Haunted by his past

Bucharest, Romania

The Romanian lawmaker who was to represent his country in the European Union’s executive body withdrew his candidacy this week, amid allegations that he had been a communist collaborator. Varujan Vosganian said he was innocent of charges that he collaborated with the notorious Securitate, one of the Warsaw Pact’s most feared secret police services. But Liviu Turcu, a former top-ranking Securitate officer who defected to the West just before the 1989 fall of communism and now lives in the U.S., said Vosganian worked for him as an informer. Turcu told Bucharest’s Jornalul National that Vosganian’s nomination showed how “Romanian politics are still ruled from the shadows of the intelligence services.”