A
\nformer technocratic prime minister of Romania and a European commissioner for
\nagriculture, Dacian Ciolo\u015f resigned as president of the Save Romania Union,
\nfour months after being elected. The reason for his resignation is that the party
\nleadership, which is dominated by allies of the former president, Dan Barna, rejected
\nthe reform project he initiated. Ciolo\u015f says this does not mean he will abandon
\nthe party:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Owing
\nto the lack of support for this plan in the National Bureau, I believe the
\ndecent thing to do is tender my resignation. I remain, however, in the party. In
\norder to have a future, and I believe it must have a future, this party needs
\nrefreshing, needs to reconnect itself to the society, needs the courage to recognise
\nthe limits it must overcome in the near future.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The
\nformer transport minister C\u0103t\u0103lin Drul\u0103 has taken over as interim leader and
\nimmediately announced a change of course to a more Liberal political orientation.
\nHe called on party members to remain united. With the Social Democratic Party,
\nthe National Liberal Party and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in
\nRomania together in power, thus enjoying a 70% majority in Parliament, the Save
\nRomania Union is in fact the only democratic opposition party in Romania. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The
\nother parliamentary party in opposition, the Alliance for the Union of
\nRomanians (AUR), increasingly looks like the ideological heir to Romania’s far
\nright movement from the inter-war period. On Monday, they were responsible for
\na worrying incident that occurred in the Chamber of Deputies during debates on
\na no-confidence motion on the subject of energy bills. The energy minister
\nVirgil Popescu, who was trying to explain why the population has to pay such
\nsteep energy bills, was assaulted by the leader of the Alliance for the Union
\nof Romanians George Simion, who grabbed the minister by the neck. This is the first
\ntime Parliament is witnessing an incident involving physical violence, despite
\nbeing no stranger to verbal abuse. The meeting was suspended and when it was
\nresumed the only MPs present were those from the Alliance for the Union of
\nRomanians and the Save Romania Union, who initiated the no-confidence motion. No
\nsanction was taken against Simion, because there are no provisions in this
\nsense in Parliament’s regulations. The Liberal leader Florin C\u00ee\u0163u said he would
\npropose clear and tough measures for such incidents. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The
\nAlliance for the Union of Romanians has a busy record, including a violent
\nprotest outside Parliament against the mandatory use of the Covid green certificate
\nin the workplace; the forceable entry by its leader George Simion into the Timi\u015foara
\ncity hall; and frequent heckling of MPs from other parliamentary parties,
\nincluding filming them without permission and physically accosting them. Through
\nits leaders, the Alliance of the Union of Romanians has also been aggressively promoting
\nanti-vaccination, ultranationalism and sovereigntism. It was only
\nrecently that this party described the Holocaust as a minor theme that does not
\ndeserve a special place in the school curriculum, which sparked vehement
\nreactions from the Israeli embassy and the Elie Wiesel National Institute for
\nStudying the Holocaust in Romania. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The violence
\nwith which the party is promoting its so-called ideas seems, however, to be to
\nthe liking of Romanian voters: from the fourth biggest party in Parliament, it now
\nclimbed to number two in opinion polls. (CM)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Divisions within the Save Romania Union and a violent incident in Parliament dominate the local political scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":73974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[29457],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-91014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n