Traian Basescu, Romania's President Elect, announced in his speech after the majority of results had been announced in his favour by the Central Electoral Bureau that he would try to form a Government around the parliamentary groups of the PNL-PD Alliance. For his part, Adrian Nastase, the PSD leader, asked the new president in his defeat acceptance speech to take into account the fact that the PSD-PUR Union had won the majority of parliamentary seats and already attained parliamentary majority.
There are thus two plans to form the next Government. First, sufficient support must be obtained, i.e. 50% plus one of the total number of MPs in the lawmaking body. Given these circumstances, the negotiations that both political forces - PSD (Social Democrat Party) and PNL-PD (National Liberal Party-Democrat Party) Alliance - will now conduct with the remaining parliamentary parties will be all-important. The remaining parties are UDMR (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania), PRM (Greater Romania Party) and PUR (Romanian Humanist Party). Traian Basescu announced some simplifications: he will focus only on UDMR and PUR. Both UDMR and PUR indicated in statements made yesterday that the political games - the negotiations for the forming of the new Government - could go either way, i.e. either with PSD or the PNL-PD Alliance.
PUR leader Dan Voiculescu was not specific as to whether his party would maintain its alliance with PSD in view of forming the new Government. He said that PUR leaders would be analysing what to do over the coming days.
Yesterday morning, PUR made a statement in which it "reaffirmed its political and doctrinal independence." This could be interpreted as indicating the party's willingness to entertain Alliance invitations. PUR also rejected any statements by PNL and PD leaders of possible negotiations for forming the parliamentary majority or the government. PUR has 30 parliamentary seats, 19 of which are in the Chamber of Deputies and 11 in the Senate. In any combination and given the bipolarity of the current Parliament, such a position could swing the balance and help laws be passed in the future. PUR had too few seats in the former coalition such that when it walked out of the governmental coalition it was a member of together with PSD, the Government remained in office.
The UDMR leader Marko Bela said the party he represented was maintaining its option to work with PSD considering there was no other majority, yet specified that if PUR were to stop supporting PSD, the Union would reconsider its position. Several other views were expressed from the party, which comes as no surprise since UDMR itself is a mix of various political platforms. Gyorgy Frunda, one of the leaders of the UDMR centre-right platform, said he did not see any prospects for a partnership between the UDMR and the Alliance for the Government because he could remember the differences that existed in the coalition that ruled Romania between 1997 and 2000 (which included UDMR, PNL and PD). Peter Ekstein Kovacs, leader of the liberal branch within UDMR, said before the runoffs that the agreements between the two rounds of elections had produced no benefits for the Hungarians and had benefited only the PSD candidate, Adrian Nastase.
adelina.radulescu@zf.ro
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