In recent days, a race against the clock has taken place between social democrats and liberals for the votes on the motion. Negotiations were conducted face to face, and each party had its own negotiating team. One day before, the situation is 70-30 in favor of the PSD-AUR camp, as intense discussions continue, according to multiple political sources.
But already, it can be said that PSD has lost the game, regardless of whether the motion of censure passes or not.
This defeat is already costing the party several percentage points in terms of political support. According to internal polls commissioned by parties, the social democrats have fallen to third place, with support below 20%, PNL has surpassed them, and USR remains in fourth place, but at a small distance from PSD. AUR has not been spared public criticism either, with the association with social democrats costing the party at least 5 percentage points in terms of voting intention.
"A major turning point in Romanian politics is coming. Usually, motions of censure are punctual events with limited consequences over time, even when a government is overturned," announced Remus Ștefureac, director of INSCOP, an important center for sociological studies.
"This time, the polarizations, fractures, and divisions associated, the immense problems of integrity and credibility of the political actors against the backdrop of a huge sense of injustice in society (over 80%), make me believe that next week's motion of censure will have much deeper consequences," he further stated in a Facebook post.
Ilie Poverty
The initiative of the PSD to withdraw from the government and submit the motion of censure has caused a huge earthquake in Romanian politics, and the big winner so far is Ilie Bolojan.
The strategy of Sorin Grindeanu and Olguța Vasilescu was a bankrupt one. The two leaders completely misjudged the ability to manipulate the public through the press and party-funded television, starting from a mistaken reading of reality, considering that Bolojan was unpopular because of the austerity measures taken by the government.
The concept of "Ilie Poverty," circulated and promoted by PSD communicators, easily decodes the strategy validated by the party leaders.
But Sorin Grindeanu's major problem, the trap he fell into, was the inability to understand the profound changes that have taken place in Romania in the last two years and how deep and widespread the hatred towards PSD and USL is, the association with PNL imposed by Iohannis, at the societal level, starting in 2021.
The social democrats behave as if they have not understood anything about the fact that in the presidential elections, for the first time since 1989, they did not have a candidate in the final, no matter how many political maneuvers were made to push Marcel Ciolacu there.
Not only did they fail at the end of 2024, they also failed in 2025 when they bet, alongside PNL and UDMR, on Crin Antonescu.
Moreover, they have shown no signs of understanding the tectonic shifts in Romanian politics even when they only obtained 23% of the votes cast in the parliamentary elections.
There has been no analysis at the party level, no reform or revival, only Sorin Grindeanu's travel buddy from the Nordis travel agency was put in place of Ciolacu, with PSD continuing to behave like a party that dominates politics in Romania.
The Teflon Candidate
PSD's resistance to change after the formation of the new government and the continuation of the policy of controlling budget resources through various schemes and networks of party members in key positions within institutions have heightened public dissatisfaction, turning Ilie Bolojan, a proponent of budget cuts, into a "Teflon leader."
The expression has been more frequently associated with Donald Trump, who increased his popularity regardless of the statements, gaffes, and questionable behavior he exhibited and regardless of the criticisms from his opponents.
In the last week, since PSD withdrew from the government, Ilie Bolojan's popularity has increased by 5-7 percentage points, approaching 30%, making him largely overshadow Călin Georgescu. Which is no small feat.
The more you distance yourself and observe the moves on the chessboard of Romanian politics, the easier it is to see the fear, desperation, and stupidity displayed by Sorin Grindeanu and his associates in the party leadership.
Simply put, unable to adapt to the new reality created by the disaster left behind by Iohannis-Ciucă-Ciolacu, PSD did everything possible to remain in control through corruption, nepotism, and blackmail against government partners, in order to maintain their privileges and access to public resources, while the rest of the population was forced to pay increasingly higher taxes.
Sorin Grindeanu deludes himself that Bolojan will exit the stage after he is no longer prime minister, but this is just a dream, a projection of the desires of a weak party leader, lacking vision and haunted by the nightmare of a possible collapse of the corruption networks he has nurtured.
End of an Era
In reality, a Teflon candidate absorbs both attacks and support, accumulating more and more until reaching their goal. It happened with Donald Trump in the US, with Traian Băsescu in Romania, with Javier Milei in Argentina, and the examples can continue.
Such a leader can only be countered by another similar one, but in politics, they rarely emerge at the same time, their evolution and connection with the people being the result of a complex process of social changes, major internal and external events, as well as the effect of a crisis in a political system.
Romania, in the coming period, will face various challenges, regardless of the outcome of the vote on the motion of censure.
The political system built by Klaus Iohannis to withstand the pandemic and the war in Ukraine no longer functions, having exhausted its reserves of credibility, and a new one will take its place.
It is difficult to say whether it will be better or worse, whether the transformation will take a few weeks or two years until the parliamentary elections, but there is a high chance it will be one without PSD at the forefront.