Remember the Planet of Apes? The end of the movie finds Charlton Heston in front of the Statue of Liberty lying in the sand. He is shocked finding out he’s been fighting on Earth, the same planet he’s been fighting the apes. ‘You, bastards! You finally did it!’ he shouts as he realizes a nuclear war had put an end to human civilization.

The Democrat-Liberal convention is not as dramatic. However, the internal war has put an end to Romanians’ hope of change. Mr. Emil Boc, the incumbent prime minister, has been reelected 868 votes against 499 for Mr. Blaga, his counter-candidate.

Present on the convention day, president Traian Basescu could not abstain himself from taking sides. He wanted and got Boc as party leader again, as he is the only one carrying all orders to the very end from the presidential palace.

‘You who get in, leave aside all hopes,’ said Dante Alighieri. All those who hoped for a change within PDL are disappointed. I don’t care much for Blaga. But any change would have meant bringing hope to light. For me, all I can say is linked to an old Romanian saying: all birds die on their own language (tongue).

It’s ironic that Mr. Boc said, referring to the opposition leaders: "One of them goes to work one to four and the other overturns in his car as a co-pilot, every two weeks. How could the country be led by such people? We are not allowed to leave Romania at the hands of the Socialist Alliance's populism," Boc said.

Thinking the other way around… How can we keep the country being led by a prime minister (and also PDL leader) who had an egg smashed on his head by his own father? How can we keep the country being led by a prime minister who promised in 2008 the first thing he would do when elected is to raise the teachers’ salaries by 50 per cent… and then he cut down the salaries by 25 per cent?

You bastards! You finally did it! You finally took away our hope!

The king is dead, long live the king! The only problem is that we are not ruled by a king. We are ruled by a president. What a president! Sometimes I wonder if he is not coming from the planet of apes… the same one Boc is coming from.

Maxy