Here’s Your Government: PSD Stirs the Pot with a Convicted Interior Minister and the Banks’ Enemy

Designated Prime Minister Luca Niculescu submitted his cabinet's list and program to parliament on Thursday, completing the ten-day constitutional deadline that began on October 6, when the decree appointing him was published in the Official Gazette. The cabinet would include eleven PSD ministers and six technocrats. Committee hearings begin on Monday, and the joint session of parliament's two chambers will vote on Tuesday. Taking office requires 233 votes. With the support of the PSD, the PNL, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), the national minorities' group and the "United Romania" group, 279 votes could be mustered on paper, but the PNL will only make its final decision on Saturday.

Two names on the list stirred up controversy even before it was submitted. The PSD has officially nominated 62-year-old Marian Neacșu for interior minister. In 2016, Romania's High Court of Cassation and Justice gave Neacșu a final six-month suspended prison sentence for conflict of interest, after he employed his daughter in his parliamentary office. He was later rehabilitated, but if parliament approves him, he will be the first interior minister in Romania's recent history to have been definitively convicted. His party leader, Sorin Grindeanu, only days earlier had demanded the resignation of USR leader Dominic Fritz under the slogan that "people with criminal records should not hold public office." Neacșu is one of the PSD's most influential politicians. During Liviu Dragnea's time he was the party's secretary-general; after breaking with Dragnea, he moved to Victor Ponta's Pro România party, then returned to the PSD under Marcel Ciolacu's leadership. In recent years he served as deputy prime minister in PSD-led governments, including the Bolojan government, until the PSD's withdrawal from it.

The economy ministry would be headed by 59-year-old Daniel Zamfir, the PSD's Senate caucus leader, one of the most vocal political opponents of large corporations and banks. In 2019, while still a senator for ALDE, he initiated a parliamentary inquiry into the movement of the ROBOR interbank interest rate and accused the Competition Council of covering up the findings of a 2008 investigation. This past June he himself announced - ahead of the Competition Council - the results of a new investigation, according to which ten banks had coordinated in setting the ROBOR rate, for which they received a record fine of 3.73 billion lei, or 710 million euros. Zamfir also backed the special tax on bank profits and the one-percent tax on the revenue of multinational companies, and he initiated the law banning the sale of state assets until 2027. His rhetoric is just as sharp: he regularly calls USR politicians "neo-Marxists," and said of USR Environment Minister Diana Buzoianu that she is like a vampire.

By virtue of their positions, the two PSD heavyweights will also become members of the Supreme Defense Council (CSAT), since the sitting interior and economy ministers automatically get a seat on the body - just like the PSD's candidate for justice minister, Radu Marinescu. So this is no longer simply a matter of putting the goat in charge of the cabbage: we've handed over the whole vegetable patch to the goat, along with every kind of pest, in exchange for which we can at least say we have a government. Only the USR is firmly protesting, objecting both to ministers with criminal records and to the PSD's role in government. Citing the need to pull the country out of the crisis, the PNL would vote for the government, but would immediately move into opposition afterward; the RMDSZ demanded nothing in the way of Hungarian interests, yet still promised to vote for the Niculescu government. And we are no longer even surprised by the support of Ponta's "United Romania" group: deep down, Ponta, who split from the PSD, has always remained red at heart, and this is, after all, the government of the Mykonos MAGA crowd - it would be strange if he were the one missing from the family photo.

So, by all indications, we will have a government. Exactly the kind the PSD is able to produce.

Ugar