PM, asked to dissent from Remes

Liberals yesterday asked Premier Isarescu to detach himself from the political action initiated by minister of Finances Decebal Traian Remes, who on Wednesday announced his intention to create a group “for the reconstruction of the real National Liberal Party” and to open a list with signatures meant to support PM’s candidacy for presidentials.

PNL leaders, who see in Remes’s gesture an intention to leave the party, state in a release that the action initiated by the minister of Finances “creates suspicions as to the independence and the neutrality of the Prime Minister towards the parties within coalition.” The members of the dissident group, to which have adhered senators Dan Amedeo Lazarescu and Vicentiu Gavanescu and deputy Laurentiu Priceputu, announced that they did not resign from the positions they held within PNL.

Sources within the Government state that during the Executive’s yesterday meeting Valeriu Stoica asked Premier Isarescu to detach himself from the dissident group but the PM did not answer following the intervention of Peasant Mircea Ciumara, who asked those present not to turn the meeting into a parliamentary debate.

PNL’s Permanent Central Bureau is to discuss next Tuesday the possibility of withdrawing the political support granted to Remes for the position of minister of Finances. They are very likely to require the latter’s replacement with another Liberal. Similar decisions are also expected with respect to Vicentiu Gavanescu and Laurentiu Priceputu, but, according to sources within the Permanent Bureau, PNL leaders are still hesitating as concerns Dan Amedeo Lazarescu and Sorin Botez, two of the seniors having founded PNL in January 1990, as well as Ioana Bratianu.