Towards a big 3-party coalition?
The National Liberal Party - PNL and the Social Democratic Party - PSD have decided to start negotiations to form a new government.
Leyla Cheamil, 09.11.2021, 14:00
In Bucharest, the idea of a new government made up of the PNL (National Liberal Party) — PSD (Social Democratic Party) – UDMR (Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania) is getting shape, after the minority cabinet made up of the Liberals and ethnic Hungarians, led by the Liberal leader Florin Cîţu, was dismissed by a censure motion in early October, and after Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis announced last week that he would call the parties for consultations only when an assumed parliamentary majority was formed. The Liberals no longer agreed to rebuild the alliance with USR (Save Romania Union), so, for the Liberals, the winning option seems to be the Social Democrats, for the time being. PNL previously had an alliance with PSD between 2013 and 2014, and that was not the first governing alliance between the Right and the Left. In 2008, the Democratic Party, de facto led by the then President Traian Basescu, formed a government with Mircea Geoanas Social Democrats.
Therefore, the Liberal leadership decided, with a vast majority, to officially start negotiations with PSD to form the government. UDMR and the national minorities will also be part of this new majority. The conditions set by the Liberals are not negotiable. They want no taxes to be increased and that the state should be an honest partner of the business environment. Last but not least, they want the formation of a majority around the PNL with a Liberal prime minister. PNL also intends to continue the administrative reforms, especially in relation to salaries and pensions, as well as to respect the partnership with the head of state, Klaus Iohannis. The Liberal president and the interim prime minister Florin Cîțu says, quote: “Reforms are important to me. I have to see with whom I can make these reforms in the next period, and we must find a partner, because PNL alone does not have a majority in Parliament. I am interested in carrying on with the reforms included in the National Recovery and Resilience Program – PNRR, with the pension system reform, the salary reform, the public administration reform, and I want to make sure that we maintain the growth rate of investment expenditures” Florin Cîțu said.
In turn, the PSD leadership, which views the alliance with the Liberals as a chance to come to power, unanimously voted to start negotiations with them. “The National Political Council has given its consent, because we are open to negotiate in order to speed up the resolution of the Romanians problems,” said the first vice-president of PSD, Sorin Grindeanu. The Social Democrats have also come up with a list of measures to be taken in the next period, which includes: managing the pandemic, raising allowances, increasing pensions and the minimum wage. The UDMR is also to be part of the future government. They decided to start negotiations for the formation of a large coalition with PNL and PSD supported by the national minorities. The ethnic Hungarians president Kelemen Hunor has said that this coalition makes sense if reforms can be made to revise the Constitution, in order to introduce the concept of parliamentary republic, which is an important goal. (LS)
