Mureșan is trying, while shooting at the PSD with early elections

Prime minister-designate Siegfried Mureșan submitted his government program and the list of his ministers to Parliament on Saturday, officially launching the parliamentary procedure for the cabinet's investiture. The ministerial candidates are expected to be heard by the specialized committees on Monday, and the confidence vote could take place on Tuesday. So the ministers are set, the program is ready, the portfolios have been distributed—only one small detail is missing: the parliamentary majority. The PNL, USR and the RMDSZ (Hungarian party) together have 170 certain votes, while 233 votes are needed for the government's investiture. Mureșan would therefore need to find at least 63 additional deputies and senators within a few days.

When submitting the documents, however, the prime minister-designate did not speak like someone preparing for a lost vote from the outset; instead, he shifted political responsibility onto the PSD, and more clearly than ever before linked the possible fall of the Mureșan government to the possibility of early elections.

„Next week the PSD will be put to the test of truth. The government program also contains social measures. The PSD bears heavy responsibility for the political crisis. If the PSD does not vote for the government, the door will open for early elections, which the head of state could then call at any time,”

Mureșan declared.

This part of the statement is the most important, since Mureșan was sending a message not only to the PSD but also to the head of state, who recently sent word from New York that early elections would be bad and that he does not want to call them. According to Mureșan, experts from the PNL, USR and RMDSZ drew up the government program in just five days.

„In five days we managed to draw up an extremely concrete program together with the experts and specialists of the three parties supporting the government—the National Liberal Party, the Save Romania Union and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania,” he said. In his speech, the prime minister-designate spoke of 372 concrete measures, while the version of the program obtained by HotNews contained 381 measures. The reason for the discrepancy is not yet clear: it is possible that the parties modified or merged some of the program points during Friday's meetings.

„We managed to submit an extremely concrete, detailed and comprehensive program, containing 372 measures that the government will implement for Romania, and we also managed to submit the list of ministers: competent, responsible and serious people who will be able to implement this program,”

Mureșan said. He added that they first drew up the government program, and only afterward chose the ministers who would have to implement it. This naturally sounds better as political communication than the fact that the three parties spent days dividing up ministries among themselves, especially in light of the USR–RMDSZ wrestling match over the Ministry of Justice—but let's stick with the official version. Mureșan also said that the detailed program was finalized on Friday, after which the leading bodies of the RMDSZ, the PNL and the USR, in that order, approved the document and the list of ministerial candidates.

Mureșan promised a modern, prosperous, just and safe country. According to his definition, in a modern Romania there is less bureaucracy and state services actually work; in a prosperous Romania, people do not struggle month after month to pay their bills; and in a just Romania, the law applies to everyone, and whoever breaks it is quickly held accountable. This latter pledge sounds particularly nice in a country where one of the biggest disputes in the bargaining over government formation between the parties was precisely over who could install their own person at the head of the Ministry of Justice. According to the prime minister-designate, however, real development must begin with the state itself, which is why the first part of the program deals with the reform of the state.

Among the cabinet's commitments are:

• reducing the number of deputies and senators in Parliament based on the data from the latest census;

• limiting the number of state secretaries in every ministry;

• reducing the number of deputy prime ministers to three;

• ensuring that all three deputy prime ministers also lead an actual ministry;

• banning the simultaneous receipt of a state pension and a state salary;

• merging state agencies;

• reorganizing central and local public administration;

• adopting a new law on public sector pay;

• and reforming certain institutions of the justice system.

The program also promises that no new taxes will be introduced in 2027 and 2028, that VAT will be reduced from 21 percent back to 19 percent depending on budgetary possibilities, that the accumulation of state salaries and pensions will be abolished, that TAROM will be privatized, and that the number of parliamentary seats will be reduced by about 13 percent. The cabinet's fate on Tuesday will depend primarily on the PSD. The Social Democrats' leadership officially decided not to support Mureșan, and Sorin Grindeanu called the cabinet in the making a younger edition of the Bolojan government, but Mureșan now spoke directly to the PSD's parliamentary deputies when he brought up the possibility of early elections—if the government falls, the constitutional conditions for dissolving Parliament could be met, and the head of state could then decide to call early elections. In theory, the 17 representatives of national minorities and the 23 independent or non-affiliated lawmakers could join the 170 certain votes. But even together, that would amount to only 210 votes, so even in this extremely optimistic scenario, 23 votes would still be missing, which could come either from within the PSD or from the parliamentary splinter groups that have broken off from AUR, SOS România and POT. Mureșan claims that he is not negotiating with AUR, but he has also previously stated that he cannot prevent AUR's deputies from voting for his government. On Tuesday it will become clear whether that is enough to convince 63 members of parliament, or whether, after four months of political crisis, Romania will once again find itself where it has been all along: without a government, with parties threatening one another, and with a far-right party calmly waiting in the meantime for its turn to come to power.

Source: HotNews