Nicușor Dan brought down Mureșan and saved the PSD

Nicușor Dan has indeed practically ruled out early elections. In legal terms, of course, he could not declare that they will never happen under any circumstances, but politically he could hardly have sent a clearer message to the parliamentary survival class: relax, nobody needs to go back to the voters, just go ahead and quietly bring down Siegfried Mureșan.

Speaking in New York, the president stated that he does not want to dissolve parliament, because in his view that would prolong the uncertainty by several more months. As he put it, citizens want the political crisis to end "one way or another," and in his opinion that can only happen through negotiations between the parties. He later added that early elections would primarily be bad for citizens, and only secondarily for the parties. That last half-sentence is particularly rich, because according to a recent CURS poll, exactly 47 percent of Romanians support early elections, and the same percentage opposes them. From this, concluding that keeping the current lineup afloat is the clear will of the people is a real mathematical feat—well, the president was an Olympian, after all, so there you go.

This statement, however, carries far more serious consequences: Siegfried Mureșan's only real weapon was that if parliament fails to approve his government, the path could open toward early elections. Under the Romanian constitution, the president may dissolve parliament if a government cannot be formed within sixty days of the first attempt at investiture, and if at least two prime ministerial candidates' requests for investiture are rejected.

Important! According to the constitution, the president may do this, but is not obliged to!

Until now, Mureșan has been relying precisely on this danger, sending the deputies a barely veiled message: if you don't approve my government, you could easily lose your mandates. Nicușor Dan has now stepped up to him, taken the gun out of his hand, carefully removed the magazine, and wished him good luck in the armed negotiations.

Within the PSD, there are plenty of people who know full well that in a new election they would no longer get a mandate. In the September INSCOP poll, the party stood at 18.7 percent, and among voters who promised certain participation, the research institute measured only 16.4 percent for it—close enough to make the comrades sitting in the back rows of the PSD faction wake up in a cold sweat. What's more, it's not only the party's weak result that would endanger them: the winnable spots on the next candidate lists would go primarily to those who kissed Grindeanu's ring in time. Among those dreading early elections are also Victor Ponta and the parliamentary remnant he has gathered around himself, which would hardly clear the five-percent threshold on its own. The RMDSZ (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania) has a similarly strong interest in keeping the current parliament alive. The Alliance has been battered by the Szeklerland protests sparked by tax hikes, by Orbán's downfall, and by Romania's unstable domestic political situation, and previous voting patterns as well as behind-the-curtain arrangements no longer guarantee the five percent. True, the alternative entry threshold tailored specifically for the Alliance still exists, but even Hunor and his colleagues probably don't want to test live whether the parachute still works. So if there was any PSD member, anyone who drifted toward Ponta, or any deputy sitting in another faction who has spent the past few days thinking that it would actually be nice to stay in parliament for another two years—the work isn't hard, the pay isn't bad, and the cafeteria is close by—they can now breathe easy. The president has signaled that he doesn't want early elections, meaning that even after Mureșan's fall, nobody necessarily has to go home. Faction discipline can remain, and the prime ministerial candidate can go on collecting votes the way a child collects pebbles on the beach: a pleasant pastime, except that it's unlikely to add up to 233 pieces.

Meanwhile, Grindeanu has openly called Mureșan a "second-hand Bolojan," and the PSD leadership has decided not to vote for his government. The Social Democratic party leader also made clear that after Mureșan's fall, he will again put himself forward for the prime minister's post. In his view, the designated prime minister will "gloriously fail" in parliament, while he himself remains a supporter of "dialogue with everyone." That "everyone," of course, includes George Simion and AUR too, because in Romanian politics red lines tend to stay red only until the ministerial portfolios are handed out. From here, the next step is already quite clear: so far, Nicușor Dan has tried to find a prime minister from around the PNL, first with the doomed-from-the-start Veștea attempt, and now with Mureșan. If this nomination fails too, the next designated candidate is likely to be Sorin Grindeanu, who leads the largest parliamentary faction, wants to govern, and no longer breaks out in hives at the thought of negotiating with AUR. The RMDSZ, for its part, has long had an eye on him. Kelemen Hunor himself has said that in politics too, size matters, and Grindeanu indeed has the largest faction behind him. The solution, then, isn't particularly hard to work out: they will let Mureșan's government fail, Nicușor Dan will take the threat of early elections off the table, and then the PSD will step in to cobble together some kind of majority with AUR, its votes, or deputies split off from it.

All that remains to be figured out is how the RMDSZ is going to sell it to us that, one way or another, directly or from the outside, it is in fact governing together with AUR. It will obviously be framed as being in the Hungarian interest. What else could it be?

Ugar