Romania’s ruling party makes new minister proposals after president’s repeated rejections

The ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) decided to make new nominations for the positions of minister of transport and development minister after president Klaus Iohannis rejected the previous proposals several times and the candidates decided to withdraw.

PSD’s Executive Committee voted on Tuesday, February 19, to nominate Razvan Cuc for the transport minister position and Daniel Suciu for the seats of deputy prime minister and minister of development.

Prime minister Viorica Dancila said she would send the proposals to president Iohannis on Wednesday. If the president rejects these nominations as well, the party leaders will meet again and make a “more firm decision,” PSD leader Liviu Dragnea said, according to local Mediafax.

Razvan Cuc, the PSD member nominated for the transport minister position, has previously managed this portfolio in June-October 2017, in the government led by Mihai Tudose. He resigned in mid-October 2017 after a long meeting of the party’s Executive Committee and after being criticized on several occasions by Tudose. Dragnea said at that time that Cuc is “a good, capable young person”, but that he couldn’t communicate well, and that he couldn’t convince the party that it wasn’t his fault that there were delays in implementing the governing program.

The PSD leaders decided last fall that a government reshuffle was needed, and changed some of the key ministers. The president accepted the new minister proposals, except for two of them: that of former labor minister Lia-Olguta Vasilescu as transport minister and Ilan Laufer as regional development minister. He said at that time that the proposals were “unfit”. PSD came up with new names quickly, proposing Lia-Olguta Vasilescu for the Development Ministry and Mircea Draghici for the Transport Ministry. President Iohannis rejected them four times. Both Vasilescu and Draghici decided to withdraw their candidacy and now the PSD came up with new names for the two ministries.

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