The Minister of National Defence, Corneliu Dobritoiu and other MApN officials joined the inhabitants of Bucharest yesterday in celebrating the Day of the Romanian Army in the Izvor Park of the Capital. Bucharesters were invited to watch demonstrative exercises of parachuting and rope rappel from helicopter, enjoy the performances of the Representative Orchestra of the Army and the Doina Dance Group of the Army, and drill-team exercises performed by the 30th Guard Regiment ‘Mihai Viteazul.’ Also in the show were demonstrations of bomb squad experts, flights of miniature aircrafts, reconstructions of combat and drill scenes, and military hardware used in theaters of operations. On this occasion, Dobritoiu announced that the events organised this year on December 1, for the National Day of Romania, will not be on a very large scale, because of the “chronic austerity” of the Defence Ministry. “We will not commit the air forces or other categories of fighting hardware, because of the very high cost. (…) The costs are not that big, actually, but they are very high for the chronic austerity of the Defence budget, i.e. EUR 1 M. I find this very much, when we suffer from chronic underfinancing,” the minister explained, quoted by Mediafax. According to Dobritoiu, the Army suffers from “the lack of a security culture among Romanian political elites, which collapse budgets or viscerally play with budgets as they please.” The minister added that a better situation for the budget of the Army will start being experienced next year.
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