MIRCEA MARIAN: "Vanghelie and Geoana have decided to become PSD’s greave diggers"

Afer the future disaster of losing the elections for Bucharest’s City Hall, the social democrats are most likely to lose the Parliament elections. And for a party made out of local barons, who are used to be fed from the state budget, another four years of opposition means the beginning of the end.

The mayors, the Parliament members and the sponsors will give up on PSD and run desperately toward those who will control the public finances. By 2012, Ion Iliescu will be 82 years old.

The present situation is the effect of Adrian Nastase’s comeback to PSD’s leadership, with the help of Ion Iliescu. The current president of the social democrats, Geoana, who is fearing he might lose his position, searched for allies and took Vanghelie, the mayor of the 5th sector in Bucharest, on his side.

The polls show that Vanghelie has not even the slightest chance to win the elections for the Mayor’s office, as he has one of the worst public image among the social democrats. The interesting part is what draws Geoana and Vanghelie together. It’s the fact that both of them have managed to lose the elections for Bucharest’s City Hall in the first round of the canvass.

And after PSD will have lost the elections for the Capital City, it’s easy to predict the party’s future: even worse results in the locals and a permanent riot inside the party.

Hypothetically, one could ask himself what other options could have hit Geoana instead. The European Parliament elections have proven that Bucharest is still Traian Basescu’s playground. Yet, PSD could have done much more with the unpopularity that surrounds the presend democrat Mayor, Adriean Videanu and his disastrous communication with the Capitals citizens.

The last thing the social democrats could have done was to bring up front a half-learned person who is not capable of inflecting the verb “to be”.

The fact that Vanghelie put up a canvass show for the teachers in sector 5 is not enough to cover up the lack of a high school graduation diploma.

The other possible social democrat candidate, Sorin Oprescu, at least had the chance to enter the second round of elections. If Oprescu will be an independent candidate and borrow some social democrat votes, the failure of Geoana-Vanghelie duo is guaranteed.

We cannot lament over the sad fate that PSD will have. Its populist ideas were the only ideology this party has ever had. Thank God, we can now say that each and every one of the Romanian parties have the same strategy, so there won’t be a great difference in the near future.

The difference is created by the most popular leaders: Ion Iliescu, Basescu, Vadim Tudor or Gigi Becali. Without Ion Iliescu, PSD is made out of common and obscure politicians, that can hardly be differentiated from the masses of the newly emerged Democrat Liberal Party (PDL), which hides behind Traian Basescu. What will become of PSD now, during the inevitable and slow divorce from Ion Iliescu is what PDL waits for.

Eventually, no party is made to exist forever. Since he also missed the Prime Minister position, Mircea Geoana has a last chance to enter the history books by becoming a grave digger for PSD.