Justice and truth take off on Sunday

PNL (National Liberal Party) and PD (Democrat Party) on Sunday, after months of negotiations, will sign the co-operation protocol stipulating that they would have joint slates for the legislative elections, a single presidential candidate, and, if necessary, common candidates for the local elections. This is one of the most important moves on the Romanian political stage since the conclusion of the previous legislative elections. The new structure will be called “PNL-PD Justice and Truth Alliance,” “DA PNL-PD” for short, and the electoral logo will be a combination of the logos of the two parties, i.e. of the liberal arrow and the democrat rose. The two parties are hoping the alliance will help them score better then they would if going their separate ways. Recent polls show PSD would get more than 40% of the votes, PNL -18% and PD -10%. “We know it will be very hard for us to defeat PSD in the elections, as that party has the institutional leverage,” Liberal VP Calin Popescu Tariceanu yesterday confessed.

The joint legislative slates will be put together according to a very complicated system: the result of the local elections for every party accounts for 50%, a poll to be ordered in October will account for 25% and a new poll conducted three months after the local elections for another 25%.

The Government forming procedure in the event they win the elections has the weight of the two parties in the Cabinet set in line with the number of MPs elected for each of them. The Prime Minister position equals two minister seats, so that the party that gets it will get a ministry less. The protocol is to be approved by the Extraordinary PNL Convention and by PD’s National Council on Sunday, and then signed by the leaders of the two entities.

The new structure will be run by a National Leadership Council, comprising seven representatives for each party and two chairmen, Theodor Stolojan and Traian Basescu. The protocol stipulates the decisions made by the alliance take precedence over those of each separate party and are mandatory for all the members of the two entities. It also stipulates punishments, which may go as far as to banning from the party those failing to comply with the leadership decisions, criticising such decisions or one of the representatives of the two entities.

The two parties, whose doctrines are different in nature, have negotiated a ruling platform that mixes liberalism with the social democracy promoted by PD. The negotiations are set to continue after the signing of the protocol, as well, in order to turn the “platform” into a “ruling programme”. The platform includes 10 “fundamental options”, 30 “priorities” and 230 “goals” for the 30 priorities.

Furthermore, in order to avoid the public settlement of the disputes, something that had become common practice in the former Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR), the signatories undertake to make the alliance decisions public only after prior approval by the National Leadership Council. iulian.anghel@zf.ro