- “Frankly, I tell you, both as a member of the Social Democratic Party (the PSD) and from discussions with party leaders, I do not believe that the PSD will enter the new government. It would prefer that someone else do the dirty work of government. A friend of mine sent me a message along these lines recently. I mean why sit on a hedgehog? The party gives you a task: you trim the hedgehog or you get someone else to sit on the pins. At the moment, the PSD is trying to get someone else to sit the hedgehog. If the party doesn’t manage to get the best deal possible out of the new government, such as someone else doing the dirty work in the form of a sacrificial prime minister, the PSD will step in and ‘save the situation’ according yo the PSD mayor of Buzău, Constantin Toma in comments made Sunday on Digi24.
The picture painted by the Social Democrat mayor once again exposes the corrosive effect of the PSD during these three weeks of negotiations about reducing the budget deficit and forming the new government.
As such, President Nicușor Dan begins a decisive week pressurized to accept one of the foreseeably worst solutions: either he accepts the terms of the PSD, and the new coalition will from the start be tired, worn out and fragile; or he ignores them, with the risks this entails – the risk of a minority government or the risk of a government led by technocratic prime minister (in other words, governments that are weak and subject to blackmai).
Both options undermine political stability and the perspective of implementing necessary reforms.
Of course, the leaders of the PSD know very well what they are doing, but as I have shown in previous commentaries, the PSD party priorities are inversely proportional to the country’s priorities.
Invariably, this has been the reality for the last 35 years, but now the PSD is about to step into its own trap: the current political-electoral picture has profoundly changed and yet the PSD does not seem willing to make the necessary changes.
With an almost blind self-confidence shown by former Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu in the run-up to the presidential election in November 2024, his successor, Sorin Grindeanu, now displays a similar short-sighted self-confidence, in the negotiations for the formation of a new government.
Because what PSD and Grindeanu don’t seem to understand, despite the obvious reality is the fact that the primitive style of cunning maneuvering used by his predecessors is clinically dead thanks to Ciolacu and his leadership of the PSD.
The approach that “we pretend to pay, but others will actually pay the bill” – simply doesn’t work anymore (in the current circumstances, the bill will indeed be paid by others, but the PSD won’t escape payment either).
If this approach had still worked, Ciolacu would have been elected president in last year’s elections. From the PSD’s perspective, its coalition government (Eds: starting in 2020) was merely to let the Liberals take the flack in the critical period, before coming to the fore and acting as if the party was the savior distributing alms in 2024, the electoral year.
Despite this, the PSD still ended up losing the presidential election twice in six months in 2024 and 2025.
It has become clear that the PSD’s cunning approach no longer works. .
Why, perhaps, do Grindeanu and his comrades in the PSD leadership still believe that the scam could be revived for the next cycle? The latest opinion poll shows that the ‘dead man’ remains dead . PSD has slumped to the level of the National Liberal Party. Both formerly major political parties are just half of the nationalist AUR party in the polls.
“We were stubborn and stubborn we remain”. This may sound good as a slogan at a meeting of drunken masochists, but if PSD insists on this approach, it will only lead to pain.
If, when a new government is appointed and the traditional cunning of the PSD still bears fruit, meaning that President Dan and the other parties will bow to the Social Democrats’ demands, Romania will start is tough road to recovery limping. It won’t even be a real victory for Grindeanu and his comrades.
In the not too distant future, the PSD will look in the mirror and will inevitably see the same ugly face – the face that the cunning of the Ciolacu legacy. A face that will only become more hideous with time.
For this party that traumatically marked the 35 years of post-communism, neither the transition to the opposition, nor the variant of a technocrat prime minister present a brighter future.
Almost half of the Romanians seem to have had enough of its old-style tricks.
Anything, anything else, seems to be the message of the people according to polls, but the PSD does not get it. Grindeanu & Co don’t seem aware that Romanians have changed their minds about them.
- PS: On May 5, the day after the first redo of presidential elections, the PSD-supported candidate, Crin Antonescu, failed to qualify for the runoff. The voice of reason in the Social Democrats’ camp came from Mayor Constantin Toma. He demanded the resignation of the party leadership and confirmed that in the November presidential elections (Eds: subsequently cancelled over Russian meddling allegations) that there had been an order from PSD organizations around the country to support George Simion. to ensure Marcel Ciolacu victory in the Dec. 8 second round which of course never happened….
Former President Traian Băsescu undergoes heart surgery in Paris: reports
