Will Romania have early elections?

There is increasing talk in Romania about holding early parliamentary elections.

Roxana Vasile, 14.01.2020, 14:00

The ruling National Liberal Party
has decided to begin talks with the political parties with the exception of the
Social Democratic Party on the subject of calling early elections. The
president of the country, Klaus Iohannis, and prime minister and leader of the
National Liberal Party, Ludovic Orban, would like to hold early elections at
the beginning of summer, at the same time as the local elections. For this to
happen, under the Constitution, Parliament would have to reject two consecutive
governments, but this also implies that one of the parliamentary parties files
a motion of no-confidence against the Liberal government and that the motion
passes. This is because the Liberals don’t think the resignation of prime
minister Orban is an option. The Liberal MP Florin Roman explains:

Our plan rules out this option. We
can no longer continue this state of affairs in which the Social Democratic
Party has in effect barricaded itself in Parliament. They dynamite all of the
government’s emergency orders and come up with projects we do not support.

The Liberals’ wish to hold early
elections is shared for the moment only by the USR-PLUS Alliance. The USR
leader, Dan Barna:

We are waiting for the necessary
talks to be able to move forward towards holding early elections, a move we see
necessary in order to achieve a majority in Parliament that would allow Romania
to begin these reforms and which, unfortunately, are only possible at the
moment through the procedure of the government’s assuming responsibility in
Parliament.

Removed from power in October
following a vote of no-confidence, the Social Democratic Party, which has the largest
number of MPs, rejects the idea of early elections and says it will do
everything in its power to oppose them. The Social Democratic MP Daniel Suciu:

This is only a smokescreen covering
up the fact that for the last two months they have been unable to find
solutions for something elementary, namely increasing the child allowance.
Also, the minimum pension hasn’t gone up for 1 million Romanians as of
September 1st, while teachers are caught between the minister, who
says one thing, and the prime minister, who says another.

The Alliance of Liberals and
Democrats, the Social Democrats’ former junior government partner, is also opposed
to early elections, invoking the political instability they would supposedly generate.
The Pro Romania party, a splinter group from the Social Democratic Party, is
not opposed, but doesn’t want to help either, while the People’s Movement Party
has its own conditions, all of which makes the Liberals’ mission rather
difficult. The Liberals need the early elections to take advantage of their victories
in the European and presidential elections. On the other hand, holding the
parliamentary elections next autumn, when they are due, would give the Social
Democrats a respite and give them hope that the Liberals would lose popularity while
they could recover some of the many percentages they lost in last year’s
elections.