Prosecutor Panait committed suicide to avoid being killed

Cristian Tudor Popescu, Gândul, February 28, 2015

Summary

• Cristian Tudor Popescu is a well-known Romanian journalist and commentator who has worked in various media institutions.
• The article discusses the manipulation surrounding the death of prosecutor Panait, criticizing the interpretation of events in the film. 
• Panait was not mentally ill, but a victim of manipulation and psychological harassment, which contradicts the film. 
• The film distorts the truth, attributing fictional actions and feelings to him to make the story more compelling.
• The article concludes with a commitment to protect the memory of prosecutor Panait and reveal the true circumstances surrounding his death.

Intro

Cristian Tudor Popescu is one of Romania’s greatest journalists. He was the editor-in-chief of Adevărul. Together with poet Mircea Dinescu, he founded Gândul, which he left in 2015. Popescu is currently a commentator on Digi24 television. He has a column on Europa FM, Romania’s most listened to private radio station. He is actively involved in the media outlet Republica.

This text was published on February 28, 2015, on the website of Gândul.

The scene with the death of prosecutor Panait

I have called this manipulation technique the “anchor of reality.” It is used with the intention of creating a more or less subconscious thought in the mind of the average viewer: “Well, if the terrace is real, then everything we saw in the film must be true.”

And it isn’t, starting with the terrace scene. We see Emilian Oprea (Panait) smiling, his eyes filled with tears, resigned and depressed, even though he is discussing future plans with his future wife. Then she goes shopping and he talks on the phone with a student he “fucked” (I have no other term that accurately conveys what director Tudor Giurgiu put on screen), asking her what she’s doing, why she’s gone underground, why we don’t see each other anymore, after which he throws the phone away, parting with life, and goes to the lethal railing.

A montage cut with two pigeons, a powerful symbol of the soul about to ascend to heaven.

Then, the image of a gray curtain, another symbol, the shroud, so to speak.

Finally, the dead prosecutor, in his tracksuit, on the asphalt.

There are also viewers who will have understood that Panduru (Panait) committed suicide because he couldn’t decide which of the two young ladies to sleep with. In reality, Cristian Panait threw himself into the void with witnesses, his aunt and mother, who undressed him and tried to lay him down on the bed, seeing his state of extreme agitation. Panait broke free, ran onto the terrace in his underwear, and jumped under the eyes of the two women.

But director Giurgiu insists on killing off Panait by inventing a final duplicitous gesture, a deception, involving the journalist and the student.

Prosecutor Panait did not suffer from mental illness

And this is part of the film’s flawed logic, which only confirms what the Romanian justice system tried to prove in 2002: that prosecutor Panait was mentally ill.

Post-mortem madman! is the title of the editorial I wrote at the time in Adevărul. There was no medical document, hospitalisation or diagnosis mentioning any mental health issues on the part of prosecutor Panait. On the contrary, he had passed the psychological test for admission to the judiciary.

All his work at the General Prosecutor’s Office had been competent, dynamic, and as coherent as possible. Prosecutor Panait’s red pen notes regarding the investigation of prosecutor Alexandru Lele in Oradea, also published in Adevărul, showed a meticulous, rigorous, rational, and mentally stable professional.

His sudden change in behavior in the last days and hours of his life is not that of a madman, but of a man psychologically assaulted by someone, a victim of mental manipulation, carried out with professional means, such as obsessive induction, blackmail with threats, and hypnotic conditioning, which are not nonsense like the violet flame. It is manipulation that he tried to resist until the very last moment.

So, what do we see in Mr. Giurgiu? A former participant in group sex parties, Panait, in his capacity as a professor, fucks hard a student (these are the director’s “creative,” artistic additions to reality, probably also in Cristian Panait’s memory, intended to make the film more palatable to mall audiences), then Lele’s file is taken away and he himself is placed under investigation. Obsessed that he is being bugged everywhere and that his life is threatened by the “secret services,” with two women on his mind, the brave and righteous Panait falls into manic depression and commits suicide.

He commits suicide because he had a difficult life and couldn’t cope with it. As a complete coward, he commits suicide so as not to be killed—this is the offensive “logic” attributed to him by director Giurgiu. Not a word, not an image in the film about the fact that the real Panait was very religious, went to church often, and had a confessor—for such a man, suicide is a great sin.

The case of prosecutor Lele

His colleague, prosecutor Lele, the first target of the circles of power in the Oradea affair, also suspended from office, investigated and subjected to all kinds of pressure, sued the General Prosecutor’s Office from 2002 to 2008, winning all the lawsuits and being reinstated.

Moreover, the insult, rather than the honor, to the memory of prosecutor Cristian Panait goes so far as to blame him for serious crimes imagined by the screenwriter and director. Using a so-called “friend” in the military prosecutor’s office, Giurgiu’s Panait “obtains,” in a completely illegal manner, the transcripts of some SRI wiretaps. So, he does not build his case against Lele on professional and legal grounds, but by cutting corners and breaking the law. After that, Mr. Giurgiu has him send this file, with the illegally obtained transcripts, to the very person under investigation, Lele—communicating data from an ongoing case is a very serious offense and disqualifies a prosecutor.

The true story

Why all this scripted confusion? Because Mr. Giurgiu shifts the focus of the Lele-Panait case from the PSD to the “secret services,” more specifically, the eternal Securitate.

What happened in 2001 and 2002 in Oradea is a case of high-level PSD corruption. The film shows the episode of the search led by prosecutor Panait at Lele’s home. It is a faithful reconstruction, frame by frame, of the real sequences, recorded on tape at the time by local television. With one big exception—Lele’s reply to Panait: “I want to make sure that everything is done correctly, because you were sent here by Năstase!” Mr. Giurgiu skipped this part, “artistically,” “creatively”…

Adrian Năstase was the one who secured the release of Adrian Tărău, the son of PSD prefect Aurel Tărău, who had been arrested by prosecutor Lele for involvement in a cross-border crime network. The PSD leader and prime minister influenced the judiciary after declaring that he did not like Friday night arrests, so Lele was forced to revoke the arrest of Adrian Tărău, who had heavily sponsored the PSD with black money so that his father Tărău could be appointed prefect of Bihor.

As soon as he was released, Adrian Tărău fled to Chicago, USA.

Reality is much stronger and sharper than Mr. Giurgiu’s fiction. Stressed by the fact that his film was said to be attacking Ponta, whose possible involvement in the Panait-Lele case had been widely reported in the press, Mr. Giurgiu organized a limited screening of the film before the presidential elections in the fall, in which Mr. Ponta was the clear favorite. And, yes, Mr. Ponta and the PSD calmed down, there was no problem.

Mr. Băsescu was also pleased, having seen Why Me? and declared it good. This is normal, because the filmmakers, who began shooting in April 2014, realized that they were in the year of the “Services,” inaugurated by Mr. Băsescu when he photographed E. Udrea, A. Bica, and A. Topoliceanu shopping in Paris in February. So, instead of the PSD’s mega-corruption and political interference in the justice system, they included wiretaps, transcripts, and hidden camera photos, all in a broth of secret police conspiracy, in the style of classic Western thrillers of the genre.

In conclusion

As for the cinematic analysis of the film, I will only mention the folk and pop songs, the glamorous piano music in the hotel lobby, and the blue-eyed ohtaturi, periodically inserted to warm the viewer’s heart and compensate for the poor audio quality of the characters’ dialogue.

The beautiful song “Noi, nu!” (Not us!), performed by Anda Călugăreanu, with lyrics by Nicolae Labiş, affirms the exact opposite of what the film shows prosecutor Panait to have done: we, no, we will never die before our bodies die! Cristian Panait, then, is one of those who have lost their “faith in victory on these ever-shifting paths,” while We—who are We? Probably Mr. Giurgiu and the film crew, since she expressly asked us to remain seated, watch the end credits, and listen to the song—no!

Back in 2002, I said on Marius Tucă’s show dedicated to the Panait case, the press, and corruption that, as a journalist, I would not be able to overthrow the PSD colossus that had taken over the country, as that was only within the power of the people, through voting, but that I would do everything I could to defend the memory of prosecutor Panait.

Which is what I am still doing.

Photo: Cristian Tudor Popescu (source: YouTube)

Source: Gândul

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