
The fall of Ludovic Orban’s cabinet takes place in conditions, which are beneficial to Ciolacu and to the leader of the National Liberal Party as well
This article was published on 7 February 2020 at the site of the newspaper “Word”.
The Romanian Social Democaratic Party will have a congress this month. It is expected that Marcel Ciolacu – the temporary leader after the era of Liviu Dragnea, will fight for a lasting take over of the party. This is the context, in which the social democrats’ activities on 5th February 2020, which led to the fall of the liberal government of Ludovic Orban, should be analysed.
The government of the National Liberal Party will remain in history with lots of lobbyist legal modifications and with the fact that its governing cadres come exclusively from the private sector. What happened on 5th February however is not quite a reaction to the unhidden lobbyism to the benefit of the private hospitals or the financial institutions. The newspaper “Adevarul” wrote that in the present situation Ciolacu and Orban have reached an agreement to enact the procedures for snap elections, while the local elections for mayors continue to be in one round. The one-round local elections give advantage to the social democrats, who are strong on local level. On the other hand, snap elections in the near future would be beneficial most of all to the two big parties, because the small ones simply will not enter the parliament.
Romanian media suggests that there are a number of differences between Ciolacu’s line and Dragnea’s line, with Liviu Dragnea continuing to have supporters in the party and in the parliament. Dragnea entered in jail immidiately after the weak result at the European elections in May 2019. Then local leaders of the social democrats didn’t give the necessary electoral support. Perhaps now Ciolacu tries to recover the party’s influence on ocal level by taking down Orban’s government, which bound the confidence in itself with support in the parliament for local elections in two rounds. On the second round in Romania the other parties usually unite against the social democratic candidate. However, when the local elections are in one round, the red fortresses will be more difficult to surrender.
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