Romanian ruling party member will run for President next year

Liviu Plesoianu, a member of the Chamber of Deputies representing the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD), will run for President in the elections that will take place in Romania next year, he announced on Facebook. In an open letter addressed to his colleagues in PSD, Plesoianu says he will run in the elections with or without the party’s support. “Besides the fact that 2018 is the year when we should start rebuilding a way, rethinking a national meaning, at the party level is also the year when we should get out of the past and the present with way too many pacts and understandings under the table and beyond the curtain. If you ask me, we don’t need pompous ideological mutations right now but one simple thing: to try, at least this year, to act according to our own beliefs and ideals, and not under the cover of various supra-democratic and meta-state groups,” Plesoianu said in the letter published on Facebook. He also commented PSD leader Liviu Dragnea’s statement that the party should not announce a candidate for the presidential race just yet, because “he will disappear in maximum three months.” In Plesoianu’s opinion, this idea is “profoundly wrong” because this secrecy could hurt the party. Thus, he decided to announce his candidacy for the 2019 presidential elections, in which he will run with or without the party’s support. He is the first politician to officially announce the candidacy for the presidential elections. Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com