Early Elections Are Soon To Come

President Traian Basescu did not give up on his idea to call in early elections. On the contrary, he looks intent on using all the constitutional prerogatives available to him in order to make these early elections happen. Basescu wants the ruling coalition to be trimmed down to two parties only: the National Liberal Party and the Democrat Party [thus getting rid of the other two partners: the Romanian Humanist Party and the Democrat Union of Hungarians in Romania].

Those who thought 2005 will be a calm year were in the wrong: it looks like this year will supercede the previous one in terms of electoral fever.

With his election as Romania s President, Basescu was single handedly able to turn around the elections and pull the former opposition to taking office. Now he shows he did not give up on the idea of calling in early elections, on the contrary.

He is counting that the political alliance of the two parties will win the elections, and that they will further come together as one with their future merger.

These are the horses Basescu puts his money on, hoping to become the president of a country led by a government holding the majority in parliament, with the Social Democrat Party and the Greater Romania Party acting as the only opposition parties, while the RHP and the DUHR would not make it to parliament.
The only thing for the plan to succeed would be for the liberals and PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu to want it to succeed too.

What will happen if PM Tariceanu, who was elected this week-end as president of the NLP, will not agree with Basescu s vision?
Then we will see a governmental crisis emerging, prompted with little effort by the DP.
So, Basescu will have to win over Tariceanu, in order to accomplish his political plan.
So far, Tariceanu happily obliged to all Basescu suggested, so it is quite likely that by the end of the year we will get those early elections.

The other political parties are getting ready for the new political contest too, though they are not openly addressing the issue.
Therefore, we are in full swing electoral campaign. All that political parties will accomplish from now on they will do it with early elections on their minds. The first such elections are those for the top job in the Bucharest City Hall [Basescu was the elected mayor of Bucharest in the 2004 local elections, and with his election as president the office was vacated].
What strategy the political parties will adopt for the early elections I will comment in tomorrow s newspaper.