Klaus Iohannis has launched a new attack against the ruling party, PSD, and its Government, in a press conference at Cotroceni Palace on Wednesday evening, arguing that the Government has done nothing so far of what it should have done to prevent a potential new Caracal case.
Iohannis said the PSD Government should have left long ago and that a reset of the entire State is needed.
“The State reset is needed, because the direction that the PSD has led the country in the past years is just wrong. And the Romanians consider this direction as wrong. We need a pro-European ruling, preoccupied with the Romanians’ rights, safety and prosperity”, the head of state stated.
Klaus Iohannis argued that PSD has been more preoccupied with dealing with its internal crisis than governing the country and that only punctual measures had been taken in the Caracal case under public pressure.
“A few weeks ago, the terrible tragedy in Caracal showed us how many and how deep are the dysfunctionalities within state institutions. Incompetence, lack of clear procedures, corruption, indifference, all these led to a terrible outcome – the state’s incapacity to save the lives of its own citizens. I asked the Government to adopt, until the end of August, a series of measures so that in similar situation as the one in Caracal there should be no more tragic delays in the actions of the state institutions. (…) The PSD, preoccupied with solving internal crises, is continuing to ignore solving the emergencies that are important for citizens and which have a direct impact on day-to-day life,” the Romanian President said.
He added that “only a few punctual measures, taken under public pressure” had been adopted during all this time and the chiefs of several institutions had been relocated “from one institution to another”, without being punished for “their incompetence”.
Iohannis accused PSD that it is an expert on dragging things out, hoping people will forget about the responsible factors.
“These days we are witnessing only PSD’s political fight to stay in power at any cost. All our warnings early this year regarding the budget, have unfortunately come true. Major investments are not done, hospitals and highways are not built. The PSD is not preoccupied of these things that are of maximum interest for people, just to secure power, putting up positions up for auction. This is what failed governing looks like,” said the President.
Iohannis accused PSD of “unacceptably delaying” the necessary legislative amendments to enable a prompter reaction of the State to situations like the one in Caracal, stressing that he had sent himself many concrete proposals in this respect, but they had been ignored.
“Moreover, PSD has abandoned the proposals to solve systemic problems when their barons understood it means, in fact, to renounce political control on Justice and Police,” Iohannis said.
The head of state argued that PSD had allowed the image of the state authorities to be “seriously damaged.”
“Today, the Romanian Police – a fundamental institution in Romania – has credibility problems due to excessive politicization. I said it before and I repeat: we got here because the governments of past years have filled the country with incompetents in public positions, too many professionals were fired and replaced by incapable persons. The PSD Government has harmed Romania a lot and it should have left a long time ago,” President Iohannsi underlined.
PM Dancila: The president is the one who should be reset
Paraphrasing Klaus Iohannis, PM Viorica Dancila has retorted that “Romania’s President is the one who should be reset”. She accused the head of state of blocking the Government’s activity by “unjustifiably refusing” to nominate the ministers for the vacant positions. According to the premier, the President generates “confusion and imbalance” and that he is obsessed with “blockades” and that he is breaking the Constitution.
Dancila has announced the Government will notify the Constitutional Court over a new legal conflict with the head of state.