TVR's general director suffers heart attack

Stelian Tanase, general director for TVR, suffered a heart attack on Saturday and at this time has been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Fundeni Hospital in Bucharest, according to tvr.ro.

His condition is stable and Tanase will be released from the hospital on Monday. Sources close to the family have said that Tanase, age 62, underwent surgery to have a coronary stent installed, according to MEDIAFAX. The same sources say that doctors are optimistic about the director’s condition.

Last week, the Parliament was scheduled to vote on Tanase’s nomination for the position of TVR general director but the vote was postponed due to absences. Stelian Tanase was named interim director on December 20 2013. Previously, the position belonged to Claudiu Saftoiu, who was fired on December 10.

Born in Bucharest, Stelian Tanase graduated from the local university’s Faculty of Philosophy in 1977. Before 1989, two out of his first three books were banned by the Communist regime censorship apparatus.

Tanase became a public figure soon after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

After July 1991, Tănase sided with the group inside the Civic Alliance that called for the organization’s transformation into a political party. As a member of the newly created Civic Alliance Party inside the opposition alliance (the Romanian Democratic Convention), he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the 1992-1996 legislature, representing the city of Bucharest. He was vice-president of the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs (until April 1995) and member of the Special Committee for the Advancing a Legislative Proposal Regarding the Functioning of Political Parties.

In 2006, he was chosen member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania by its president, Vladimir Tismăneanu. The Commission was founded by President Traian Băsescu in order to provide for an official and academic basis for condemning the Romanian communist regime.