- Total control of the governing program”
- “Total freedom in the choice of ministers”
- PSD “will play its own hand”
This is what PSD leader Sorin Grindeanu said Wednesday, when he announced that his party would assume a minority government.
But only two days later, after talks held on Friday with the leaders of the pro-Western parties, President Nicușor Dan declared: “we have returned to the political deadlock that we thought we’d overcome on Tuesday.”
Then the head of state pointed to a culprit: Ilie Bolojan’s party. “From Tuesday to today, PNL has changed its position,” Nicușor Dan wrote on Friday. And immediately after the president’s post, PSD leaders came with accusations against Ilie Bolojan, like they were ordering unity.
It’s an interesting and hollow reasoning:
- He came out of his “mediator”, role, which he voluntarily put on, but never really took off when it came to the PSD (falsely invoking that it would not be constitutional to do so), but he was suspiciously relaxed when it came to the PNL (proof that, for Nicușor Dan, “constitutional” has a variable geometry).
- In his Friday comments, in which he noted he had not expected the blockage and where he also blamed the PNL, Nicușor Dan omitted one essential thing: the Sorin Grindeanu’s dishonest and unconstructive position where it emerged that the PSD sees itself as the only solution and at the same time is not accountable to anyone. A classic case of PSD arrogance, of course, but also totally unfitting in the current political context. Because from Grindeanu’s statements on Wednesday, it appears that the PSD believes itself to be more important than it actually is in reality, despite the number of seats it has in Parliament. The PSD has a lack of credibility and has irremediably compromised itself by breaching the protocol of the former coalition and bringing down the Bolojan Government in an extremely delicate period for Romania. But, consistent with the game he’s been playing these last few months in favor of the PSD, Nicușor Dan overlooked the absurd demands the Social Democrats made on Wednesday. It another in a long line of serious errors committed by the head of state given the fact that the PSD seems to be at the origin of the new political deadlock blockage that exasperated Nicușor Dan. The lesson is once again is that as long as President Dan stubbornly accepts anything from the PSD, the result is invariably either the collapse of what already exists such as the former government or the impossibility of building something new, like a future government.
The problem with Nicușor Dan is, therefore, that overnight he came to consider legitimate any illegitimate demand expressed by the PSD, and to consider the claims of the other camp (PNL-USR) illegitimate, no matter how legitimate they may be.
On Friday Nicușor Dan considered two illegitimate claims of the PSD to be legitimate:
- The refusal to accept a rotating government (although this mechanism had existed in the former coalition).
- The refusal to accept an agreement with PNL, USR and UDMR, which would contain some emergency brakes for the government team and governing program, despite the fact that the PSD has shown that it is sufficiently irresponsible to drive the country off the cliff. .
You can see why Grindeanu is bothered by the PNL and USR proposals, but less so why they bother Nicușor Dan, if you start from the premise that the head of state’s priority is the country and not the PSD.
Parties everywhere in the democratic world obviously have group political interests, in addition to interests that are in the service of the country. In fact, the presidents also play on this double playing field, and Nicușor Dan is no exception.
But Nicușor Dan has been giving clear signals for several months that while is concerned about the PSD’s party interests, he is irritated by the calculations made by the PNL, USR and even the UDMR. This is not the spirit of a “mediator”.
Then, as president of the country and especially as president of Romania after May 5, 2026, Nicușor Dan would should have been more receptive to the PNL and USR proposal than to the PSD proposal.
He should have tried for the sake of establishing a balance of power between deeply antagonistic parties. And also for the sake of minimizing the risk that the PSD will again abuse its position, because it has a long record on this subject which was most recently updated on May 5 and then in the appointment of Adrian Veștea.
The incoherence of his actions and the discrepancy between what he says and what he does have rapidly become an essential feature of Nicușor Dan’s first year in office.
From this point of view, the new political deadlock declared by the head of state is not surprising, it will cost us and is in line with the way Nicușor Dan proceeds.
