Liberal Ministers of Transport have unblocked the projects on which PSD ministers are now cutting ribbons, PNL president Nicolae Ciucă said on Saturday.
Ciucă, acid response to Ciolacu’s speech PHOTO Mediafax
“The development of transport infrastructure is the first solution in any economic growth plan. And this is not only valid here, in the Oltenia area, but throughout the country. Romanians see that in recent years more and more segments of high-speed roads have been put into traffic. Liberal Ministers of Transport (like my colleague Lucian Bode) unblocked the projects on which the PSD ministers are now cutting ribbons”Ciucă wrote on Facebook.
According to the former prime minister, Romania needs highways in order to develop, because this is the only way regions can be connected to each other and the whole country can connect to the more developed markets in the west of the continent.
“Each section of a high-speed road is important and deserves the attention of the authorities in terms of financing and authorizations, as well as the mobilization of the builder. Together with Ionel Scrioşteanu, secretary of state in the Ministry of Transport, Cristian Pistol, general director of CNAIR, Ştefan Stoica, PNL deputy from Dolj and PNL vice-president Robert Sighiartău, we visited the construction site of the first section of the DEx12 Craiova-Pitesti expressway. Here I saw that work is being done at a sustained pace and I hope that this piece of road will be open to traffic in the spring of next year, so that Craiova will also have direct access to a high-speed road. Throughout the liberal government – and especially while I was prime minister – the road transport network had priority. As evidence, in any state budget project starting from 2020, large infrastructure has only received positive corrections“, added the PNL leader.
In his speech at the congress, Marcel Ciolacu talked about what, in his view, the future president should look like. He promised that he would continue to develop relations with Western states and that he would continue to support Ukraine against Russia, which he does not want on Romania’s borders. But Marcel Ciolacu did not miss the opportunity to charge the current president, Klaus Iohannis.
“We need a president who makes state politics, not party politics. We must overcome the era when everyone worked for the good of one man. And the presidential mantle should no longer be thrown on people’s backs“, alluding to a gesture made by Iohannis shortly after he was elected president.
But it didn’t stop there. He also attacked Traian Băsescu, without naming him directly, but also Iohannis. “For 20 years, the president became, from a symbol of hope, only a source of frustration in society. You were promised, first, that you will “live well”. Then your wages and pensions were cut. After 10 years, you were promised an “educated Romania”. And you got a failed education system where kids are more exposed to drugs than books. The truth is that honesty with citizens has been missing from the presidential podium for the past 20 years. We’ve had presidents who didn’t care about the people at all”Ciolacu also said on Saturday.
