Romania has an interim prime minister

Deputy PM Gabriel Oprea takes over prime-ministerial tasks while PM Victor Ponta is recovering from surgery.

Bogdan Matei, 23.06.2015, 13:54

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis has
eventually signed the decree allowing Deputy Prime Minister Gabriel Oprea to be
interim head of government. President Iohannis had previously announced he was
waiting for the medical documents proving that Prime Minister Victor Ponta was
unable to carry out his duties. Victor Ponta is not unable to run the
Government, he is only unable to walk, the President said before receiving the
medical documents, official sources say.

Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta was
operated on a week ago, in a clinic in Turkey, after he had suffered a knee
injury during a basketball game. After the surgery Ponta announced he needed
time to recover and undergo complex medical procedures. On Sunday the Prime
Minister said in a Facebook post, apparently his favourite communication means,
that he would ask President Iohannis to agree to replace him temporarily from
his prime minister position. Deputy Prime Minister for security affairs and
leader of the National Union for the Progress of Romania, UNPR, which is a
junior partner in the Government coalition dominated by Ponta’s social
democrats, Gabriel Oprea had already taken over, as of last week, the Prime
Minister’s tasks.

Ponta’s one-month medical leave has
triggered criticism from the opposition. According to the co-president of the
National Liberal Party, Alina Gorghiu, Victor Ponta has suspended himself from
his position as Prime Minister. Gorghiu has once more called on Ponta to
resign, as the National Anti-Corruption Directorate prosecutors are
investigating him for alleged corruption.

The head of the Social Democratic Party’s
National Council, Rovana Plumb, has said that the party has confidence in the
Government’s well functioning with Gabriel Oprea as interim PM. Pundits are
rather sceptical though, as the interim Prime Minister is one of the most
sophisticated and unpredictable figures in Romanian politics. Although Oprea’s
centre-left party has not won any election by itself, he has proven
indispensable for all governments, irrespective of their political colour.

More than ten years ago, the would-be president
Traian Basescu openly accused Oprea, a retired general and a member of the
Social Democratic Party at the time, of being the head of the former Social
Democrat Prime Minister Adrian Nastase’s personal mafia. Oprea then left the
Social Democratic Party, which prompted Basescu to reconsider his position
towards him and agree to include the National Union for the Progress of Romania
in the cabinets he personally controlled, although Emil Boc and Mihai Razvan
Ungureanu officially headed them. The government headed by the latter was
toppled three years ago following a censure motion filed by the opposition,
supported by the UNPR MPs. The National Union for the Progress of Romania would
later join the new parliament majority controlled by the Social Democrats.

Gabriel Oprea, who had been Victor Ponta’s
godfather when he first married, has recently said the latter is a good prime
minister, but that the corruption scandal he is involved in is a huge problem
and that, had he been Victor Ponta, he would have resigned. The Deputy Prime
Minister has also said he supports the President’s initiatives consolidating
the rule of law. It is precisely in the name of the rule of law that President
Klaus Iohannis has been calling on Prime Minister Victor Ponta accused of corruption
to resign for almost one month now, as newspapers point out.