Harsh words were said at the PSD congress towards colleagues from the government, and the liberals did not remain indebted either. In this context, what will the political scene look like after the elections and what are the chances that PSD and PNL will still govern together, explains political analyst George Jiglău.
Ciolacu spoke about tolerance, in the same speech launching attacks PHOTO: video capture
The PSD Congress on Saturday, August 24, 2024, was the stage from which PSD leaders, almost without exception, launched their harshest attacks yet on their governing partners. However, the anti-PNL speech is only campaign rhetoric, political analyst George Jiglău believes, and we will most likely witness, after the elections, new negotiations started in the name of the need for stability, so we should not give importance to the words heard on Saturday higher than they actually have.
“It is a congress specific to electoral periods. It is normal to look at these things that were caught in the speeches, what was said about colleagues from the government. All this time we discussed what the PSD says about the PNL and vice versa, but it doesn’t seem to me that in the medium term, especially right after the elections, these things will matter very much. After three years of almost joint governance and after this spring-summer season when they went on joint lists, this decision to go with separate candidates was clearly going to put them in a logic of competition, of competition, in time that they must continue to rule together,” explains Jiglau.
“It is very easy to invoke stability, the national interest again”
Although it sounds somewhat contradictory what we see now, the PSD and PNL candidates must dissociate themselves from each other in the competition, even if what they actually say does not matter very much.
PSD is fighting “to leave the impression that he is the first violin of the government when things go well and that it is the fault of others when things go bad”says analyst George Jiglău, while PNL will make a great effort to present itself, after three years of governing alongside PSD, as a party that represents a real competition to PSD. “This kind of speech was normal to appear and will intensify in the coming period”the political analyst believes.
“Why do I say it doesn’t really matter? Because the math is pretty simple. Regardless of how the percentages will be settled after the redistribution of votes, then, in the following days after December 1, and depending also on the result of the second round of the Presidential elections, the chances of not having an all-PNL-PSD government are rather small, for that I don’t really see another option that will reach the majority and exclude AUR, which I hope remains as it is, regardless of which parties will form a governing coalition”, George Jiglău thinks.
What will be the arguments of the two parties to continue together in government? The same ones they served us before. “It is very easy to invoke stability, the national interest again, we don’t like it, we don’t want it, but we have no choice, we have to for the country and the people, and then continue with this government which, for better – for worse, from my point of view from the point of view, it went well, I mean the relationship between the two parties, we do not evaluate the performance of the government”, says the political analyst.
The harsh speeches we witnessed and the responses of the PNL leaders will not affect, on the other hand, the course of the current government, the political analyst believes. “After all, in a coalition government this happens, and in the perspective of December, again, the chances are that we will have the same government in the future, with all these words that we will hear again, with stability and the others that we- have used in recent months, the chances are still there, regardless of what we see now,” reinforced Jiglau.
Who will fight in the second round?
The candidate pushed by PSD members to the Presidential Elections against his will, political analyst George Jiglău believes, will reach the second round without problems, most likely from the first position. Who will fight here remains a discussion, the political analyst believes, because we still don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle.
“We have to wait for an official announcement from Mr. Geoana, whether he wants it or not, so that we can have the complete landscape. It is clear that any PSD candidate, in any election, has a very high chance of entering the second round, because he comes with at least two million votes, up to three million, which will almost certainly take him to the second round. And these elections, assuming that Mr. Geoană also enters, are a bit atypical, because we have a candidate without a party behind him, a strong candidate, with real chances in the second round, which complicates our calculations a bit, if we were we only forgot the percentages of the parties and associated them with the respective candidates”, says Jiglau.
Almost any of the candidates already profiled has a chance to enter the decisive round of the Presidential elections. “The PSD candidate, whoever he is, will almost certainly enter the second round, and on the other side are the four – Geoana, Ciucă, Lasconi and Simion – who all think they have reasonable chances in the second round. Probably Simion with the least chances in the second round, but I seriously question him because the percentages, probably 10-15%, that he takes will matter a lot in the second round”, explained the political analyst.
Competition for GOLD votes
The presidential candidates who will enter the second round, assuming that George Simion will not enter, will most likely adapt their speech to win over the AUR electorate, the analyst believes. The candidate who will win the second round of the Presidential Election helped by the votes of the AUR electorate “it also means he took over from AUR’s ideas, and that’s not necessarily good news”the analyst believes.
“Now, if we look, excluding Simion from the presence in the second round, maybe with the exception of Mircea Geoană, who for now has not gone too far in this direction, and Ciucă is a conservative character, and Mrs. Lasconi is obviously a character conservative, and Marcel Ciolacu can always play this card. And that’s why I’m afraid that those two weeks between the two rounds, and with the parliamentary elections in the middle (we’ll see what AUR scores there as well), might be more in this direction and it’s not necessarily a good news”, the analyst believes.
Ciucă and Ciolacu, threatened by the same danger in case of failure
Marcel Ciolacu, although he has the chance to enter the second round from the first position, is not necessarily the clear winner of the Presidential Elections, and the election results of the last 20 years have clearly shown this. On the other hand, all PSD presidents who entered the competition and lost it also lost the leadership of the party. It is also the reason why, according to political analyst George Jiglău, Ciolacu was most likely pushed towards candidacy without him wanting it. The best option for Ciolacu, instead, would have been for the PSD to nominate another candidate with a real chance of winning the elections.
“I think he was pushed from behind by the party. I believe that the position of prime minister, which he could count on even after the presidential elections, if the PSD came with a winning candidate, then it would have been practically guaranteed. He would also remain president of the PSD, most likely winning the parliamentary elections and the presidency, eventually, and then things would have been much more comfortable for him. But like this, entering this competition, either he wins and leaves the party and goes to Cotroceni, but I think he knows very well that this position does not suit him, or he loses even then, sooner or later, at some point he will still lose the party presidency”, thinks Jiglau.
PNL leader Nicolae Ciucă is also threatened by the same danger. “And in Ciucă it’s always the same discussion: either win and leave, or lose and leave again”, says George Jiglau.
The speech of the presidential candidate Marcel Ciolacu, one of the prime minister
Marcel Ciolacu officially became, after Saturday’s congress, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party for the 2024 Presidential Elections, the PSD Congress delegates competing in supportive speeches, simultaneously with the attacks on the government colleagues. Marcel Ciolacu’s speech was, however, one of a prime minister, political scientist Cristian Pârvulescu believes, and not one of a presidential candidate. The attacks on the PNL were launched out of a political calculation, the political scientist says. All this calculation, however, depends on the situation in which Mircea Geoană, for various reasons, will not run, otherwise “all the talk was useless and they created a serious problem for the government afterwards”the political scientist believes.
Marcel Ciolacu did not present any program, instead he profiled himself, during the speech, as an ordinary man, “the human person proposing a new presidency”. In the second part of the speech he launched attacks, so that in the third part he spoke about the successes of the government.
“It was a prime minister’s speech, not a president’s. Plus the obsessions, which come from the Ceaușista period: Romania does not have the place it deserves in the world, a huge error to talk about allies in the European Union. We have no allies in the European Union. In the European Union we are together, in the European Union we do not impose our interest, in the European Union we find the common interest of all. This is the European principle that Mr. Ciolacu does not seem to have understood. The analysis that I will do will also be done by the embassies. Sure, he tried to make sure he was anti-Russian, pro-NATO, pro-American, he talked about the American arms industry and other things he thought would impress Americans, but this speech left a bitter taste for me, because I was expecting a Presidential candidate’s speech, much more ideologically structured. And it wasn’t, I just saw a desperate attempt to address the far-right electorate with far-right messages,” concluded political scientist Cristian Pârvulescu.
