Nicușor admitted: Romania is not a sovereign state!

Bolojan seems to be kinder than usual: he's just left the door open for a PSD government. He still doesn't want to form a coalition with the "reds," but he can now imagine that under certain circumstances the PNL would vote to install a government, only to then remain outside it. Grindeanu shouldn't pop the champagne yet, since he hasn't received support with his name on it, but he can at least have the glasses prepared. First, of course, we need to wait and see whom the president nominates, who promised his decision for Monday at that rather obscure press conference we wrote about yesterday. Until then, everyone pretends not to have the faintest idea whose backside the PSD would finally like to see sitting in the prime minister's chair.

Bolojan's interview with Digi24 last night had another interesting part: the American gas deal. The caretaker prime minister explained that they support the gas corridor heading north from Greece, but that doesn't mean Romania also has to buy the American gas arriving through it. To answer that, one would have to tackle two questions that are presumably quite uncomfortable in diplomatic circles: do we need it, and how much does it cost. According to Bolojan, Romania will become a gas exporter next year, and companies should decide on purchases based on economic calculations. A terrible attitude, really: the great American friendship arrives, and this stubborn Romanian starts checking the price tag. Black Sea extraction is indeed getting closer: according to a late-September announcement by OMV Petrom and Romgaz, the first gas from the Neptun Deep field could flow into the grid in the first half of 2027, with production expected to reach around eight billion cubic meters a year at full capacity—so the strategic partnership still shouldn't mean getting fleeced at the register out of friendship, because, well, we have Kimberly Guilfoyle, the MAGA gas peddler appointed ambassador to Athens, who apparently threw in some loud talk about toppling governments alongside her diplomatic duties. The Financial Times, on September 29, confirmed through its own sources the Athens conversation described by the WSJ: Guilfoyle had already talked about clearing out the Romanian government back on March 18.

But that still hasn't made the story even remotely reassuring. There was an American gas deal, there was Romanian resistance, there were meetings with PSD leaders, and there is bragging attributed to an ambassador about how to clear out other countries' governments. Meanwhile Bolojan is carefully protecting the American partnership, saying there's no disagreement with the administration over the assessment of Romania's gas situation—while who promised what to whom behind the scenes, and exactly how big a role American business interests played in May's government collapse, still needs to be unraveled. Knowing the capabilities of Romanian investigative journalism, that's only a matter of time, and of course the Romanian political class will get there on its own too—no American help needed; around here, backstabbing isn't an imported technology, it's a carefully tended national sport. Incidentally, the ambassador was once engaged to Donald Trump Jr., the same younger Trump whose later wedding celebrations were also graced by Umar Kremlev, a figure tied to Putin. That alone, of course, isn't proof of the Romanian government's downfall—just a bit of family background on the crowd that so eagerly lectures the world about patriotism, sovereignty, and Western values—apparently there's always room for Russian money at a wedding, so don't be such buzzkill pricks about it.

So Bolojan is leaving the door open, which might involve a bit of cunning. Suppose the PNL caucus votes to install a PSD government but doesn't enter a coalition and doesn't promise lasting parliamentary support. Grindeanu gets the chair, then has to walk the halls separately for every important law: either he gives in to the liberals, who from the comfort of opposition can comfortably ask for this and that, or he ends up with AUR again. In the latter case, every joint vote further wears away the story that the PSD is some kind of European social democratic party that only its wicked opponents confuse with the nationalist, anti-reform swamp. What's more, if voters see that the PSD and AUR are peddling the same resentful, nationalistic, pseudo-patriotic crap, just one louder than the other, sooner or later they'll ask why stick with the old merchant at all. In the country of Iliescu's original democracy, this isn't an entirely unfamiliar problem: you want the money and comfort of the Western setup, but preferably none of the accountability. National pride then neatly spreads over everything, like a nice big tablecloth over the table from which the country is being hauled away underneath. From Moscow to Budapest, and from Bucharest to Washington, patriots of this sort understand each other surprisingly well.

Incidentally, Bolojan didn't spare Grindeanu on Digi24: in a cynical sense, he said, Grindeanu would be the right prime minister for bothering no one—except Romania doesn't deserve that. In other words, as I read it: everyone whom Bolojan's reforms have inconvenienced could finally breathe easy and go back to sitting by the old familiar trough.

Of course Grindeanu also spoke, on Antena 3 no less; sometimes you can already understand a lot about Romanian politics just from which studio someone picks to explain themselves. The PSD leader reassured everyone that if the president nominates him, he would indeed like to be prime minister. Well, who would have thought? I almost figured he saw it as some unpleasant duty he just couldn't dodge, poor thing. At least now we have one solid point in this damn chaos: Grindeanu wants the job, and we've known since the Bolyais that with the right fulcrum you can turn the world on its head—though in the first round Sorin did a splendid job of plunging Romania into crisis. He also added that the PSD won't support a government it isn't part of, and that he wants a clear, transparent majority, not an installation cobbled together from occasional votes. In other words, he wants the power, he wants the ministers to go with it, and he'd like someone to also hand him a guaranteed parliamentary backing on the side. I can practically hear the stones dropping off Attila Cseke's heart, and personally I'd like to go on a space trip—only I was never on good terms with Viktor, so I guess I've missed out on that too; that must be the only obstacle.

Meanwhile, the president isn't exactly sitting on his hands either, now that parliament has so nicely handed them back to him. Although he announced the official consultations for Monday, according to G4Media's information, he's also holding informal talks over the weekend with the leaders of the PSD, the PNL, the USR, and the UDMR. And by Monday afternoon he already wants to make a nomination, so at least we're starting to understand how the great constitutional epiphany is supposed to fit into a single working day. Returning from Prague, Dan also stated that he won't support a government that includes AUR, because voters entrusted him with preserving the country's Western direction. Well yes, that is indeed why we voted for you, dear Nicușor, and that's exactly why it would have been damn good if you'd remembered that back when the PSD set about wrecking the government, while you, amid all your grand presidential balancing act, somehow always forgot to clearly say whose responsibility the circus was. Keeping AUR out of government, moreover, would require some workable parliamentary solution. Either the PSD finds support among its former partners, whether from outside or in a new coalition, or it has to scrape up votes from elsewhere. The UDMR would hardly die over a PNL–USR–PSD reconciliation, except first everyone would have to pretend that the same people hadn't spent the last five months beating each other up. I'd say this is unlikely to turn into cooperation if I lived in a normal country, but this is still Romania, where yesterday's betrayal is usually answered with, fine, but then who gets the development ministry. The president's other remark, however, is even more beautiful, so hold on tight. Nicușor Dan rejected early elections with, among other things, this:

He also explained that new elections would extend the period of caretaker governance by months, would hinder fiscal adjustment, and that Romania lives on credit, so it can't risk its financing. Fine, we've heard that. Now let's chew over for a moment what Romania's damn president did with that sentence.

First of all, I rather doubt that some mysterious multitude of investors sent him this message in a single unified chorus, though after the MAGA-style gas diplomacy it's getting hard to be cynical enough. But the most important thing isn't exactly what words the bankers used, but what the president did with it. Well, he committed such a monumental political blunder that it's becoming an effort to interpret it as mere clumsiness. Because what does the voter hear in this? That the parties have been unable to form a government for months, the president has been unable to close the crisis for months, but the moment it comes up that maybe the people should be asked again, suddenly the creditors appear, who wouldn't like that. Five months of political impotence was fine, but an election would suddenly be a reckless adventure. Politicians can freely waste the time, but the voter had better not interrupt too much, because it makes the financial markets nervous.

One of the foundations of AUR's entire xenophobic worldview is that others decide about Romania, that leaders are placed over the people's heads from abroad, and that the Westernized elite serves foreign interests. And then along comes the very president who is supposedly meant to protect the country from that party, announcing that the creditors, too, spoke out against early elections. Simion really won't even need to break a sweat for his next video: he'll cut out that sentence, sign it with "we told you so," and be done. And yes, on this one point AUR is right: the fact that Simion wants early elections doesn't automatically make it the devil's work. I'm not going to accept the endless soap opera of a dysfunctional parliament and a powerless president just because that would mean agreeing with him for the length of one sentence. Asking the voters isn't a far-right invention, and it's a particularly impressive achievement for the Westernizers to manage things so that the far right ends up able to claim this demand as its own.

Of course, an indebted country has to pay attention to what keeps it running, but the president was given his mandate to make political decisions and take responsibility for them, not to present the creditors' opinion as though it settled the debate. Because what really comes across is that democracy is a lovely thing in holiday speeches, but the moment the people might actually have a say in something, it turns out the timing just isn't right. We live on credit, instead of reforms we keep toppling each other, but shut up anyway, because stability requires that the same people who got us here keep on bargaining among themselves. And if anyone seriously believes that keeping the current parliament alive until 2028 will starve AUR out of the air, I have a message for you, boys: you've just hooked them up to concentrated oxygen. We don't know what result they'll get in two years, but one thing is certain: you can't keep selling your own incompetence as a defense of democracy forever. After a while, the voter no longer hears that you're protecting them from Simion, but that you're protecting yourselves from the voter.

And now Nicușor himself has shoved this right in our face...

Anna Karczag