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Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu said Monday that he has set out to behave as normal as possible while in office, adding that he avoids doing certain things out of a fear of looking ridiculous.
"Hopefully, I've remained the same person as I used to be before becoming a prime minister, that is a sane person. I do normal things, I try to behave as normal as possible; that is one of the things I have set out to do, because when you lose touch with reality, with the world, there is a very high risk of you doing things differently than normally done," Grindeanu told TVR 1 public broadcaster in an interview aired on Monday.
He also talked about December 30, 2016, the date when he was offered to become the prime minister. "I was asked to come to Bucharest, where there was a situation as the first prime minister pick of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Mrs Sevil Shhaideh had been rejected. Statutorily, the party's steering board convened and voted on me taking over that duty. That surely came as a surprise, I guess it was visible (...) Sometimes I look at the pictures back then and I can detect a certain emotion in me (...)," said Grindeanu.
Asked if he is a timid, Grindeanu said: "Not necessarily shy, as rather I am very, very afraid of looking foolish and so I avoid doing certain things. And also falling prey to foolishness, which is very easy to happen."
He went on to say that since taking over of prime minister office, he has had very little time off. "There are very many things to be done. Time is short, and so the time for strictly personal business is very short," said Grindeanu.
He also reminisced about his childhood at his maternal grandparents' in the village of Borlovenii Vechi, sharing his passion for mathematics and his recollections of secondary and high school when he would take part in school math competitions.
"As my father was a mathematics teacher, he instilled in me the same passion and I followed in his footsteps (...) Many times I think about just how much mathematics I would do in secondary and high school and in faculty (...) Since I've embraced that career, I may not be using now all these very many things that I learned," said Grindeanu.
He also talked about his son Mihai and his daughter Sofia, whom he gets to see once or twice a month only, because they live in the western city of Timisoara with his wife Mihaela, some 541 km away from Bucharest City, where he works. Given the circumstances, he said he and his wife will decide this summer on the entire family moving out to Bucharest.
Grindeanu also mentioned the time when he started up in politics: while a student in Timisoara in 1996, he joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD).
"In the first round of the 1996 presidential election, I voted the Democratic Party (PD), which candidate was Petre Roman and which was a left-of-centre party back then. (...) In between the rounds, Roman considered that PD should enter an alliance with the right-of-centre Democratic Convention, which dealt a blow to my beliefs (...) And that boosted me into joining FDSN [the National Democratic Salvation Front]," said Grindeanu, also mentioning the political offices he held later on that culminated with the prime minister office.
