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Progressive Romanians had hoped some things would change after the December 2020 elections. Less nepotism and empty promises, more follow-through. Those hopes have so far proved vain.
Cabinet tumult
The new government is a coalition of PNL (liberals, old guard) and USR/PLUS (progressives, first-time government member). The conservative-nationalist PSD, which became the largest party again in December, has entered the opposition.
Florin CÎțu, who was finance minister in the previous cabinet, may now take charge of the government. Although Romanians are increasingly less compliant with corona measures, the vaccination campaign is going better than feared, so large-scale corona unrest is out for now. Hospitals are full, though, and that is a problem because Romanian healthcare is chronically underfunded and has a severe shortage of doctors. A quarter of them now work in Western Europe.
But health minister Voiculescu (USR) had been under fire for some time because of several fatal accidents in Romanian hospitals. He did not want to take political responsibility for it and, in addition, seemed to be riding roughshod over the prime minister as coronachef with headstrong behaviour. Voiculescu was sacked, but it did not go quietly. In press conferences and interviews, he loudly stated that he was the best minister and that figures were being fiddled, so he had to be able to continue his work at the ministry to sort it out. Whatever was true about it, the whole spectacle was politically executed so immaturely that confidence in the coalition was severely dented. And Romanians are very suspicious of politicians anyway.
Lack of clarity over EU money
The Minister of European Resources (USR) got into the press in almost as ky a way. Of the proposed projects in the national corona recovery plan, many appeared to be arbitrarily cobbled together from half-baked ideas and plans that had little to do with the objectives. A number of plans were rejected by the European Commission, again leading to uncertainty in Romania. Will there or will there not be a motorway to Moldova, the north-eastern part of the country? The Romanian government barely has money for pensions and civil servants' salaries; other things have to be funded by the EU.
It was precisely on the issue of more EU money that expectations of the new government were higher than of the previous one. The PSD, which usually governs, does not have EU money high on its agenda, reportedly because it is less easily tampered with. The new government has gone full steam ahead on the issue, but if it turns out to be mirages, it is likely to translate into electoral losses for USR/PLUS in the next elections.
By: Johan Bouman
Photo: Unsplash
