Romania’s ruling party loses majority and faces no-confidence vote

Romania’s ruling party loses majority and faces no-confidence vote
By bne IntelliNews August 27, 2019

Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) lost its fragile parliamentary majority on August 26 after its junior partner, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (Alde), pulled out of the coalition to form a new political pole with the PSD dissidents concentrated around former PSD leader and ex-prime minister Victor Ponta in Pro Romania, a party formed in 2017. 

The outlook for Romania’s political stability deteriorated significantly when the junior ruling party joined the opposition, as this has not resulted in a new majority to replace the cabinet of Prime Minister Dancila who is very likely to lose her position in an imminent no-confidence vote.

Alde pledged to support any no-confidence vote against Dancila, but has not yet mentioned plans to be part of any new parliamentary majority.

The PSD and Alde formed their ruling coalition after the December 2016 general election, but have clashed recently over the PSD’s latest budget revision, and failed to agree on backing a joint candidate in the upcoming presidential election in November. 

Dancila said on August 26 that the PSD’s executive committee had agreed to continue supporting her government despite Alde’s decision to quit. 

“Unanimously, our colleagues argued that we must continue to govern. We have a responsibility towards those who gave us their votes in 2016, we have responsibility to implement the governing programme, a responsibility that we have undertaken with Alde, but now the PSD has to move on alone,” Dancila told a press conference following the committee meeting, a PSD statement said. 

The prime minister took a stronger line in a Facebook post, writing that “running from responsibility and cowardice will never take Romania further”. “The PSD will ensure the stability of this government,” she added. 

However, Raiffeisen analysts point out that while the PSD and Alde together had 50.8% of Romania’s MPs, the PSD alone has only 44.1% of seats in parliament, “so it would be very difficult for the government to survive.”

“The next 45 days look crucial as PSD will try to seek support from other MPs. At this time, the PSD needs another 29 MPs to win a parliamentary vote (Alde has 31 MPs),” says an analyst note from ING. 

Dancila has recently emerged as a credible political force after former PSD president Liviu Dragnea, Dancila’s former political mentor, was sent to prison to serve a 42-month sentence for corruption. Since then Dancila has gained firm control over the PSD apparatus, and was affirmed as the party’s presidential candidate at the weekend. 

Alde president Calin Popescu-Tariceanu has now abandoned his own plans to run in the presidential elections and vowed to support independent candidate Mircea Diaconu, who is also backed by Pro Romania.

Pro Romania leader Ponta called on his Facebook page for a “new, competent and professional government to fix what has been broken in the past three years/make a radical reform of public administration, investments in health and education, infrastructure and European funds = good governance!

“If Viorica Dancila doesn't want to or can't — we have to!” he added. 

There are various alternative possible developments following the re-positioning of Alde, but no baseline scenario since there is no obvious parliamentary majority. 

A minority PSD cabinet might be tolerated until next year’s general elections, under very tight control of the opposition — a condition not easily acceptable by Dancila’s party that already shows signs of fragmentation. Alternatively, Popescu-Tariceanu and Ponta could form a new majority with the opposition National Liberal Party (PNL) with a view to remaining in office after next year’s general elections.

While the latter scenario would secure a certain stability until the general elections next year, it is likely to result in a major political crisis after the general election when another political force is set to enter the parliament: the bloc formed by Save Romania Union (USR) and former technocratic prime minister Dacian Ciolos’ PLUS party. Based on existing polls, the PNL, PSD and USR-PLUS have very similar levels of support. Looking at the possible long-term scenarios, the PNL could get additional support from Alde and Pro Romania but possibly not enough to form a stable majority.

News

Dismiss