After taking another step towards getting on the ballot in May, through validation by the National Council of the PSD, Crin Antonescu relaunched his campaign, which had been in question for weeks, with a lengthy rhetorical exercise on Antena3, with questions received from both journalists and the public, with polemical charges, irony, self-irony, and a significant dose of humor.
A successful exercise at least for the comforting sensation of hearing a Romanian politician for whom the agreement between subject and predicate is not a Sisyphean attempt, who does not lose the meaning of the sentence on a convoluted path towards the end, and who can draw on cultural and historical references without falling into ridicule.
But certainly, rhetoric is not Mr. Antonescu's major challenge in this electoral battle where he has the advantage, albeit not negligible, of approaching it with little to lose.
Whose Candidate?
A first attempt will be to receive real support, not just declared, from the PSD and PNL (there are no doubts about UDMR), which should endorse him wholeheartedly as a candidate and advocate for him.
For PNL, it will be easier. It is the party he led, to which he remained a member after withdrawing from active political life and which has since gone through episodes so painfully embarrassing that one can only nostalgically look back at the Antonescu period, with its ups and downs.
It is much more complicated with the PSD. The party must digest supporting a candidate who is not a Social Democrat, at least at heart, from the first round, which is a first.
And not just any candidate, but one with whom it has a complicated history, from whom it parted ways traumatically at the breakup of the USL, and, not unimportantly, a candidate with a strong personality. Therefore, they cannot anticipate exactly what to expect once they are in the same boat.
Victor Ponta, for example, despite arousing many resentments in the party, is ultimately one of theirs, one who, for better or for worse, made it to the second round, one who has returned to them, and whose discourse is not too different from what a large part of the PSD feels.
Of course, the PSD is probably going through its worst period, with its lowest score in parliamentary elections, its first failure to reach the second round, so it cannot afford an electoral scandal within the coalition and jeopardize governance, as it did last year. But that does not mean that the Antonescu solution is exciting, and the party apparatus will not mobilize frantically to support it.
Currently, we do not see Mr. Antonescu having a campaign team, a common communication strategy among party communicators, not even a minimal online propagation infrastructure with active TikTok, Instagram, Facebook accounts.
The support for Crin Antonescu does not differ much from that offered by the PSD to Ms. Lasconi in the second round. Or, if you want, the common candidate seems more on his own for now, as was Catalin Carstoiu, with the difference of having incomparably more political experience than the doctor thrown to the lions.
However, it is true that recent elections have shown that even politically faithful electorates have emancipated themselves. The scores of all candidates compared to those of the parties, not to mention mayors, except for Ms. Lasconi, show a devaluation of party allegiance.
Therefore, Mr. Antonescu, whether supported by parties in a real way or not, must reach their electorates.
On What and Whom Does He Bet?
According to an Avangarde survey, Crin Antonescu starts from a not bad 25%, considering his total absence from political life and, as mentioned, the still fragile support of the parties. But to win, he needs double that.
In the Antena3 show, Mr. Antonescu strongly defined himself ideologically as a conservative, which is certainly strange for a former president and still a member of a party called liberal. But let's not dwell on what doesn't matter anyway in Romania.
This clear stance means that Mr. Antonescu is not pursuing a catch-all strategy. He targets the predominantly conservative transpartisan electorate and his entire discourse shapes the offer of a nationalist sovereigntist, albeit European, without extremist touches, moderate, so to speak.
While not necessarily bad in principle, a devilish detail emerged from his response to the invitation to associate Viktor Orban's name with a noun. He said "example."
Alongside the legend of fighting for national interest and skillful negotiation with Brussels, V. Orban is a pillar of Putin in Europe, an almost openly Putinist, and a promoter of illiberal policies that have harmed democracy, freedom of expression, and justice in the neighboring country.
From the same perspective, there is also the reference to Donald Trump's inauguration speech, hailed as a return to conservative common sense. True, in that speech, he had not yet announced trade war with the EU, of which Romania is a part.
Mr. Antonescu is thus trying to solidify that conservative PSD and PNL electorate, the most vulnerable to migrating towards the Georgescu or Simion area.
An electorate that, as shown by polls, including the recent INSCOP one, wants nationalism, wants a head held high, wants their pride massaged, but without jeopardizing the European status without which any rational person knows we will collapse.
Moreover, Mr. Antonescu aims to attract voters from Georgescu and Simion, the moderate eccentric zone, who can gladly do without excesses if they receive nationalism without hysterical tendencies.
I don't believe Mr. Antonescu is counting on the progressive electorate; he has defined himself too strongly for that. It is enough not to anger them, he has taken care not to do so, and ultimately, to rely on the fact that in competition with an extremist, they will either vote for him, a choice that does not endanger EU membership, or stay home.
In this strategy, his past helps him. His sovereigntist statements from 2012 are much more in trend today than back then, and by being consistent, he owns them. If he cannot deny his past, he puts it to work in new, more favorable circumstances.
The Millstones Tied to His Feet
Crin Antonescu's biggest problem is his association with the current coalition. The train ordinance and all the measures that will follow, the performances with sarmale and papanași on the head by the prime minister, the inevitable but unpopular restrictions beginning, will be millstones tied to his candidacy.
He is only independent in the sense of not formally belonging to a party, but he is a seasoned politician, having been a party president and interim president of Romania. He is supported by traditional parties that have provoked and bear the brunt of public anger, which will matter especially in the second round.
He has been absent from politics for 10 years, which is an advantage, but it also means he did not have public positions regarding what brought Romania to such exasperation that it massively voted for a character like Georgescu. So he can be accused of not caring much. In fact, those 10 sabbatical years are constantly brought up and are hard to accept, especially for the conservative electorate, for whom only women can be homemakers.
What kind of president he will be, what kind of president Mr. Antonescu aims to be beyond the strategic and tactical campaign positions, is still hard to say; we will have to wait until May to find out.
The greatest challenge for society will be to somehow move beyond the hysterical phase and be able to reach a somewhat rational analysis of the offers and candidates, so that at least some arguments can break through the fog of anger and frustration. Otherwise, the choice will remain a lottery.