The PSD Faction of the RMDSZ-Backed Government Gains Five Defectors

Five senators, originally elected on the lists of SOS Romania and the Party of Young People (POT), have joined the PSD's Senate faction, whose membership has thus grown from thirty-five to forty. The switch was announced on Monday, November 2, during the plenary session of the upper house – reports G4Media.

Joining the faction of the party led by Sorin Grindeanu were Ionel Carp and Cristian Bem, who had entered parliament on the SOS list, as well as Valentina Aldea, Liviu Sorin Robe and Robert Daniel Ghiță, elected under the POT banner. Aldea, incidentally, burst out laughing before revealing where she would continue her political career.

Before the switch, all five had been sitting as independent senators after their former parliamentary groups disbanded amid a wave of departures; the Pace Întâi România faction, which had also housed Carp and Bem, ceased to exist just last week after its membership fell below the seven required to function.

The story also poses an awkward question for the RMDSZ (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania), since Hunor Kelemen had previously stated that the party had no intention of entering a coalition with any extremist formation, no matter how it relabeled itself. What, then, becomes of this principle when politicians from extremist parties move, one by one, into the faction of a potential coalition partner — and when there is still the agreement on supporting the PSD-led government that has remained undisclosed to the public ever since?

Ugar