A PSD leader minimizes Băluță's failure in the Capital and indicates what risked being a “tragedy” for the party
Sorin Grindeanu and Daniel Băluță. Inquam Photos / Alexandru Nechez
PSD leaders met on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. in a meeting of the National Political Bureau to analyze the results obtained by the party in the partial local elections that took place on Sunday.
The meeting of the social democrats comes in the context in which Daniel Băluță, the party's candidate for the position of general mayor of the Capital, ranked 3rd, obtaining 20.51% of the votes cast by the citizens of Bucharest.
However, PSD leaders do not see the defeat in Bucharest as a national failure, they talk about the fact that they won in the rest of the small towns where elections were held. They gave the example of Marcel Ciolacu, the former prime minister who obtained the position of president of the Buzău County Council with 51.97% of the votes.
“We're going to do evaluations”
On Sunday night, after most of the votes were counted, Sorin Grindeanu said that out of 14 localities where elections were held, PSD won in 12 and PNL in two. The PSD leader emphasized at the time that no position was won by the opposition party AUR nor by USR, which is in government alongside the liberals and social democrats.
“We will make evaluations. Of course, we are talking and we are under the impression of this score from Bucharest, which is a political score somewhere over 20% of the PSD candidate. It is a score that does not satisfy us at the moment. We cannot say that things are as we wanted. But we did not have Bucharest. PSD did not lead Bucharest”, Grindeanu explained.
Sorin Grindeanu and Claudiu Manda also chaired a meeting on Monday, a day after the election, which took place at the Parliament. PSD senators and deputies participated.
“We won in Bolojan at home, in Bihor, and no one talks about it. Everyone only talks about Bucharest,” Claudiu Manda told the PSD MPs, according to several sources who participated in the discussions.
The success refers to the partial local elections in the town of Remetea, Bihor county, where PSD obtained the position of mayor with 76%. It was a clear battle, in which the winner obtained 1,218 votes, and in second place was the PNL candidate with 383 votes.
Behind the scenes of the PSD meeting that prepared today's official meeting, in which the attitude towards the Bolojan Government will be discussed. “It would be an uncertain situation, neither on horseback nor on foot”
What a party leader says before the meeting
HotNews asked PSD first vice-president Ionuț Pucheanu if the score of 20.51% obtained by Daniel Băluță is the real score of the party.
“I never believed that the party was at 15, not at 12, not at 10, as I hear now. I think that at the moment a national score of just over 20%, I think it's a real score. I firmly believe that the party's score starts with 2 in front”, answered Ionuț Pucheanu, the mayor of Galați.
He also mentioned the fact that, at the national level, PSD won the majority of electoral races and that Bucharest is not a PSD fiefdom, but rather USR.
“Not being a PSD fief, I think that if the headlines of the day should have, or could have been written in larger letters than the print or the size of the newspaper, if Marcel Ciolacu lost in Buzău. That was a tragedy. The fact that we came out on three is, I think, a momentary situation,” Pucheanu said.
He also says that the situation in Bucharest is not gratifying, but not disastrous either.
Opinions divided
When they arrived at the party, some of the leaders said that they did not expect such results in the Capital.
Asked if he predicted that Daniel Băluță would come in 3rd place, Corneliu Ștefan, first vice-president of the PSD, answered briefly: “No”.
“We didn't lose anything, we didn't win,” said Marius Oprescu, also first vice-president.
