For today’s young people born after the Revolution or shortly before, a supermarket, a mall and other such creations are part of the normal. It amazes me, especially, the easiness of preschool children who are not in the least inhibited in the temple of consumption ranked to unconsciousness.

In childhood, as a preschool, I was keeping the place in line at a shop where there were suspicions that will enter merchandise, while my mother and sister were planting to other queues, equally mysterious. With an anecdote of that time it will be easier to understand the phenomenon. A citizen sees a queue and asks the last person in that line why is he waiting there for?

He replied he didn’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because whatever it is, it’s welcomed. The passer continued the investigation from person to person, with the same result, until he reached the first person in the queue. Dialog. Q: “Why are you staying in the queue for?” R: “What queue?”. “The one that is behind you.” Q: “Why are they staying in line for?”, R: “They were following you. And I repeat the question, why are you waiting here for? “. R: “Nothing, I was sick and leaned against the wall here. “The passer advised him to leave, because it confuses the others. The other replied, “Why, Sir, just now when I got to be first in line? ”

For today’s youth, it is normal to have a supermarket, although the excess of supply diversification and relatively low prices are an outrageous excess for my generation, just as the poorness and starvation from the past were blamable.

The postwar situation was explainable. The economy was destroyed, the people were traumatized by the changes in the social order, the main source of food was destroyed by collectivization, etc. On the eve of the Revolution, it was taken a policy of starvation to repay the debt to the IMF and to get an upgrading. Today, judging from another position, we say that the reimbursement was hasty and the upgrading has not achieved its purpose because it was decreed by the Prime Minister that the industry is a scrap heap, as well as the fleet. One example: the price at which it was sold the entire compound of heavy equipment in Cluj-Napoca did not cover the price to buy one of the existing presses in the compound.

It is circulating the idea that one of the reasons our country’s acceptance into the EU include the distribution in the role of a consumer country. The fact that the romanians had enough money for consumption was not an insurmountable obstacle, because EU banks extended their branches to “help” the romanian to indebt themselves, not only to investment, but also consumption.

In the food shortages around the Revolution, each person handled “how he could” and the fridges were sometimes full, sometimes empty, but the shops were always empty. I did find a way to fight poverty and if this solution was a murder, my criminal liability prescribed. I had a “connection”at the Avicola Floresti enterprise in the person of the accounting officer, who wrote to me once a week a ticket,  with which I payed to the cashier the goods and then I gave it to the head clerk and he shared it to other court employees.

For others it was harder, because they didn’t  find the formula to overcome the crisis. They sometimes searched for miracles.

Here’s an example: The company ISCIP Bonţida had as object of activity breeding and fattening pigs for export. On the entire surface of several hundred acres, there was no space for slaughter. However, the meatloaf came out on the gate in rubber boots and garments of the workers. The miracle was undeniable. For considerations of ethical accuracy I couldn’t exclude the hypothesis of contaminated area, given the close proximity of the famous Holy Monastery Nicula to the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary. But as the common police was not sensitive to miracles and organized controls at the gate at periods of time known only by the police, arrested 10-20 “criminals” and sent them to trial in the procedure of flagrante delicto. In such case involving a group of 80 defendants – 100 I have been faced in the winter of 1988. Seeing the proportions of the case, I took the trial and given the guidance of the head of the Court, as well as the Ministry of Justice, I decided to use a “method of civil influence”, the most suitable one in this case was sentencing at the crime scene. The place of judgment was the cafeteria, located just after the entrance. The defendants were arrested and guarded by the police. I parked the car outside the premises and came back to the car after the sentence. At that moment, two movements were taking place:

• On the small gate came out workers, who had in their rubber boots steaks which were visible to the naked eye, as evidence of the efficiency of civic influence measure.
• Entering the large black gate was the chief prosecutors car, 1310 Dacia, with the driver behind the wheel without any other passengers. Perhaps he had been invited to a round of golf, with no connection to what the workers were doing. More likely is that the driver was stealing with full trunk, while the workers were stealing with the pocket. And more likely, however, is that the driver was on a mission ordered by his boss.

And when you think that all this was happening simply and solely because of the miracle!

prof. Dr. Ion Turcu
retired magistrate

:: The source: JURIDICE.ro