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President of the Senate Teodor Melescanu on Thursday stated he still thinks of himself as being a member of ALDE, in which capacity he will further endorse an independence candidate in the upcoming presidential elections.
Melescanu answered a question addressed to him at a press conference, about whom he will endorse in the next presidential elections, by saying: "This is a very good question. In principle, I assure you that I haven't decided yet, for I need to wait first and see who are the most serious candidates. But as a member of ALDE, for I still consider myself to be just that, and I hope I will remain a member of ALDE, I endorse an independent candidate. I don't want to go into too much detail right now about the independent candidate, Mr Mircea Diaconu - I have only found out by chance that he is our candidate, and if he is our candidate he will deserve my support."
He also said he didn't consider supporting Viorica Dancila - who is the PSD (Social Democratic Party) candidate for the presidential elections.
In respect to the possibility of making some alliances with the PSD for the local or parliamentary elections, he showed this was "one of the possibilities" for ALDE.
"In my opinion, this is one of the possibilities that we could have. But, of course, it doesn't depend on us alone, it also depends on the PSD and the extent to which this party would want that. However, what is essential is that we need to have a political programme - and probably the extraordinary congress will be the occasion for us to establish very clearly the direction we are taking - if we are going to stay in opposition, for the next 10, 20 years, to get stronger and to build ourselves as a party capable of influencing the life in Romania, or we are going to make a political alliance, which is quite possible in my opinion, considering how things are with ALDE at this point. (...) But first we have to see what is the vision that the members of the party have, the ones with leadership positions, and we need to have some open discussions, where to really see a programme being presented. There could be several candidates, each with his/her own programme and then we will have to choose the best such programme," said the President of the Senate.
