A day after the Social Democrats ended its support for its own government this is what things look like:
- PSD leader Sorin Grindeanu’s reasons – weak from the get-go and with the occasional lie, or lies by omission – are looking even wetter.
- The sensation that the PSD wants to shirk its responsibilities is looking more obvious.
- The PSD is beginning to lose control over the reasons for the political crisis it created. Hardly surprising, given that, after the first day of consultations with President Nicusor Dan, the PSD can’t say what it wants now or why it wants what it wants. The PSD lacks strategic communication and has its leaders lack credibility and charisma, such as Grindeanu and the Manda-Vasilescu duo, whuke the Liberals have stars” such as Ilie Bolojan and Oana Gheorghiu – who already had a credible public profile. If Grindeanu is bland one, and Manda-Vasilescu more strident, (thanks to Olguta’s Greater Romania Party origins), Bolojan and Gheorghiu focus on substantive issues such as waste, the political capping of state-owned companies, and they emanate calculated sobriety.
- President Dan has been caught up with a backlog that he needs to deal with: as an institutional mediator, he can no longer avoid choosing one side or the other. There is no middle ground, and if the president stubbornly chooses appearances over reality, he risks complicating the crisis.
- The Liberals finally have the opportunity to stamp out the PSD wing in their own ranks.
- Junior partner USR now has the opportunity to show Romanians that it is politically mature and not just a focused on appearing “political correctness” in its public discourse. Fortunately, current USR leader Dominic Fritz seems hopeful in this regard.
- Finally, the radical AUR, with all its sins, has the chance to capitalize even more efficiently from the PSD’s drift than it has already capitalized.
- The crisis that the PSD has triggered has current potential but also long-term potential. At the moment, it is stirring already troubled waters but it also has the opportunity to clear those waters.
This is precisely because, before being a political crisis, the crisis invented by PSD-Grindeanu is a profoundly moral one.
Therefore, the PSD’s moral backbone will this time be the supreme criterion the party will be judged by. Because the way the PSD generated the crisis and then proceeded has made public opinion an active element in how the hostilities on the political scene play out.
That is why it is so important that the head of state no longer hides behind the fragile curtain of neutrality.
That is why it is so important that Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan stays on until the last moment, even if he is forced to leave by a vote of no-confidence.
That is why it is so important that coalition partners do not offer the PSD an easy way out of their dead end situation.
That is why it is so important even for AUR not to seem opportunistic and this implies a huge effort on their part not to give reasons to believe that, in any case they were planning to be the PSD’s accomplice.
The current domestic and international circumstances during this crisis are unlike anything we have all known so far.
As such, for everyone – the parties, president and citizens – the costs derived from a moral-political management that lacks vision and especially from a failure to exploit the crisis so that it becomes an opportunity for the future will be intolerable.
Finally, there is another fundamental dimension of the crisis that all political actors – (from the parliamentary parties to the head of state) are obliged to take into account; a dimension that all these actors have to harshly sanction. This is the abuse of power committed by the PSD, which organized an internal conclave which tried to destroy the sovereignty of another party – its coalition partner and co-signatory of a governing protocol that that party had not violated.
This is seen by the move of some PSD members who decided to force the PNL to dismiss its prime minister and appoint a PSD one.
In Romania, as in most of Europe – perhaps with the notable exception of Hungary – the electoral system and the mood of the electorate are predisposed to governing coalitions.
In Romania’s case, based on the Parliament after 2024 elections, the PSD is the decisive party for the configuration of any possible government.
The PNL and USR need the PSD, as they won’t govern with the radical AUR. And if AUR wants to be in government, needs the PSD as the PNL and USR won’t look at them.
In such a context, it goes without saying that the PSD has violated a red line, since it has brutally affirmed it has the right of veto over the internal decision of another party and can remove and then select the prime minister from its own ranks.
Today, the victim is PNL, but tomorrow, the victim could be AUR.
Such a thing must be sanctioned in principle, as well as in the spirit of self-preservation, regardless of the party and regardless of whether you are in government today or if you could be tomorrow.
President Nicușor Dan must be aware of this aspect, not just the parliamentary parties, since we can assume that the president has no interest in encouraging (even passively) a political crisis.
In its efforts to oust Bolojan, the PSD has not only taking the country into uncharted waters but has involuntarily created conditions for an alliance between Romania’s main centrist and extremist party.
