Word: front
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Even before the Ceausescus were executed, civilians had moved to assert authority over the army as well as the country. Television, which once beamed | out only the glory of Ceausescu, then helped topple him, became the heart and voice of the new government. The National Salvation Front gathered at the studio to announce that the revolution had triumphed -- and set about trying to steer it into calmer channels. The Front ordered all those who had seized or been issued firearms to turn them in and instructed revolutionary committees that had sprung up around the country to be "immediately subordinated...
That organizing process got haltingly under way last week. Citizens' committees in provincial cities such as Timisoara, where the revolt ignited in mid-December, refused the call to "subordinate" themselves, and demanded a role in the National Salvation Front. Workers who joined students in the streets of Craiova, a southwestern industrial town, for example, had no more coherent a plan than the warning "Beware of the wolf in sheep's clothing...
...dictator was being held in an attempt to free him. "We were in a situation that did not allow us to wait," Roman said. "Perhaps it was a mistake. But it is too early to judge." At least as real as an impending rescue attempt was the Salvation Front's fear that Ceausescu as a prisoner would give the Securitate a reason for fighting on. Some members of the Front may have thought it a good idea to offer the Rumanian people some blood quickly in order to head off wider vengeance directed against communists in general. "A long trial...
Rumania now enters a perilous new phase of its revolution. The tyrant has been overthrown, but a power vacuum has been left behind. The National Salvation Front is ruling by televised announcements; no authority is in full control anywhere. Weeks are likely to pass before anything resembling an effective government emerges...
...meantime, the only national institution with authority and legitimacy is the army. While the military has promised the Front its support, the ad hoc alliance faces the task of ending civil strife and imposing law-and-order on a country flooded with weapons and a thirst for retribution. Says a Western military attache: "Proper law-and-order can be restored only when the army takes all excess weapons out of circulation. But it can do that only when it has won the confidence of the population...