PSD wants to rule by itself after 2004

PSD (Social Democrat Party) yesterday during its National Council launched a strong political offensive whose purpose is to gain the majority party position after the upcoming elections.

PSD’s target is to win the local, parliamentary and presidential elections. To that end yesterday’s meeting motto was the call to unity from President Ion Iliescu, PSD leader Adrian Nastase and the chairman of the National Council of the party, Alexandru Athanasiu. With the upcoming elections in mind, PSD set bold political and economic goals.

PSD leader Adrian Nastase says there are three top priorities for the ruling party. The governmental priority is to address the pressing issues of the underprivileged population along with making certain decisions required by the pre-accession stage. As for the party policy, Nastase said the priority in this regard was preparing the party for elections. “Now it’s time we proved our strength and unity,” the PSD leader told the over 1,000 delegates of the local branches.

He warned that in order to win the elections by scoring 50%, the PSD members, both in the central and in the territorial organisations had to work “Fridays and Sundays, as well.” “We want to convince the voters to choose the continuation of our ruling,” Nastase said. He talked about the “false issue” of the conflict between generations, saying it had been induced by the mass-media: “In a party as important as ours we must put experience and imagination together. We may not risk PSD’s future or the future of this country by betting on only one person,” the ruling party leader said, explaining PSD had promoted young people to decision-making positions and even to the Government.

During his about one hour and a half speech delivered before the National Council, Nastase said that where Bucharest was concerned, PSD was not looking to come up with a candidate to defeat Basescu, but with a candidate to bring a different vision of how to run the Capital.

The candidates for local elections in the territory will be selected through successive polls intended to show how credible the PSD candidates really are.

Most of his political speech, which summarised the “A new political offensive” document later endorsed by the National Council, was allotted to the achievements of the Government and of PSD so far: i.e. the partial endorsement of the Constitution modification, the enactment and enforcement of the Anti-corruption laws, the 5% economic growth attained.

Still the speech largely focused on PSD’s and the Government’s future plans.

The Prime Minister also said,” This year’s major goal is getting the functional market economy status.” He added the Government was also pursuing a reduction in the arrears in the energy sector and the liquidation of the loss-making state-run companies.
mirela.luca@zf.ro