historian Adrian Cioroianu, himself the co-author of a new manual and a vocal critic of the methods of Pecican's adversaries during the polemic, publicly sided with the Sigma authors, and argued in their favor during televised confrontations with Marius Tucă and Octavian Paler. Eventually, the original version failed to win Ministry approval. In later editions, the Sigma textbook was published with significant changes in content. In 2002, the PSD Minister Ecaterina Andronescu removed it from the list of endorsed textbooks, which caused Pecican to issue a formal protest, supported by, among others, the historian and West University professor Victor Neumann. Both Pecican and Neumann expressed concerns that this was signaling a return to official history, and made mention of inconsistencies in educational policies. 2001 Memorandum With Molnar Gusztav, Smaranda Enache, Marius Cotmeanu, Miklós Bakk and other Romanian and Magyar intellectuals from Transylvania, Pecican founded the Provincia Group around the magazine Provincia (April 2000); it was created as an advocacy group in favor of debating the majority-minority relationship in Romania, dedicated to reshaping Romanian administrative policies and renouncing centralism. On December 8, 2001, it issued a Memorandum calling for a public debate on the issue of Transylvanian autonomy. The Memorandum drew criticism from several sources. In an editorial for Ziua, Adrian Cioroianu expressed his own support for a degree of decentralization, but argued that the document was unrealistic in its assumptions and more radical goals, and that it did not represent a unitary perspective on the issue. The Memorandum was dismissed outright by President Ion Iliescu, a gesture which prompted Pecican to address him in an open letter. The more nationalist political forces called on authorities to indict the document's authors, based on an interpretation of the Constitution of Romania. Other polemics In late October 2005, the journalist Melania Mandaș Vergu published an article in Gândul on the issue of Pecican's alleged candidature for government office in Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu's Justice and Truth cabinet. The article made reference to Pecican's involvement in the textbook scandal (focusing on a reference to "Decebalus' sensual lips", made in the Sigma volume) and identified Pecican's ideas with those of Sabin Gherman, the advocate of a high degree of Transylvanian autonomy (it alleged that Pecican shared Gherman's statement "I'm all fed up with Romania!"). Replying in Cotidianul, Pecican dismissed the tone and content of the article as "deliberate manipulation and distortion", while recalling that, during