Ludovic Orban voted president of Romania's National Liberal Party

Ludovic Orban was elected the president of the National Liberal Party (PNL) on Saturday at a congress attended by more than 5,000 delegates. He has the difficult mission to revive the party after the defeat in last year’s parliamentary elections. Orban has been a PNL member for more than 25 years and has held a number of elected and appointed functions from the party. Last spring the party appointed him for the third time as the candidate for the Bucharest City Hall. One week later in May, the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) charged Orban with having used his political function to ask EUR 50,000 from the investor Tiberiu Urdareanu to support his election campaign last summer. He was acquitted in January 2017 by the Supreme Court, but the decision was not final. Orban, who is 54, has been a PNL member since 1992. He has a 15-year experience in local administration, being a local councilor in Bucharest’s District 1 and District 3, as well as deputy mayor of the capital. Between 2000 and 2010, he was the president of PNL Bucharest. In 2007, he was appointed minister of transport in the Calin Popescu Tariceanu Government after the removal of PDL from the government. At the parliamentary elections in 2008 he received a MP office from Bucharest, a mandate he renewed in 2012. Ludovic Orban has run for mayor of Bucharest City Hall several times, but unsuccessfully. editor@romania-insider.com