Immediately after the elections on November 24, in a state of shock seeing itself for the first time in its history without a candidate in the final, but also after those on December 1, when it came out on top, but with a score that took it out of the league of major parties, PSD began to say on all voices and channels that it understood exactly the message of the electorate.
However, everything it did after returning to power shows the opposite. Either it understood nothing, or, if it did, it is trying to resort to the same cheap and smoky tricks to dodge these lessons until, you know, the electorate gets bored and goes for a beer.
What did the electorate actually convey? Apart from a small truly extremist core, the vast majority of voters transmitted, with exasperation, that they want seriousness, predictability, responsibility, respect for democracy, and public money.
## Ce face PSD?
The annulment of the elections was a trauma for Romanian democracy. At the moment when it decided on the annulment, the Constitutional Court established, in the initial form of the reasoning, that the elections should be organized within a maximum of 3 months, a clarification that mysteriously disappeared from the final form.
But there is a constitutional provision, article 97, which states that within 3 months from the date on which the office of President of Romania became vacant, the Government will organize elections for a new president.
True, we are not in one of the cases expressly provided as a cause of the vacancy of the office, but obviously the provision is applicable as long as the term of the current president has ended and the only reason why, debatably, he still holds the prerogatives is the lack of a successor.
It was common sense for the elections to be organized within this constitutional term of three months. PNL and UDMR firmly advocated for a tight schedule, but the decision lies with PSD, and because it has the Prime Minister, without whom the Government cannot issue any decision, and because it is the majority partner in the coalition.
As the decision to organize the elections was not issued by January 7, the deadlines for the first round on March 23 were missed. It is unlikely to be held on March 30, in order to then push the final to Palm Sunday, which would not be healthy at all, considering that large church gatherings are extremely favorable to extremists.
## It is evident that PSD wants to push the elections towards summer. Why?
It could also be a psychological matter: moving away from winter with high bills, with all kinds of difficulties, voting in the natural optimism of the beginning of summer. There is also the hope that by then, the extremist current, chopped by the press, will inevitably plateau into banality and exhaust its resources, making it easier to defeat.
These could be valid arguments if the price of postponement were not the extension of Klaus Iohannis’s mandate, the most detested president since 1989, and if we could count on a government that does not generate constant reasons for frustration, which is not the case. The extremist wave will remain with abundant fuel.
Moreover, even in Western democracies, with rules ingrained in their DNA, transforming a crisis situation, exceptional, into a petty political calculation cannot be accepted. Thus, the very reason for the urgency that led to a radical measure, which should have lasted the minimum necessary, is thrown into ridicule.
## Evidently, the reason for stalling relates to PSD’s interest
PSD set the sine qua non condition of the common candidate for the coalition’s creation. And it made sense because an alliance of parties that compete in elections, as we have seen, has absolutely no chance of functioning, with a direct impact on the government’s stability.
Thus, the common candidate emerged, provided with a name and surname in the political agreement signed on December 23. Whether he is good, bad, whether he has a chance or not should have been thought out beforehand. Now he is provided for in the political agreement on which the government is based.
However, the awakened PSD does not seem at all reconciled with the idea of not having its own candidate. Whether some still believe in Ciolacu’s chances, whether others want to push him up the stairs once again, if the first time he seems to have politically survived the defeat, matters less.
How can one imagine that the possible repetition of the Cîrstoiu episode, which ridiculed the PSD-PNL coalition, will not have devastating effects in favor of extremists?
PSD plays with the election date and the seriousness of the governance agreement strictly in its own interest, which is exactly what happened all last year and the electorate severely punished.
And not only that. On the days when PSD avoided any decision regarding the elections, they engaged in all sorts of nonsense. From the TikTok video where they admit to mass election fraud, to disappearing on an extended holiday break.
When the country is in such a serious situation from many points of view, primarily political and economic, when the extremist zone is so agitated and brimming with a violence ready to explode at any moment, how irresponsible it is as a Prime Minister to disappear on vacation and convey that you will reappear after the deadlines for the rapid organization of elections have passed?
Irresponsibility, defiance, shamelessness, recklessness. PSD is doing the same thing and hopes to achieve different results.