eventually clarify her political affiliation.

P.S. Unfortunately, there was another Romanian born American who run for president in 1992 so that afterwards he started businesses which I would not dare calling shady but which brought him millions of dollars in an incredibly short period of time. Now he is resting in his sumptuous villa on the shores of Snagov Lake and affords gentle sighs at the sight of the disaster outside the gates of his mansion.