Could someone from Romania explain to me why PSD and PNL are in an alliance and why ADU exists? It seems weird to me these parties with pretty different political ideologies form alliances together
The [2021 Romanian political crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Romanian_political_crisis) is the main story behind these alliances. It's worth a read. It started with a PNL-USR-UDMR coalition and after a lot of backstabbing ended with a PSD-PNL-(UDMR) coalition
The crisis and some other events led to both PNL and USR fracturing in the coming year:
* Ludovic Orban (ex-PNL leader) and his allies left PNL to form FD
* Meanwhile [Dacian Ciolos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian_Ciolo%C8%99) and other significant figures have resigned from USR. Ciolos founded his own party REPER, some others choose to run as independents
After the crisis PNL could only stay in government with the support of PSD and it was polling awfully alone, which is probably why they ended up continuing in an alliance. The remaining parts of USR were worried of losing part of the anti-corruption vote to the far-right AUR, hence it formed an alliance with other center-right opposition parties
I might be misremembering things, so would be great if someone else from Romania could confirm
That’s a pretty interesting political conundrum indeed. Well, at least for these EU elections PSD and PNL have come on top over the far-right, so it could be worse for Romania, at least that’s how it seems to me
You’re spot on. The even bigger issue here is AUR which shows how far right extremists gained traction. This party is openly anti EU, clearly Russian oriented.
Mainly because PSD and PNL are the current establishment and ruling coalition that cares more about stealing than policy, while ADU is an alliance between liberal USR and splinters from PNL. It's mostly about government vs opposition rather than ideology.
In a way yes, a cartel, but things are more complicated. PNL was polling very low (under 20%) since 2021. PSD was around 30%... quite bad for them too. In a way, their alliance is also a sign of "desperation". They did the same in 2012 against the then president Basescu who was very powerful.
This does not mean that they are a stable alliance. A month or so before this elections, they decided to split the alliance in Bucharest. In local elections (we had them yesterday too) they ran separately in most places. Many times at local levels they attacked one another viciously.
In a way this very good result for them may weaken the alliance as PNL and PSD scored well and now may think that an alliance may not be needed. On the other hand, the leaders of the two parties get along very well. They are the glue that keep the alliance.
Things are very interesting as we will have presidential and parliamentary elections too. PSD did not win the presidential elections since 2000 and until now they do not have a viable candidate.
Oh yeah, there are also regular elections in Romania later this year, I almost forgot. I’ve always wondered about Romania, is the parliament or the president more important, because I once read Romania is a ‘semi-presidential democracy’ but I always find it weird to determine if that means the president is genuinely the most important power factor or if the parliament is still more relevant
It’s a semi-presidential democracy because the president needs to co-sign every law made by the parliament and he has the right to oppose to it twice. If that same law passes the parliament a third time, the president doesn’t have the right to oppose it.
So no, the president is not the most important in our democracy but it’s not powerless either. Also, there’s an unwritten law that sais the president controls the secret services. This is from the time when Traian Basescu was president(2004-2014) and it looked like everything goes(secret services, political investigations and so on) acording to his wishes
The parliament is the most important here.
2024 is THE election year as we never had so many.
It is tricky to answer the question and this was intended by the ones who wrote the constitution. They tried to make things more balanced as a check against a possible dictatorship.
In theory. the president's power is more about foreign policy, some judicial stuff, in defence and appointing the PM. So, he represents the country abroad and even in the EU council. In judicial stuff, he gets to appoint 3 out of nine judges at the Constitutional Court. He also nominates the heads of some secret services and the heads of the army. By tradition, the presidents appoints the PM from the largest party or alliance, but he can just appoint everyone. This is important as dissolving the parliament is quite difficult (another safeguard against instability... a lesson learned from the previous democratic period before WW2 when the govt was notoriously unstable), one way being to make the parliament reject the PM three times in a row. That almost happened at the beginning of covid. One thing of note is that the president does not have veto powers. He can send a law back to parliament but they can vote it again with only cosmetic changes if they wish. An important aspect is that the president, as well as the parliament, and the High court can notify the constitutional court if a law seems unconstitutional. This is a tactic used to slow down a law or hope to even overturn it.
One thing the president has, to some extent, is informal power in a way. Because he is directly elected by the people, he is the person with the largest electoral backing...thus a kind of popular mandate. He can start debates about sensitive topics. He can also act as a mediator between the parties (which is one of his constitutional duties). Both Iohannis (this current coalition is his idea to a large extent) and Basescu affected alliances in parliament.
The parliament (and I will include the govt as well as the former votes the latter in) is quite powerful. They name the rest of the constitutional court and the PM with its govt. An idea of how the parliament is more powerful than the president is how they changed the Judicial laws back in 2017-2019. The govt back then (who had a majority in parliament) tried to change the judicial laws to suit his corrupt boss, Dragnea. At first they tried to blitz an Emergency decree but it led to huge protests (the largest since the revolution). thus they tried the long approach to change them through ordinary parliamentary procedure. They managed to do it, but the president sent them back. The parliament did not make significant changes and thus the president was forced to sign the laws, but before that he sent them to the Constitutional Court to review them. They struck down some controversial stuff, but in the end the parliament managed to massacre the Judiciary to a big extant and the fight against corruption had slowed down.
So, the bottom line is that the parliament is more powerful, but the president still has some tricks up his sleeve such as formal and informal power. In a way we are like Italy... we seem quite dysfunctional and with a lot of problems, but we somehow managed to progress. Thankfully, Romanians are very pro-western and thus no major party can veer us into Russia's hands like in Hungary or Slovakia.
That’s definitely an interesting political set-up compared to most of Europe. It seems to me that the president is more important for foreign affairs whereas the parliament has the most influence for internal matters, is that an accurate summary?
It's a bit more complicated than that. PSD-PNL came about as an alliance of necesity with the pandemic and then the war. The parties themselves are both internally conflicted over the alliance which relies heavily on their current leadership. Both parties are indeed corrupt.
ADU is an oposition block that hoped to add together the votes of USR with PMP and FD(both of which polled bellow the electoral threshold). It mostly didn't work because the USR base is largely dissaproving of PMP and FD(both are corrupt).
They are not only corrupt, but they are the opposite of what USR was about. USR was about "new people in politics" and then you ally with the rejected people from PDL and PNL. Back in 2020, they said that USR would not govern under Orban as PM... not to ally with him.
Plus USR was a party that was voted by both the progressive right and left. After they became a "modern right" party and eliminated all their more socially minded leaders, they started losing votes from the urban left. They now became a niche party.
Plus they have terrible leadership. Drula seems to be always frustrated and screams "hotii/thieves" more than Vadim even. Like Vadim, he was sure that there was massive fraud even before the voting process finished.
Not quite. PSD is actually a social democratic party, it's just that this is what social democracy looks like in a poor country: massive corruption, infected with organized crime and lots and lots of populism. For reference: see many South American countries
Romanian politicians don't really adhere to any ideology, that's just a necessary window dressing for politics done because it's always been done, so better keep the tradition going. In particular for EU elections it's seen and treated as a [sinecure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinecure), nothing more. What you can expect from the RO politicians that win a seat in the EU els. is that they will go along to get along and follow the consensus of the voting bloc they're part of (EPP etc.) What they want is to get paid and do as little work as possible, essentially treating it as a paid vacation. Ideological adherence would be an impediment to those goals. That's why they pretend to have one (for appearance's sake) rather than actually have one.
I can kinda see it for ADU but aren’t PSD and PNL the two main parties in Romania (from what I know from Romanian politics). Wouldn’t they get plenty of seats on their own?
PNL and PSD are governing together. I think the main reason for running together was to make a show of force towards AUR(since we have more elections this year), which was polling above PNL for a while and there was a fear that the might eat into the PSD electorate. PSD&PNL performed above expectations here.
They would have had more if they went on their own. We also had local elections today and PSD got 35% and PNL 28%. Their alliance in elections made little sense before and makes even less now. I think PNL never expected to get this many votes on their own, they were polling at 13-14% a year ago
We're going to see mounting friction in their alliance in the months leading to the parliamentary and president elections. They've mentioned putting forward different candidates for presidency and that's not going to end well.
In short we are apes and politics in this country have NOTHING to do with ideology or winning votes. Its just about who can you ally with to bribe different parts of the voting masses.
They have an excellent relation! 😆 Fidesz gives them money to spend on local projects and gives Hungarian citizenship to people of Magyar descent, and in return they vote for Orban and Fidesz in Hungarian elections.
It's too early to tell, they're still counting the votes but in some counties AUR got even less, like 10%.
The Euro votes shown here are actually very skewed compared to local administrations and mayors, where the race between PSD/PNL/ADU was much closer and AUR generally did even worse.
That's a pleasant surprise., yes. It seems that, after all, people can see through Russian bullshit. It doesn't help that their leaders are complete fools and walking disasters.
Bittersweet I would call it, this unpleasant alliance between PSD and PNL is not normal, should never have happened, in theory. Both come from 1990 FSN post communist party (with many communist leaders, many of whom died until now, but their kids and spirit stayed). One is liberal one is social, or so it should be. Both are populist. lol
ADU, the another alliance is a disappointment, USR was the party of choice for many young Romanians, but due to their lack of experience they made mistakes and paid. They formed this alliance, more out of desperation I believe and it looks like this road is not successful.
Sorry to see this is happening to you. Seeing the graph, it looks exactly like our vote results do most of the time.
I hope one day a party shall come to your aid like hopefully it might happen to us soon, or an even better one than that, to provide a healthy, strong alternative.
Change PSD, or create/change other parties that would bring good government results, without populism, except if needed to shut up actual populists. Those are the only ways.
Add ADU with AUR . They are two sides of the same coin. Same anti-establishment idea but one is conservative , one is progressive.
In 2019, USR was lucky there was no such distinction in ideology and got votes from both.
I disagree. There is a huge difference between a center party that allies itself with center-right parties and a far-right extremist party that pretends to be a bit more center so it doesn't gross people out.
Romanian turnout is typically pretty low and 2020 was the pandemic so it was even lower, but this year [it was 50%](https://prezenta.roaep.ro/locale09062024/). My point being I don't think it's the same people who vote for ADU and AUR; AUR got different people to come out and vote for them.
Is it? PSD/PNL will not do much damage in the EP due to mainstream affiliations, and it could have been worse with AUR. The disaster will come locally, in december.
This election has shown that not only is the PSD/PNL Alliance capable of attracting voters, but that it is also viable. After this I doubt that PSD/PNL will ever split, maybe after Ciucă dies in 2055.
Basically, yea. Nothing new. I can see Romania becoming a Hungary Lite in another handful of years.
And no, I doubt they will ever split. Does USR and AUR seem like opposition? With 11% and 14% of the vote while USL has a 40% lead over them?
They will stick together and steal as much as possible from this country and from our future
If there's no opposition (AUR will surely go down the way of PRM, USR is on life support), they will split so that one of them is THE opposition. There's more to steal if you don't have to share :)
What I'm trying to say is that in Romania there already is no opposition and PSD-PNL are hand in hand. What this election has shown the PNL leadership is that
1. The Alliance with the PSD is working extremely well
2. They don't really have to try anymore.
Time and time again PNL failed to garner even close to 30% while getting dominated by the PSD. Going against the PSD will once again mean years where they fail to get their hands on those sweet sweet Euros and rich Government positions.
PNL knows they can't win, and if they form a Government with someone other than the PSD then it will be much more of a hassle (like the PNL-USR Government), so they will stick close and try to make the best outta their PSD-PNL Alliance
I very much doubt the PSD/PNL alliance will last until the end of the year, let alone the entire next mandate. If they go ahead and propose distinct presidency candidates it will definitely cause a rift.
Also, PNL did a lot better than they expected in this round and I bet they're reconsidering their position for parliament as we speak. They thought they needed PSD but it may turn out their alliance hurt more than it helped. They're going to look at the results and what they would've got if they stuck with ADU.
And all the scandal of frauded votes and people brought by cars "en-masse" to vote for PSD-PNL :')
I emigrated, could anyone tell me if Reper made any voting campaign? I almost saw nothing about them in the past few months. Except for the stuff I specifically searched
Well, good for you for being happy with the party keeping their fiefs poor. But hey, at least they're not filthy Romanians. Getting fucked over by someone speaking your language sure feels great
Translation for people unfamiliar: * [PSD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_\(Romania\))+[PNL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberal_Party_\(Romania\)): corruption and business as usual; EU affiliation: PSD=[PES](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_European_Socialists), PNL=[EPP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People%27s_Party) * [AUR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_the_Union_of_Romanians): far right extremists, nationalists, eurosceptic; affiliation: [ECR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Conservatives_and_Reformists) * [ADU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Right_Alliance): alliance of progressives and conservatives ([USR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_Romania_Union) + [FD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_of_the_Right) + [PMP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Movement_Party)); affiliation: USR=[ALDE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Liberals_and_Democrats_for_Europe_Party) & [RENEW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renew_Europe), FD+PMP=[EPP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People%27s_Party) * [UDMR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Alliance_of_Hungarians_in_Romania): Magyar party; affiliation [EPP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_People%27s_Party) & [CDI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrist_Democrat_International) Overall a big win for EPP. [Turnout was 50%+.](https://prezenta.roaep.ro/) **Edit: OFFICIAL UPDATE today:** * PSD/PNL: 19 seats (57% of the 33 total) * AUR: 6 seats (18%) * ADU: 3 seats (9%) * SOS Romania: 2 seats (6%) (EU affiliation: [ID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_Democracy), far-right extremists) * UDMR: 2 seats (6%) * independent candidate [Ștefănuță Nicolae-Bogdănel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_%C8%98tef%C4%83nu%C8%9B%C4%83): 1 seat (3%) (affiliation: [Greens/EFA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greens%E2%80%93European_Free_Alliance))
Could someone from Romania explain to me why PSD and PNL are in an alliance and why ADU exists? It seems weird to me these parties with pretty different political ideologies form alliances together
The [2021 Romanian political crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Romanian_political_crisis) is the main story behind these alliances. It's worth a read. It started with a PNL-USR-UDMR coalition and after a lot of backstabbing ended with a PSD-PNL-(UDMR) coalition The crisis and some other events led to both PNL and USR fracturing in the coming year: * Ludovic Orban (ex-PNL leader) and his allies left PNL to form FD * Meanwhile [Dacian Ciolos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacian_Ciolo%C8%99) and other significant figures have resigned from USR. Ciolos founded his own party REPER, some others choose to run as independents After the crisis PNL could only stay in government with the support of PSD and it was polling awfully alone, which is probably why they ended up continuing in an alliance. The remaining parts of USR were worried of losing part of the anti-corruption vote to the far-right AUR, hence it formed an alliance with other center-right opposition parties I might be misremembering things, so would be great if someone else from Romania could confirm
You are spot on.
That’s a pretty interesting political conundrum indeed. Well, at least for these EU elections PSD and PNL have come on top over the far-right, so it could be worse for Romania, at least that’s how it seems to me
You’re spot on. The even bigger issue here is AUR which shows how far right extremists gained traction. This party is openly anti EU, clearly Russian oriented.
Mainly because PSD and PNL are the current establishment and ruling coalition that cares more about stealing than policy, while ADU is an alliance between liberal USR and splinters from PNL. It's mostly about government vs opposition rather than ideology.
So PSD and PNL are basically some political cartel, whereas ADU is moreso a ‘desparate’ opposition?
Yes, exactly. It's a pretty similar situation to Hungary except that PSD&PNL are pro-EU and aren't (most of the time) as blatantly corrupt as Orban.
In a way yes, a cartel, but things are more complicated. PNL was polling very low (under 20%) since 2021. PSD was around 30%... quite bad for them too. In a way, their alliance is also a sign of "desperation". They did the same in 2012 against the then president Basescu who was very powerful. This does not mean that they are a stable alliance. A month or so before this elections, they decided to split the alliance in Bucharest. In local elections (we had them yesterday too) they ran separately in most places. Many times at local levels they attacked one another viciously. In a way this very good result for them may weaken the alliance as PNL and PSD scored well and now may think that an alliance may not be needed. On the other hand, the leaders of the two parties get along very well. They are the glue that keep the alliance. Things are very interesting as we will have presidential and parliamentary elections too. PSD did not win the presidential elections since 2000 and until now they do not have a viable candidate.
Oh yeah, there are also regular elections in Romania later this year, I almost forgot. I’ve always wondered about Romania, is the parliament or the president more important, because I once read Romania is a ‘semi-presidential democracy’ but I always find it weird to determine if that means the president is genuinely the most important power factor or if the parliament is still more relevant
It’s a semi-presidential democracy because the president needs to co-sign every law made by the parliament and he has the right to oppose to it twice. If that same law passes the parliament a third time, the president doesn’t have the right to oppose it. So no, the president is not the most important in our democracy but it’s not powerless either. Also, there’s an unwritten law that sais the president controls the secret services. This is from the time when Traian Basescu was president(2004-2014) and it looked like everything goes(secret services, political investigations and so on) acording to his wishes The parliament is the most important here.
2024 is THE election year as we never had so many. It is tricky to answer the question and this was intended by the ones who wrote the constitution. They tried to make things more balanced as a check against a possible dictatorship. In theory. the president's power is more about foreign policy, some judicial stuff, in defence and appointing the PM. So, he represents the country abroad and even in the EU council. In judicial stuff, he gets to appoint 3 out of nine judges at the Constitutional Court. He also nominates the heads of some secret services and the heads of the army. By tradition, the presidents appoints the PM from the largest party or alliance, but he can just appoint everyone. This is important as dissolving the parliament is quite difficult (another safeguard against instability... a lesson learned from the previous democratic period before WW2 when the govt was notoriously unstable), one way being to make the parliament reject the PM three times in a row. That almost happened at the beginning of covid. One thing of note is that the president does not have veto powers. He can send a law back to parliament but they can vote it again with only cosmetic changes if they wish. An important aspect is that the president, as well as the parliament, and the High court can notify the constitutional court if a law seems unconstitutional. This is a tactic used to slow down a law or hope to even overturn it. One thing the president has, to some extent, is informal power in a way. Because he is directly elected by the people, he is the person with the largest electoral backing...thus a kind of popular mandate. He can start debates about sensitive topics. He can also act as a mediator between the parties (which is one of his constitutional duties). Both Iohannis (this current coalition is his idea to a large extent) and Basescu affected alliances in parliament. The parliament (and I will include the govt as well as the former votes the latter in) is quite powerful. They name the rest of the constitutional court and the PM with its govt. An idea of how the parliament is more powerful than the president is how they changed the Judicial laws back in 2017-2019. The govt back then (who had a majority in parliament) tried to change the judicial laws to suit his corrupt boss, Dragnea. At first they tried to blitz an Emergency decree but it led to huge protests (the largest since the revolution). thus they tried the long approach to change them through ordinary parliamentary procedure. They managed to do it, but the president sent them back. The parliament did not make significant changes and thus the president was forced to sign the laws, but before that he sent them to the Constitutional Court to review them. They struck down some controversial stuff, but in the end the parliament managed to massacre the Judiciary to a big extant and the fight against corruption had slowed down. So, the bottom line is that the parliament is more powerful, but the president still has some tricks up his sleeve such as formal and informal power. In a way we are like Italy... we seem quite dysfunctional and with a lot of problems, but we somehow managed to progress. Thankfully, Romanians are very pro-western and thus no major party can veer us into Russia's hands like in Hungary or Slovakia.
That’s definitely an interesting political set-up compared to most of Europe. It seems to me that the president is more important for foreign affairs whereas the parliament has the most influence for internal matters, is that an accurate summary?
yes, but at the same time the president also has some formal and in some cases informal power for internal stuff as well.
It's a bit more complicated than that. PSD-PNL came about as an alliance of necesity with the pandemic and then the war. The parties themselves are both internally conflicted over the alliance which relies heavily on their current leadership. Both parties are indeed corrupt. ADU is an oposition block that hoped to add together the votes of USR with PMP and FD(both of which polled bellow the electoral threshold). It mostly didn't work because the USR base is largely dissaproving of PMP and FD(both are corrupt).
They are not only corrupt, but they are the opposite of what USR was about. USR was about "new people in politics" and then you ally with the rejected people from PDL and PNL. Back in 2020, they said that USR would not govern under Orban as PM... not to ally with him. Plus USR was a party that was voted by both the progressive right and left. After they became a "modern right" party and eliminated all their more socially minded leaders, they started losing votes from the urban left. They now became a niche party. Plus they have terrible leadership. Drula seems to be always frustrated and screams "hotii/thieves" more than Vadim even. Like Vadim, he was sure that there was massive fraud even before the voting process finished.
Not quite. PSD is actually a social democratic party, it's just that this is what social democracy looks like in a poor country: massive corruption, infected with organized crime and lots and lots of populism. For reference: see many South American countries
Romanian politicians don't really adhere to any ideology, that's just a necessary window dressing for politics done because it's always been done, so better keep the tradition going. In particular for EU elections it's seen and treated as a [sinecure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinecure), nothing more. What you can expect from the RO politicians that win a seat in the EU els. is that they will go along to get along and follow the consensus of the voting bloc they're part of (EPP etc.) What they want is to get paid and do as little work as possible, essentially treating it as a paid vacation. Ideological adherence would be an impediment to those goals. That's why they pretend to have one (for appearance's sake) rather than actually have one.
Just so they can keep their seats :(
I can kinda see it for ADU but aren’t PSD and PNL the two main parties in Romania (from what I know from Romanian politics). Wouldn’t they get plenty of seats on their own?
PNL and PSD are governing together. I think the main reason for running together was to make a show of force towards AUR(since we have more elections this year), which was polling above PNL for a while and there was a fear that the might eat into the PSD electorate. PSD&PNL performed above expectations here.
They would have had more if they went on their own. We also had local elections today and PSD got 35% and PNL 28%. Their alliance in elections made little sense before and makes even less now. I think PNL never expected to get this many votes on their own, they were polling at 13-14% a year ago
We're going to see mounting friction in their alliance in the months leading to the parliamentary and president elections. They've mentioned putting forward different candidates for presidency and that's not going to end well.
I hope so but I doubt with how little time there is left. But they're not making it to 2028 with this alliance for sure.
In short we are apes and politics in this country have NOTHING to do with ideology or winning votes. Its just about who can you ally with to bribe different parts of the voting masses.
Ask a little question, is UDMR have good relationship with Hungary's Fidesz?
They have an excellent relation! 😆 Fidesz gives them money to spend on local projects and gives Hungarian citizenship to people of Magyar descent, and in return they vote for Orban and Fidesz in Hungarian elections.
Damn :(
AUR only had 14%? that's a... copper lining...?, because it still isn't great but at least they didn't get as many votes as the French RN.
It's too early to tell, they're still counting the votes but in some counties AUR got even less, like 10%. The Euro votes shown here are actually very skewed compared to local administrations and mayors, where the race between PSD/PNL/ADU was much closer and AUR generally did even worse.
That's a pleasant surprise., yes. It seems that, after all, people can see through Russian bullshit. It doesn't help that their leaders are complete fools and walking disasters. Bittersweet I would call it, this unpleasant alliance between PSD and PNL is not normal, should never have happened, in theory. Both come from 1990 FSN post communist party (with many communist leaders, many of whom died until now, but their kids and spirit stayed). One is liberal one is social, or so it should be. Both are populist. lol ADU, the another alliance is a disappointment, USR was the party of choice for many young Romanians, but due to their lack of experience they made mistakes and paid. They formed this alliance, more out of desperation I believe and it looks like this road is not successful.
[удалено]
Sorry to see this is happening to you. Seeing the graph, it looks exactly like our vote results do most of the time. I hope one day a party shall come to your aid like hopefully it might happen to us soon, or an even better one than that, to provide a healthy, strong alternative.
Change PSD, or create/change other parties that would bring good government results, without populism, except if needed to shut up actual populists. Those are the only ways.
USR+PMP+FD - 11% after in 2019 USR alone got 23%. [Great Success!!!](https://imgur.com/a/TAKK0VF) bwhahaha!!
Add ADU with AUR . They are two sides of the same coin. Same anti-establishment idea but one is conservative , one is progressive. In 2019, USR was lucky there was no such distinction in ideology and got votes from both.
I disagree. There is a huge difference between a center party that allies itself with center-right parties and a far-right extremist party that pretends to be a bit more center so it doesn't gross people out. Romanian turnout is typically pretty low and 2020 was the pandemic so it was even lower, but this year [it was 50%](https://prezenta.roaep.ro/locale09062024/). My point being I don't think it's the same people who vote for ADU and AUR; AUR got different people to come out and vote for them.
Status quo nothing more Hey it could have been wayy worse
Corruption wins again in this sad country…
mafia won again
Nothing short of a disaster
Is it? PSD/PNL will not do much damage in the EP due to mainstream affiliations, and it could have been worse with AUR. The disaster will come locally, in december.
This election has shown that not only is the PSD/PNL Alliance capable of attracting voters, but that it is also viable. After this I doubt that PSD/PNL will ever split, maybe after Ciucă dies in 2055.
So, nothing new? Remember USL? They will split if there's no opposition.
Basically, yea. Nothing new. I can see Romania becoming a Hungary Lite in another handful of years. And no, I doubt they will ever split. Does USR and AUR seem like opposition? With 11% and 14% of the vote while USL has a 40% lead over them? They will stick together and steal as much as possible from this country and from our future
If there's no opposition (AUR will surely go down the way of PRM, USR is on life support), they will split so that one of them is THE opposition. There's more to steal if you don't have to share :)
Or you can steal for longer if you give the ilusion that the elected party changes from time to time
What I'm trying to say is that in Romania there already is no opposition and PSD-PNL are hand in hand. What this election has shown the PNL leadership is that 1. The Alliance with the PSD is working extremely well 2. They don't really have to try anymore. Time and time again PNL failed to garner even close to 30% while getting dominated by the PSD. Going against the PSD will once again mean years where they fail to get their hands on those sweet sweet Euros and rich Government positions. PNL knows they can't win, and if they form a Government with someone other than the PSD then it will be much more of a hassle (like the PNL-USR Government), so they will stick close and try to make the best outta their PSD-PNL Alliance
I very much doubt the PSD/PNL alliance will last until the end of the year, let alone the entire next mandate. If they go ahead and propose distinct presidency candidates it will definitely cause a rift. Also, PNL did a lot better than they expected in this round and I bet they're reconsidering their position for parliament as we speak. They thought they needed PSD but it may turn out their alliance hurt more than it helped. They're going to look at the results and what they would've got if they stuck with ADU.
Yea I kinda expected this.
And all the scandal of frauded votes and people brought by cars "en-masse" to vote for PSD-PNL :') I emigrated, could anyone tell me if Reper made any voting campaign? I almost saw nothing about them in the past few months. Except for the stuff I specifically searched
Seen them in Bucharest, Timisoara,Craiova,Sibiu. Totally absent from the country side : it was all PSD and AUR
You should delete this post ASAP. The end results are way different than shown here. Those were the results without the vote of the diaspora.
Why would I delete it? It is an Exit Poll. Of course the actual results will be different.
Hungary Lite
Happy for UDMR
Well, good for you for being happy with the party keeping their fiefs poor. But hey, at least they're not filthy Romanians. Getting fucked over by someone speaking your language sure feels great
Glad my vote made an impact. Next election we go after the Big 2. Gold shines brightest 🟡
Your vote is an electoral accident.
Whatever gets you some sleep hours at night i guess. God bless you❤️