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The chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR), Dacian Ciolos, stated on Tuesday, at private broadcaster B1TV, that if the coalition is restored a new governing programme is not necessary, but there is need for an application calendar for measures provided.
"There is no need, from our point of view, for another governing programme, but there is need for a little more precision in regards to the application of the governing programme. And that's because we have a governing programme. In the ten months of governing very few things were put into practice and when we proposed the elimination of special pensions for mayors they said: "Now's not the time, let's wait, let's discuss the whole package to reform pensions'. We made a working group for this - it trailed off. Our partners did not come with ideas, with proposals, so we can work on something in common. Just the same, with depoliticization of public administration. They asked: 'Let's take the prefects and underprefects - let's assume them politically, because they represent the government.' We accepted in the idea that then we can come with general directors, ministry directors and directors of devolved institutions, of county directorates of some ministries, which would be professionalized and depoliticized. This did not happen," said Ciolos.
He added that in the electoral campaign, the National Liberal Party (PNL) promised reforms in justice and the public administration or the elimination of special pensions, but that such measures could not be applied in the ten months of governing. In his opinion, the PNL option in what regards its future governing partner represents "a moment of truth."
"If they want, at any cost, a majority in Parliament, they can do it with the PSD [Social Democratic Party], but we know what that means and we've already seen what the PSD pretensions are. We know the PSD has more mouths to feed there. There are local barons expecting money, money that should be spent in any way that's not transparent. We've seen what they did to justice when they were governing, we've seen what they did with the state budget when they governed - that we had a deficit that was then amplified by the COVID crisis," mentioned the USR leader.
In his opinion, both the PNL, and the USR have "learned their lessons from what happened in the past months," but that the formations need to make efforts to define common political objectives.
