The departure of important leaders from the AUR, and then from other parties, produced a chain effect, building a “party system”, says political scientist George Jiglău, who shows that the basis of this division are the personal problems between the leaders, rather than the difference in values between each newly established formation.
PHOTO Inquam / George Călin
Splits in sovereignist parties usually cause chaos and are heralded with scandal and accusations. Nevertheless, Luis Lazarus, the second parliamentarian of SOS Romania left Diana Soșoacă’s team without much noise. The MEP is setting up his own party, the Justice and Brotherhood Party (PDF), already bringing a PSD senator into his team.
Also from SOS, the party founded by Diana Șoșoacă, the Pace – Întâi România group split off, to which members of AUR and POT also joined, another sovereignist party that crossed the threshold of the Parliament by adhering to the political line of the former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu.
The head of SOS Romania, herself, is a former member of AUR. She was excluded from the party, along with Mihai Lască. Both established new formations with which they ran in last year’s elections, the SOS Romania party, of the former senator, which was more successful and managed to bring people to the Romanian Parliament and the European Parliament, and the Patriots of the Romanian People (PPR), which also has the doctor Răzvan Constantinescu, in the position of executive president.
Another departure that produced the emergence of a new political formation is that of the former AUR co-president, Claudiu Târziu, who founded the Conservative Action Party, a formation that has already attracted other AUR parliamentarians and MEPs. Incidentally, in the European Parliament, Cristian Terheș, president of the Romanian National Conservative Party, entered the AUR lists.
Sovereignty, on the rise in Europe
These are not the only formations that adhere to the sovereignist trend registered in recent years in Romania. Political scientist George Jiglău points out that sovereignty is “a fashionable political current” at present.
“We live in times when, let’s call it sovereignism, this extreme right, extreme conservative, as we used to call it in classical style, populist, with nuances, in our case in Europe, anti-European, anti-Western, anti-EU, is a fashionable trend. We live in times when the world is clearly inclined to listen to such speeches to a greater extent, much greater, than they used to be”explains George Jiglău.
GOLD’s monopoly on the sovereignist electorate
However, the political scientist points out that, despite the inflation of formations that adhere to the sovereignist current, we cannot talk about a real competition of these formations, in relation to what AUR is today:
“The sovereignist slice is almost entirely covered by AUR, which is at 40% in the polls. I also sometimes say that the current governing coalition is somehow the old party system in which there are the same sympathies and antipathies, only that now they are all in the governing coalition, because AUR appeared on the other side, which somehow narrows the space. We, equally, can apply the exact same perspective to the other side of the party system. There are basically two parallel party systems at the moment. It is the one that is represented by the governing coalition, which has its own dynamics that we analyze almost daily, and it is the other side that is the party system, let’s say sovereignist, with 45% in the current polls, where there is gold and the others.
And in theory, when we categorize party systems, there is this idea of a hegemonic party system. This is a type of party system specific to semi-authoritarian regimes in which some always win the elections, are always in government, but there are others out there, as far as saying we have an opposition, it just doesn’t matter. At this moment, the party system that means this sovereignist slice is this kind of system, let’s say a subsystem of parties, compared to the great Romanian one, a subsystem in which we have a hegemon (no – AUR), who is very strong at this moment”.
Lack of discipline
AUR’s monopoly is also due to the fact that the sovereignist electorate is more disciplined than the sovereignist parties, the political scientist explains:
“I don’t place all this dynamic in an area of values. Any politician, when he moves from one party to another, will tell us that it’s a problem of values, he hasn’t been reconciled. In the end, the problem is that they investigated each other. (…) I don’t think it’s about who is the real sovereignist, it’s about some personal quarrels between them, but it’s also true that we would expect from parties like this to see more discipline, somehow. That’s it the specifics of conservative parties. So they are somehow more consistent with themselves and more disciplined in relation to some values. But so does the electorate. (…)
At this moment, these pieces that break from AUR illustrate the fact that the discipline component at the level of the AUR party is not so present anymore. Who remained disciplined and coherent might be the electorate, predominantly still as seen in relation to AUR”.
