Romaniaâs President Traian Basescu accomplished an extraordinary feat: to turn irrelevant the only major opposition party, the Social Democrat Party, or PSD.
The last case in point: the PSD filed a useless no-confidence motion to comply with Basescuâs wishes, while all political analysis and count of likely favorable votes in Parliament showed it shouldnât have.
The motion fell by 235 votes against, and 145 votes in favor, with some of the PSD parliament members voting alongside the ruling coalition.
This was an expected outcome, since the Greater Romania Party, in opposition, already had said it would not support it and the Conservative Party had decided Sunday to stay in the coalition fold.
It haunts me the idea that PSD sold out to Basescu, who wants the liberal Calin Popescu Tariceanu out of the PM seat, but has no constitutional powers to make him step down.
The PSD proved it worked for Basescu with its renewed, excessively violent campaign against Tariceanuâs Government, far beyond the typical tone of an opposition party against the politicians in the top office.
That the PSD chose to go ahead and file a no-confidence motion in spite of all the obvious sings which should have cautioned it against the move only reinforces my take that PSD does not belong to its followers any longer.
The top-ranks in the PSD were easy to blackmail, since their fortunes were amassed via botched privatization deals which resulted in a true plunder of state properties.
They played to the tune of Basescu to not end up investigated by anti-corruption prosecutors.
Thus former PSD party top leaders Ion Iliescu and Adrian Nastase fell from grace and office, and Mircea Geoana came to the top; he is a mediocre but ambitious guy, ready for anything to reach at the top and stay there.
Voters may not be aware of the inside de
