BUCHAREST - Romania renamed a square in central Bucharest after former King Michael to celebrate his 91st birthday on Thursday, 65 years after Soviet-backed communists forced him to abdicate.
Although a return to monarchy is not on the public agenda in
the EU member state, Romanian politicians are divided over their
attitudes towards Michael.
While right-wing President Traian Basescu has criticised the
former king for leaving the throne and last year did not attend
Michael’s first speech in parliament since his 1947 abdication,
a leftist government showed support for the former monarch.
“Let’s send him the warmest birthday wishes and sincere
congratulations for what he did for Romania throughout history,”
said Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who is favoured to win a
December election against Basescu’s rightist allies.
“King Michael I is a living symbol of Romania,” Ponta said
on his Facebook page.
Born in 1921 in the Peles castle in the Carpathian
mountains, Michael is a descendant of the German Hohenzollern
dynasty and a cousin of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.
The king played a major part in changing Romania’s fate in
the World War Two, participating in a 1944 coup to overthrow
fascist wartime leader Marshal Ion Antonescu, after which
Romania broke with Nazi Germany and switched to the Allied side.
After communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown
and executed in a violent revolution in 1989, Romanian
politicians fearing Michael’s influence blocked his first few
attempted visits after decades of exile in Switzerland, Britain
and the United States.
He finally returned to Romania in 1992 and regained
citizenship in 1997 after reformist President Emil
Constantinescu took over from former communist Ion Iliescu.
Michael made several appeals for the restoration of the
monarchy in the early 1990s. Iliescu deported him on several
occasions and even deployed tanks on one occasion to prevent him
from touring the eastern Balkan country.
Many Romanians respect Michael, but too few support the
restoration of the monarchy to make it a possibility.
Some 200 supporters of the aged king, who walked without
support to greet the small crowd in the square, located in an
upscale Bucharest neighbourhood close to government
headquarters.
They chanted his name and sang “Happy Birthday” after
Bucharest mayor Sorin Oprescu revealed a bust of Michael.
“I came here because my father gave the military salute to
the king in the 1940s,” said Filip Atanasiu, a 69-year old
pensioner.
“And I am looking with sadness at the royal family, at what
they meant to the country and how now they are not at all
involved in ruling Romania.”
