A coalition formed of Social Democrats (SDP), Liberals (NLP) and Hungarian Democrats (HUDR) would be probably subject of as much internal tension as the coalition of SDP and Democratic Liberals (DLP), Economist Intelligence Unit analyst Joan Hoey has told HotNews.ro. She believes the best prospects for a stable government in the short term may lie in a government involving technocrats with all-party support.
According to Hoey, "the collapse of the coalition government on October 1st and the ensuing political crisis have highlighted structural and other flaws of the Romanian political system. A multi-party system consisting of three major parties and a number of smaller parties, combined with an electoral system that de facto incorporates proportional representation, means that no single party can win enough seats to form a government and means that the country will inevitably be ruled by coalition or minority governments."
She also points out that "the decision to separate the dates for the presidential and parliamentary elections, made several years ago, also means that the parties constituting a coalition government will be required to oppose each other in mid-term, unless they can agree on a mutually satisfactory distribution of power.
"The flaws in this system have been exacerbated by deep personal animosities among members of the ruling elite which have meant that coalition partners have often been unwilling to compromise on issues of national interest that conflict with personal, or party, interests. As a result, successive coalition governments have been coalitions in name only and have consisted of separate parties pursuing entirely separate agendas and controlling their individual ministries", Hoey argues.
She recalls that "he coalition between the centrist Democratic Liberal Party (DLP) and the alliance of the le