In his second year as president, Nicușor Dan lost his sense of reality as well as his sense of ridicule.
He demonstrated it on both axes of the country’s policy: foreign and domestic.
It began in January, with the Davos Forum, one of the major institutions on the international scene.
The President of Romania did not even dare to make an appearance there, because in Nicușor Dan’s head, Davos is a fad. “I don’t just go on foreiign trips”, this was the message that the head of state wanted to convey to Romanians at that time, according to the explanation offered by presidential adviser Marius Lazurca.
And it continued in June, with the appointment of the prime minister, another important institution, but this time a domestic one.
After waiting unacceptably long to nominate a prime minister (a month, with essential reforms knocking on the door, and Romania risking to lose huge amounts of money from the PNRR), in the course of a few days, the president appointed two prime ministers – one more ill-suited than the other, and the second makes you weep. And at the same time, both were already dead horses when they were designated. It couldn’t be anything else, because President Dan showed a total contempt for political reality, for the structure of the Parliament and for some basic principles.
At the time of publication, Cotroceni seems gearing up for a third nomination after the UDMR announced Tuesday afternoon that it would not endorse the Veștea government. And UDMR votes are key. Although no obscure maneuver can be ruled out in which a Veștea government gets the votes it needs from AUR.
Given that Nicușor Dan boasts that he is a hundred times more informed than the average Romanian, you can only conclude that if this is the case, then the president has no idea what to do with the tons of information he has access to. .
In January, when justifying the strategic absence of his boss in Davos, adviser Lazurca stressed that the president must stay in the country to “prioritize the crises, emergencies and events that are on his agenda.”
Given the sour lesson of May and June, I am beginning to think that perhaps it would help us more for the head of state go on more foreign trips, because when he’s in Romania he does not seem to prioritize crises but rather to amplify or create new ones.
It is also true that it would be more constructive for Nicușor Dan to accept some limits to his visits so that he does not go just anywhere abroad. It would be advisable to have some beautiful islands and blue lagoons (as pristine as possible if possible), because sometimes the super-informed president can sadly blunder in this regard as well, choosing the worst destinations. This was the case with the inaugural session of the Board of Peace, the toy with which Trump tries to isolate the UN, which was packed with illiberal leaders and established autocrats… plus our Nicusor.
Davos, Trump, PSD, Tomac and Veștea are not just names and reputations, but rather substantial reasons to believe that without being a hundred times more informed you can still be alive and stay relevant. But without a sense of reality and without a sense of ridicule, behold, you catastrophically hit the fence.
