Ioana Lupea: "An executive divided between PDL and PNL under the leadership of Theodor Stolojan is a mission impossible."
Theodor Stolojan will be the head of government after the elections only if PDL will make an alliance with PSD.
Emil Boc's Party will not get a result to enable the formation of the future cabinet alone, and an executive divided with PNL under the leadership of Theodor Stolojan is a mission impossible. If Ion Iliescu still has a say in PSD - and, according to a recent statement by Stolojan, he has - then he will certainly prefer his old faithful soldier, to Geoana. There is only one valid explanation: Theodor Stolojan is only an electoral campaign prime minister and, possibly, subject to negotiations with the Liberals after the elections.
Theodor Stolojan still enjoys the confidence of a significant number of Romanians, higher than the PDL voters, as shown in the opinion polls. It is a valuable asset for this election campaign in which no party is shining, at least so far, through political bids. Perceived as floating above politics, an enlightened technocrat, Stolojan has been forgiven or forgotten for his ideological inconsistencies. His mandate of prime minister, which preceded a number of mineriads and political unrests, is associated in the minds of the most with stability. Without being for PDL what was Sarah Palin for the American republicans, the surprise that increased overnight the percentages of John McCain, Theodor Stolojan has all the data of a solid and efficient party locomotive, a German locomotive. But, he is an impossible obstacle when dealing with liberals, if the Liberal-Democrat intention expressed by Adriean Videanu, that of making an alliance after the elections, is real.
A PDL-PNL government, considered by many as a preferable variant for Romania for the next four years, has no chance with Theodor Stolojan nominated as Prime Minister. The liberals swallowed him with great difficulties, but they never digested him, even when he was their chairman, following a compromise between the camps. Stolojan and his supporters departure from the party was a blow over which PNL will not pass, having a second option to stay in power: PSD. In these circumstances, is not excluded that, after the maur will fulfill his duty, the position he was promised to be offered to someone else, perhaps to another acceptable technocrat for all three parties involved in the negotiations: Traian Băsescu, PDL and PNL. In the same situation is the current head of government Calin Popescu-Tariceanu. Backed by the PNL for the same function, his role is to convert the satisfaction or gratitude of some social categories towards the government in votes for the liberals. The strategy Finkelstein-Silberstein sved PNL from what was announced to be a catastrophe for the liberals. Most likely, the exchange between PDL and PNL will be: "No Stolojan, but no Tariceanu."
Relevant is that, throughout this debate on the Prime Ministers, the voters are fooled. The future head of government will be decided not by them, but as a result of inevitable post-electoral negotiations. Most likely he will not be Theodor Stolojan, nor Calin Popescu-Tariceanu or Mircea Geoană.