President Iohannis says he’ll accept any PM agreed by a PNL-USR-PLUS-UDMR coalition that has majority in Parliament

If the PNL, USR-PLUS and UDMR coalition proposes Ludovic Orban as PM, President Klaus Iohannis says he will designate the former PM for this position again.

Asked about this issues, the head of state replied: “Yes, if a coalition with majority in Parliament is established and it proposes Ludovic Orban I will accept him, I will designate him.

It is possible that the right-wing coalition agrees to a name for PM. If PNL, USR-PLUS and UDMR agree and come up with a proposal, I will accept it, either it is Orban, Citu or anyone else, I’ll accept it,” Iohannis stated.

Asked if Ludovic Orban’s resignation was a mistake, the President said: “No, I  think it was a correct move and a totally honourable gesture, considering that PNL hoped to gain the largest number of votes and did not obtain it. Ludovic Orban has made a very honourable move to withdraw”.

Also questioned if he was the one who had asked Orban to resign, Iohannis said that it was Orban who had taken this decision and that he had announced him before.

The head of state revealed he had a discussion with Ludovic Orban about his intention to be prime minister again, but mentioned that parties must be allowed to negotiate a solid coalition to prevent making the same mistakes from the past.

“In my opinion, the main reason for which the parties have not agreed on so far is for they are still negotiating. It is early to talk about a failure. The main reason is that they tried, at least some of them, to negotiate via mass media, which is simply not possible. A negotiation is done among the parties in the coalition and the preliminary results are not released,” the President said, adding that this type of communication “decreases the public’s trust in the parties”.

“Let’s have patience. It is important for me as well that a government is quite quickly established to manage the pandemic, a government that shall count on a solid majority in Parliament“, he pointed out, saying though that chances are small to have a Government set by Christmas.