PNL Honorary Chairman Mircea Ionescu Quintus was decorated on Friday by President Klaus Iohannis with the ‘Romanian Star’ Order in rank of Officer, a day before turning 100 years old.
Several liberal leaders attended the ceremony: Raluca Turcan, Catalin Predoiu, Ludovic Orban and Gheorghe Flutur.
President Iohannis told the liberal veteran “it is an honour to decorate you today, a person wearing with such dignity the age of 100. I am glad to stand beside someone who embodies a century of history and eight decades of liberalism and democracy. I wish Happy Birthday and I hope you will continue to inspire the new generations by your example.”
In his turn Mircea Ionescu Quintus said at Cotroceni Palace: “It hasn’t been easy to live such a long life, as life gave me good things, less good things and bad things, fortunately the end of my life is with the good ones. (…) I tried to do my duty to the people, to the society and to my country, as lawyer, as Romanian and soldier, as politician during the past 25 years.”
He recalled his political career after 1989, started as Deputy Chamber of Deputies Speaker. “All my life I tried to avoid compromises, of incorrect issues,” Quintus said, adding that PNL was the party of his family, as his grandfather was one of the liberal leaders in 1875. “For 100 years the Ionescu-Quintus family lives along with PNL and that’s why I believe I’ve done my duty until now,” Quintus said.