On Friday last week the Romanian government collapsed in a vote of no-confidence (that's the second government we've lost in about three months - to lose one seems unfortunate, two seems like carelessness). Just in time for the four day weekend brought on by the (now historical) government's decision to tack a bridge day between the weekend and may 1st.
Anyway, we now have a new government (or we will very soon, once they get through the little hurdles), and we will see what happens. Politics nerds might find the whole process relatively interesting - the unpopular government of some months ago (we'll call it the Boc government, as that is what it was called here) - resigned en masse after coming up against lots of blocks and protests against its austerity obsession. The constitution in these instances says that the president nominates the next PM, who, if parliament approves him (or her, but I can't see it being a her anytime soon), then forms a government. If the parliament rejects the President's choice twice then there has to be a new general election. So Basescu (president) offered up someone who seemed to be specifically designed to be rejected so he could paint the dominant USL opposition coalition as intransigent. But they agreed and voted him in.
Now some time later and the new PM (Ungureanu), was apparently doing a reasonably good job of convincing people that he wasn't just the usual shit Romanian politician, and was getting increasingly popular. Hence Friday's vote of no confidence. Again, everybody expected Basescu to nominate a PM who would be rejected, but to everyone's surprise he went ahead and nominated the leader of the PSD (traditional post-Ceasescu force in Romanian politics and home to large numbers of the nomenklatura). (The PSD being one of the major partners in the USL grouping). This, it is suggested, is because someone from outside (ie the EU) lent on him and said that Romania couldn't afford the instability of lots of dicking around playing political games. I have no idea if this is true, but it was a bit of a surprise.
Anyway, we now have a new PM -Victor Ponta. A friend from Bucharest who spent the weekend with us plays football with Ponta and says "You can get a lot of insights into a man's character from how they behave on the football pitch, and Ponta is an aggressive, cheating, dirty, uber-competitive little shit"
So, then, isn't there an election in Greece coming up?
Anyway, we now have a new government (or we will very soon, once they get through the little hurdles), and we will see what happens. Politics nerds might find the whole process relatively interesting - the unpopular government of some months ago (we'll call it the Boc government, as that is what it was called here) - resigned en masse after coming up against lots of blocks and protests against its austerity obsession. The constitution in these instances says that the president nominates the next PM, who, if parliament approves him (or her, but I can't see it being a her anytime soon), then forms a government. If the parliament rejects the President's choice twice then there has to be a new general election. So Basescu (president) offered up someone who seemed to be specifically designed to be rejected so he could paint the dominant USL opposition coalition as intransigent. But they agreed and voted him in.
Now some time later and the new PM (Ungureanu), was apparently doing a reasonably good job of convincing people that he wasn't just the usual shit Romanian politician, and was getting increasingly popular. Hence Friday's vote of no confidence. Again, everybody expected Basescu to nominate a PM who would be rejected, but to everyone's surprise he went ahead and nominated the leader of the PSD (traditional post-Ceasescu force in Romanian politics and home to large numbers of the nomenklatura). (The PSD being one of the major partners in the USL grouping). This, it is suggested, is because someone from outside (ie the EU) lent on him and said that Romania couldn't afford the instability of lots of dicking around playing political games. I have no idea if this is true, but it was a bit of a surprise.
Anyway, we now have a new PM -Victor Ponta. A friend from Bucharest who spent the weekend with us plays football with Ponta and says "You can get a lot of insights into a man's character from how they behave on the football pitch, and Ponta is an aggressive, cheating, dirty, uber-competitive little shit"
So, then, isn't there an election in Greece coming up?
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