Pavel Popescu, vice-president of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), answered on Sunday on Facebook to Ioana Dogioiu, former spokesperson of the government led by Ilie Bolojan. She had accused him of lying about financing for the candidacy to the Council of the International Telecommunication Union.
Popescu said the candidacy is Romania’s, not a person’s. He wrote that ANCOM proposed allocating 860,000 lei from its own budget, with no impact on the government budget, to support Romania’s bid for a ninth consecutive mandate on the ITU Council. He said Romania can be represented by officials delegated from ANCOM and from the Ministry of Economy, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, and by the minister delegate for digitalisation and artificial intelligence.
He added that the two ministers holding the MEDAT portfolios are invited to the event and are working continuously, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to support the candidacy. As in previous years, the presidents of two relevant parliamentary committees were also invited to the Qatar event backing Romania’s bid: USR deputy Radu Mihaiu, chair of the Chamber of Deputies committee on information technology and communications, and USR senator Ciprian Rus, of the Senate committee on communications, information technology and artificial intelligence. According to Popescu, Rus and four other senators have already confirmed they will attend.
Popescu wrote that at last year’s multi-day event in Geneva, when Romania announced its candidacy for the mandate to be sought in Qatar, Radu Miruță of USR also took part. Miruță was then president of the Chamber committee on information technology and communications. Popescu asked Mihaiu, Rus, Miruță and Oana Țoiu to confirm the figures in his post, the invitations, their past participation in events supporting Romania’s ITU Council bid, and that the candidacy is a strategic national objective rather than a bid for one person, backed by several ministries and state institutions. He said ANCOM is the institution that pays the funds.
He also accused Dogioiu of continuing what he called disinformation by claiming that he, rather than Romania, is running for a post on the ITU Council. He said she had strongly criticised the partnership with the United States and insulted America’s leadership.
Dogioiu accuses Popescu of lying and says he is unhappy that, at the last government meeting chaired by Ilie Bolojan, funding for what she describes as his candidacy to the ITU Council was not approved, while funding for Romania’s participation in the Francophonie Summit was. She says the government decision on participation in the Francophonie Summit was adopted on 11 September, not at the last meeting of the former government.
She wrote that Popescu wanted 860,000 lei of public money for an event for 1,000 people, with an artistic programme and protocol gifts, in exchange for a four-year seat on the ITU Council. According to her, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan ordered that draft government decision removed after it had been placed on the agenda of the last cabinet meeting, and Prime Minister Niculescu can approve it if it is good for the country.
Dogioiu said she understands Popescu’s dissatisfaction but not accusations she considers false. She referred to a post in which he claimed that, at the same government meeting, 340,000 euro were approved for the summit at which Dacian Cioloș would support his candidacy for secretary-general of the International Organisation of La Francophonie. She said that at the 11 September meeting Bolojan cut in half the sum first requested by the Ministry of Culture, from 1.96 million lei to 980,000 lei.
She said the money is not for receptions, gifts or any candidacy, but for participation in the Village de la Francophonie on the margins of the 20th Francophonie Summit, specifically Romania’s pavilion, including travel there by Romanian artists. The funds are managed by ARTEXIM, the institution that also organises the George Enescu International Festival.
Popescu, who was himself a member of the National Liberal Party, has accused former prime minister Ilie Bolojan, the party’s leader, of deliberately sabotaging diplomatic efforts made over the past year for Romania’s ITU Council candidacy. He says Bolojan withdrew the draft government decision at the last moment from the agenda of the final meeting he chaired, after presenting what Popescu calls a false picture. Popescu said the move came from Bolojan’s failure to grasp how much the post matters for Romania, from what he described as a visceral hatred of regulatory authorities, and from a superficial reading of the draft by the former prime minister and his advisers.