PM’s retreat starts fight for power in Romania’s largest party

Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s decision to step down as president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the largest political party in Romania, has started an internal fight for power in the party. Ponta has named Labor Minister Rovana Plumb to lead the party as interim president, hopefully until he solves his legal issues. Rovana Plumb was validated as interim president by PSD’s Permanent National Bureau, which is currently dominated by Ponta’s allies, the party’s Executive Committee, a wider leading body will also vote on this proposal next week. PSD’s former executive president Liviu Dragnea has been linked to some internal moves in PSD, as many local PSD leaders would want him in charge. Dragnea, who stepped down as executive president and minister in Ponta’s Government, after he got a one-year jail sentence with parole for electoral fraud in the 2012 referendum, hasn’t yet expressed an official desire to lead the party. He said he has made a decision but that he would announce it at the right time, reports local Mediafax. Another one of Ponta’s former allies, Valeriu Zgonea, the president of Romania’s Chamber of Deputies, criticized the party’s current leadership saying that it was time for it to be renewed. “We are in a crisis situation, with the party’s president indicted and the vice president convicted for corruption,” Zgonea said in an interview with Associated Press.

He added that PSD needed an extraordinary congress to elect a new president.

Romania’s Anticorruption Directorate – DNA indicted Ponta on Monday, July 13, on charges of forgery, accessory to tax evasion and money laundering during his law practice for his friend Dan Sova’s law firm. The prosecutors also wanted to investigate Ponta for conflict of interest, for making Sova a minister in his cabinet, but the Parliament rejected the prosecutors’ request to waive Ponta’s immunity. Ponta stepped down from his position as PSD president saying that he didn’t want his legal problems to affect the party’s image. He hopes to return to power when he will be cleared of all charges. Ponta said he wouldn’t resign from his Prime Minister position. editor@romania-insider.com