Premium
The knives are sharpened in PNL. Ludovic Orban is determined to gain full control over the Bucharest branch and to overcome the will of his colleagues in Bucharest, who are demanding, little by little, the installation of the MEP Rareş Bogdan at the helm of this organization. Moreover, party leadership is looking for a candidate for the Bucharest City Hall and is currently negotiating with a politician for his recruitment PNL.
Three weeks ago, Orban asked for a postponement at the last session of the PNL in order to come up with proposals for the leadership of PNL Bucharest. The term has already expired, but the PNL leader has claimed that he was busy with the motion and did not have time to analyze well the situation in the capital, where his party gets very weak results lately.
Today, within the Executive Bureau, Ludovic Orban should come up with assessing the performance of Bucharest's subsidiaries at the last Euro-parliamentary elections. Already, the entire line of heads of sectors, headed by Capital leader Cristian Buşoi, resigned or were disqualified for the disastrous scores obtained at these elections.
The rise of Rares Bogdan and his contribution to the national score obtained by PNL added momentum to Orban's contestants from the party. Many see Rareş Bogdan the main tool by which they can create a counterweight to the tendency to centralize the power coming from the current PNL leader. And setting him as president of PNL Bucharest as a reward for the services provided would serve this purpose.
A situation fully known by the two protagonists. In the last few weeks, Rareş Bogdan tried to play from a position of power, criticizing some decisions taken by PNL leadership and coming with hard conditions to accept the leadership of PNL Bucharest: no man under direct control of Orban in the leadership team of this branch and the opportunity to come with his own team at the Capital. As expected, Orban refused these conditions in the subsequent talks, ostracized the new MEP in Brussels, giving him the honorary function of leader of the Romanian delegation, but legitimized the position of Rares Bogdan as his sole rival in the party , a position that now the former resignations at the PNL Bucharest level seek to exploit it.
The pressure put on the leadership of Modrogan by throwing in the public space an
open letter with the signatures of supporting 600 liberals to designate Rareş Bogdan as president in Bucharest did not work. According to sources in the liberal leadership, Orban learned that the whole strategy was staged by the former sector leaders with the assent of Rares Bogdan and acted as such.
Thus, the PNL leader plans to appoint as President of the Capital a trustworthy man, flanked by a team of similar people. Imported from the Cioloş -USR area, unsuccessful candidate for the European Parliament, Violeta Alexandru is in the cards for the leadership of the Bucharest organization, being considered by management to be one of the few people who, through her profile, can break the USR-Plus percentages in the long run. Under its direction, Orban wants to install Tănase Stamule as general secretary of the branch, a person with serious image problems associated with the serious problems identified by the DNA at Sector 1 City Hall and one of the core PNL leader. This is also taken into account for taking over the head of the PNL Sector 1, while the lawyer Cristian Băcanu (the writer of the PNL leader's criminal complaints) is considered a favorite to become the president of PNL Sector 5. At NLP 6, the best chance to be appointed by General Counsel Ciprian Ciucu. Discontents are already murmuring at the corners of the PNL.
"When you have Hagi in a team you do not play with the reserves. None of them exceeds the PNL score on the Capital, be it the way it is." The only one who has twice the trust in Bucharest over the party is Rareş Bogdan, but he did not want to take over the organization with Ludovic's under him. Instead, we were making a survey to see the first six liberals as notorious and trustworthy, and we'll put them in office, "said a Liberal vice president.
But Orban's strategy does not stop here. Rareş Bogdan was also removed from the books of a possible candidacy for the City Hall of Bucharest. According to stiripesurse.ro sources, negotiations have been held in recent weeks with MP Nicuşor Dan, the former founding president of USR.
"He is still in talks with him, but we have come to some kind of impasse." Ludovic urges Nicusor Dan to join the party to be the PNL candidate, but he prefers PNL support for his independent candidate platform ", the sources quoted us.
Negotiations are far from being finalized, but a possible understanding under Nicusor Dan's terms is not seen well in PNL. Nicusor Dan as an independent can not contribute to the increase of the liberal votes in the Capital, and his eventual success in this position in the 2020 elections before Gabriele Firea will not be effectively capitalized by Orban's party.
