Just a few hours before BEC gave the green light to be included on the PNL list without being a PNL member, President Iohannis communicated that he does not wish to run in the Parliamentary elections. Another blow dealt to the Liberals, following the outrage with which he rejected a law for himself.
PNL went to great lengths to find a way to make him a senator, submitted an overnight bill dedicated to this purpose, argued with PSD when it backtracked, twisted any legal logic and even common sense. And when the scandal erupted and the image cost proved too high, Mr. Iohannis distanced himself from this initiative.
If we believe him, it means the Liberals lost their minds as a group to forcefully make him a senator. But it seems utterly impossible to believe. It is evident that PNL rushed to fulfill this whim of the president left without office, after successive external failures, each more embarrassing than the last.
Bordering on pathological selfishness, Mr. Iohannis first imposed the preparation cost of the candidacy on the Liberals, then the ridicule of dissociation. Not to mention the damage suffered by the already feeble electoral Nicolae Ciuc, whose candidacy no one talked about, forced to perform rhetorical acrobatics he is as skilled at as physical ones.
In other words, total damage.
The New Deal?
But just a few hours after Mr. Iohannis communicated that he does not intend to run, BEC, following lengthy debates, issued the decision allowing him to run on the PNL list without being a member of the party.
Without delving into technical details, BEC embraced the version served by the Legislative Council of Florin Iordache. The one who said there was no need for a new law, one can run on the PNL list even with the current law.
Another bucket of ridicule for the Liberals who, in support of the new law for the president, vehemently rejected Iordache's version.
It could be a move from the Iohannis - Ciucă - Colacu deal from the new law, which was not meant to be due to significantly high political costs, to the contortion of the old law.
Without this deal, it is very hard for me to believe that BEC bothered not only to issue a favorable decision but also to delve into the background of the issue to deliver, in fact, an absurdity - the theory of various kinds of independents, the independents - independent and the independents - non-independent because they depend on the pen that writes the party list. A night of the mind!
Are they fools or do they like it?
Could the president not have known where BEC's decision would lead and wanted to be one step ahead, refuting the candidacy, so as not to seem to have lost again? It is possible, but it is still hard for me to believe he had absolutely no clue, especially since there was a PNL representative in BEC.
If he really had no intention to run, why did he need so much time to clarify this and let PNL sink into a politically dreadful situation, causing instability?
What cannot be excluded, given the character, is that the president wanted BEC's decision not to be in any way associated with him, only to later be fervently requested, urged by PNL to sacrifice himself, to put his experience back in service of the country and to honor the Liberals by opening their list in Bucharest.
Therefore, the essential question does not seem to be what Klaus Iohannis will do. The answer has long been the same: what is best for his own person. The question is how much humiliation PNL needs to understand what Valeriu Stoica recently told them: the Iohannis era has ended.
In other words, the question is: will the Liberals detach themselves from Iohannis' whims and send him into retirement, or, like the bunny in a famous joke, will they leave us only with the dilemma of whether they are fools or they like it?