I should’ve written “Guten Abend” instead of “buna seara”, but I don’t mean to torture my readers more than necessary. I’ve recently learned about Ion Caramitru’s prodigal son Andrei having returned from Switzerland (bmr-icstory), much like the older Ion Ratiu, to give Romanians Nestle candies in exchange for votes.

So I first covered the so-called “USR sex scandal” (previous article), but now that it’s out there, let’s finally consider Caramitru the Young, but not before the Elder.

Ion Caramitru is a well-known actor in Romania and former voice of “1989 events” – I remember in the early months of 1990, listening to the “good evening love” song on the national radio being introduced by the DJ with “Ladies and gentlemen, here speaks to you Ion Caramitru, FSN (National Salvation Front) vice-president, with an important message for the country”. I thought it was funny. It was an older song by Adrian Enescu, where Caramitru is basically reciting and Loredana Groza is “grozava” (meaning “superb”), as usual.

Mr Caramitru Sr, however, didn’t find it funny when his duet partner (Loredana) republished the song on an EP without giving him royalties. The press reported his win in the matter as being over copyright (aka “author’s rights”: rtv-cararoy; can’t help feeling like that some reporters would be well served to read my intro to IP and longer expose).

I didn’t know about that civil matter with Loredana; last I had seen / heard of Ion Caramitru after leaving the country was seeing him getting beaten in a minor role of a big budget movie, probably Mission Impossible ‘96.

Meanwhile, his son Andrei had left the country for Switzerland, where he had an aunt who had apparently left Romania before 1989. (That to me raises questions on Caramitru Sr who had not been purged, given that back then having relatives outside was a career-ending “flaw”.) Much like myself in Canada, Caramitru Jr discovered that without having been a math star at Nicolae Balcescu / Sf Sava, he easily outshined Western-educated peers in that field. Unlike me, he intelligently oriented himself toward finance, which is something I thought of but never quite did, and had a meteoric rise in a few important consulting firms such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting, then returned to Romania (also unlike me). In a way, he’s a more mature and compelling Cristian Dascalu.

I don’t know how he feels about Switzerland, but for me this is a country where I had some amazing experiences. In any event, I think he is deserving of more exposure (which he is getting on TV: ytef-icprez, ytc33-iciaru, ytb1-brac) and he’s someone I’ll be following closely, especially considering that he had a chance to experience direct democracy .. umm.. directly.

Sources / More info: bmr-icstory, rtv-cararoy, fb-ic