RO Social Democrats claim senior position in would-be ruling coalition with Liberals

The Romanian Social Democrats’ leaders decided, in a meeting held on Wednesday, to back their president Marcel Ciolacu for the prime minister seat. They also decided that Ciolacu is entitled to hold the prime ministership in the first part of the shared agreement with the Liberal party (PNL), G4media.ro reported.

The announcement, made around noon by Social Democrat vice-president Sorin Grindeanu, blocked again the negotiations that looked like heading toward a mutual agreement.

Following Grindeanu’s statements, the leaders of the three parties in talks for the would-be new ruling coalition, Liberal Florin Citu, Social Democrat Marcel Ciolacu and Hungarian ethnics’ Kelemen Hunor cancelled their meeting previously scheduled for the afternoon of the same day.

Liberal leader Florin Citu had just implied Wednesday morning that he might let his friend, finance minister Dan Vilceanu, take the prime minister seat instead of him - a major breakthrough for the negotiations with the Social Democrats.

At that time, the Liberals assumed the Social Democrats let them take the rotating prime minister seat for the beginning.

Soon after Citu’s “flexibilisation”, and possibly in response to this, Social Democrat vice-president Grindeanu made clear that his party can afford to “set the terms” of the arrangement (and claim the prime minister seat immediately) because they won last year’s elections - or they hold the largest number of MP seats.

“How can you imagine we held this meeting to propose the prime minister supposed to take office after a year and a half,” Grindeanu told journalists.

The Social Democrats are gradually increasing their requests in the negotiations with the Liberals, partly by speculating the disagreements among the Liberals and the ambition of Liberal president Florin Citu who sees his position at risk.

(Photo: Marcel Ciolacu Facebook Page)