Following the recommendations of the party conference, the day after the conference adjourned the Grand National Assembly convened to elect Ceausescu as president of the Council of State, and it approved legislation to implement most of the other conference decisions. At the same time, the assembly elected a new Council of State consisting of (in addition to Ceausescu) three vice presidents and fifteen other members. A new Council of Ministers was also elected, with Maurer again named as prime minister. Apostol was demoted from his position as a first deputy prime minister to his previously held post as chairman of the General Union of Trade Unions. Draghici was removed from the party Secretariat and given a position as a deputy prime minister under Maurer. With the successful demotion of his chief rivals, Ceausescu emerged at the close of 1967 as the undisputed leader of both the party and the state. Rehabilitation and De-Stalinization With his power base firmly established, Ceausescu acted to fully disassociate his regime from the Gheorghiu-Dej era. In April 1968, at a plenary session of the Central Committee, the report of the commission of inquiry, which had been secretly established in late 1965, was made public. The Gheorghiu-Dej regime was severely indicated for fraudulently conspiring to arrange the trial and execution of Patrascanu in 1954 and for violations of justice in the other political show trials of the 1950s. Patrascanu was exonerated of all charges, and several other of the trial victims were officially rehabilitated. Because of this close association with Gheorghiu-Dej and his position as head of the internal affairs ministry during the period of the trials, the Central Committee dismissed Draghici from all his positions. Apostol and Stoica were censured but were allowed to remain in their posts, although their standing in the party was considerably weakened. Throughout the 1968-70 period the Ceausescu regime continued a gradual and cautious policy of de-Stalinization in domestic affairs and continued, as well, to assert the country's independent stance in international relations. The domestic relaxation was limited, however, and, in an address to an association of artists in April 1968, Ceausescu cautioned both intellectuals and artists not to overstep the bounds established by the party. The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact) in August 1968 posed a crisis to the Ceausescu regime and raised the possibility of Soviet intervention in Romania. Ceausescu's firm denunciation of the invasion, however, served to unify the population behind him. His call for national mobilization and the creation of a home guard for national defense elicited broad popular support and gained him stature as the defender of Romanian independence.