Behind the scenes. PNL makes the first gesture of frond towards Iohannis: Prime Minister of Cîţu

In the first intervening hours, General Nicolae Ciuca got rid of some of the former Prime Minister Ludovic Orban. The Secretary General of the Government, Antonel Tănase, and the Councilor Mădălina Simion were asked to resign by order of the acting Prime Minister. “You have no job today. Tell the press that I asked you to resign,” Nicolae Ciucă sent them, briefly, liberal sources for the statement of “Adevărul”. .

The attitude of the acting prime minister annoyed the leaders of the PNL, who from the first hours began to discuss taking a position on the behavior of Ciucă, the one chosen by Iohannis for the interim leadership of the Government. What disgusted him in the first place and gave the signal for revolt was especially the express request for resignation of Antonel Tănase, an elder of the party, treasurer for many years, but also close to Ludovic Orban. “The decision had to be discussed at the party, not taken in a hurry. Nor did he tell Ludovic Orban. You don’t do that without announcing it. It is no longer about advising the party president,” said a member of the NLP leadership. by “Adevărul”.

In fact, the decision to remove Antonel Tănase was duplicated by a second decision made by the acting Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă. More precisely, in the position of Secretary General of the Government, Dragoş Condrea, apparently a technocrat, was appointed director of the SGG legal department, but which is contested by the liberals. “Condrea was close to Ponta and before Elena Udrea. In addition, in the past he was involved in several scandals that appeared in the press,” specified one of the leaders of the NLP, who stressed that at the moment no one wanted to question the decisions of Ciucă as interim, as he has the full support of Klaus Iohannis.

“We prefer someone from the party”

However, the Liberals rebelled within the party at the possible election of Ciuca as a variant of the PNL for the post of prime minister with full powers. “We prefer someone from the party,” said one NLP leader. In the end, at the NLP leadership meeting, Florin Cîţu was voted overwhelmingly as the party’s proposal for the post of prime minister, with only one abstention. Nicolae Ciucă and Marcel Boloş were also on the short list of liberals, making people unrelated to the rank and file of the party, the first recently registered with the NLP and elected senator by Dolj. It is the first gesture of rebellion by the NLP towards Klaus Iohannis, in the conditions in which the head of state had shown that he was assuming the leadership of the negotiations for the formation of a parliamentary majority around the NLP. Ludovic Orban tried to sweeten the situation by introducing the fact that both he and Iohannis each wrote a name on a piece of paper for the future prime minister, and Florin Cîţu passed both of them on. The NLP proposal for prime minister was reserved for the press release, which was only three sentences long, emphasizing that all it wants is the formation of a parliamentary majority as soon as possible.

USR-PLUS jumps to the NLP side

Behind the scenes, there are struggles over Parliament’s functions, although negotiations for the new government have not started well either. After the PNL sent the message that it would also want the position of president of the Chamber of Deputies (by Ludovic Orban), not just the position of prime minister, the USR-PLUS leadership criticized the liberals for claiming this position. Dan Barna is pulling the strings for him to be president of the Chamber of Deputies, because the alternative would be the position of deputy prime minister, that is, a more symbolic position. Therefore, USR-PLUS would receive Senate leadership for Parliament, which would be reserved for the PLUS side, which would put Dan Barna in a thankless situation.

The harsh criticism of the NLP comes from another USR-PLUS leader, Cătălin Drulă, who targeted the liberal first vice president Rareş Bogdan. “All discussions about ministries are pure fantasy. They have not happened yet. We believe that it is important that these negotiations take place fairly, not on television,” Cătălin Drulă wrote on his Facebook page after Rareş Bogdan said that according to the results of the elections, the PNL would occupy 10-11 ministries, USR-PLUS five or six ministries, and UDMR, two ministries. The USR noted that his party will support the government around a liberal only if the negotiations are “fair and loyal”, not under any conditions, as some in the PNL would like.