Long live the ex-king

By V.P.

BEING king in Romania is an awkward business. And not just because the country is a republic. Although the former King Mihai abdicated in 1947, he still seems to have the power to complicate politicians' lives.

Today, as he turned 90, the former monarch addressed parliament for the first time in 60 years. He called for a clear break with the "bad habits" of the past: demagogy, clinging to power, "primitive egoism". He felt sorry, he said, for the elderly and the ill, who face "humiliating situations". Romanians living "in territories that were taken away from us" [read: Moldova] should not, he urged, be forgotten.

There was no direct mention of any politicians, some of whom had formed the king into exile and were now sitting in the front row, applauding warmly. Prominent among them was Ion Iliescu, a former Communist Party official who became Romania's president in the first decade after the fall of the regime.

The king's speech was "constructive and useful, but also necessary," Mr Iliescu said afterwards. He appeared to have forgotten his decision as president to ban King Mihai from the country, fearing that the popular ex-king might challenge his pseudo-democratic regime.

The current president, Traian Basescu, is also no big fan of the monarchy. He was out of town today, meeting EU officials in Brussels. But it is unlikely he would have attended the speech even if he had been in Bucharest. Asked yesterday if he had any message for the king's birthday, the president said: "A message to say what?"

Mr Basescu has not hid his contempt towards the king, whom he once accused of "betrayal" for having abdicated two years after Soviet troops entered the country and appointed puppet regimes. Mihai says that the Communist leaders threatened to execute 1,000 students unless he agreed to abdicate.

But Mr Basescu contests this account, pointing to old files from the Romanian secret police (Securitate) that he says suggest that the king was never threatened and was able to negotiate the terms of his departure, taking with him several courtiers, pieces of jewellery and other valuables. Yet many historians say that accounts from other Soviet archives indicate that the king was indeed blackmailed.

Mihai has since regained his properties in Romania and seems to have accepted that he is not about to be restored to power. The same has not always been true for his son-in-law, Radu Duda. In 2009 Mr Duda announced that he would run for Romania's presidency (amid an outcry from royalist groups he withdrew his candidacy).

An example has been set in neighbouring Bulgaria, where the former King Simeon II entered politics in the late 1990s and became prime minister in 2001. In Romania of 2011, however, the king's speech looks like too little, too late.