President Iohannis initiates consultations on new Government

President Klaus Iohannis took the first stance after PM Victor Ponta handed in his resignation and the one of his Cabinet. In a press conference at Cotroceni Palace on Wednesday afternoon, Klaus Iohannis informed the consultations with the political parties would kick off tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow the latest.

“We have a resigning Government, I wait for the resigning prime minister to send me his resignation, the Government’s resignation and soon after that, I’ll get in touch with the political parliamentary parties and will summon consultations,” the president announced.

“I want to conclude the first round of consultations this week. We’ll have an interim Government, we’ll have a solution that I will communicate when it takes shape,” the Romanian president stated.

Regarding potential premiers rumored today in the media, Iohannis said he wouldn’t like to go into technical details and will expose first conclusions after the first round of consultations.

He reviewed the past weeks’ events that stirred the citizens’ anger and led to this situation.

“In the past weeks, things have evolved in a direction that led to these events. An accident occurred on October 20: policeman Bogdan Gigină, who was leading a motorcade, died. After ten days, the Colectiv Club tragedy happened. This tragedy affected the nation’s nerves. People waited for actions, for results, for resignations of some politicians who failed. People waited for someone who takes responsibility (…),” president Iohannis argued.

In his view, most of the politicians did not understand these demands until it was too late. “They understood very late that they cannot do anything they want, that they cannot ignore the people’s will. These tragedies happened for some laws and rules had been ignored,” the president said, adding that on Tuesday, Romanians’ indignation turned into a real uprising.

“Demonstrators were right. They had common sense demands, asking for answers and clarifications. Last night, the most proper street demonstrations that I have ever seen took place (…) Ultimately, late, very late, the Government resigned. People had to die so that this resignation should occur.

Demonstrators told us what they think it should happen in the predictable future. I think these demands are correct. They talk about buildings collapsing, about the situation in hospitals- perfectly right. Proposals were being made and they should be considered,” Iohannis further said.

Later on in the evening, the Presidency sent letters to all leaders of the parliamentary parties to invite them for consultations to designate a candidate for the prime minister position. PSD, PNL and UDMR and the group of national minorities are the first called at Cotroceni on Thursday, while UNPR and ALDE will come on Friday.