The leader of Romania’s main isolationist party, George Simion (Alliance for the Union of Romanians, AUR), recently defeated in the presidential elections but backed by a party that holds nearly 20% of the seats in Parliament, has encouraged his supporters to organise street protests with the aim of forcing early elections.
He argued that AUR and its partners could win the majority in Parliament amid the ruling coalition’s failure to address fiscal challenges.
“We must keep fighting. We need people; I invite you to join AUR or similar parties to form a common front. [G]iven the state of Romania’s economy, I believe early elections will be held within several months. I advise you to join AUR or another sovereignist party, to participate with your organizations, unions, and civic organizations, to protest, to get involved, to take to the streets, to demonstrate, to fight for Romania because these people are really afraid of us! Do it peacefully!” George Simion said, as reported by Hotnews.ro.
Simion’s close ally, Anamaria Gavrila, the head of the Party of Young People (POT, 6% in Parliament before part of its MPs pulled out of the party), has also recently voiced plans for early elections.
The two isolationist parties, joined by allies such as SOS, are likely to capitalise on the authorities’ efforts to address the wide fiscal slippage and public finance imbalances that have accumulated over the past electoral cycle.
Even if the government can avoid painful decisions such as hiking the VAT rate, the fiscally restrictive package will be felt by employees in the public sector, public pension recipients, and other categories that depend on social security.
Furthermore, the two main parties (Social Democrat PSD and Liberal PNL) returning/remaining as key members of the new ruling coalition would make the executive vulnerable to anti-system rhetoric used by the isolationist leaders unless visible internal reforms are carried out. While the president of the Liberal Party (Nicolae Ciuca) resigned, Social Democrats’ leader Marcel Ciolacu was unconvincingly replaced by Sorin Grindeanu as interim head, and no deep restructuring is predictable.
iulian@romania-insider.com
(Photo source: Inquam Photos/Sabin Cirtsoveanu)
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