Olguța Vasilescu slaps pensioners who did not vote with PSD: “Many preferred a party that looked, without voting”
Lia Olguța Vasilescu, the mayor of Craiova, sent a harsh message to the pensioners, after, on Wednesday, the PSD failed to pass in the budget committees the amendment regarding the granting of social aid for the elderly. The mayor of Craiova claims that the party did not have enough votes in Parliament to adopt the promised measures and slapped the pensioners who did not vote PSD.
Olguța Vasilescu slapped the face of the pensioners. FB PHOTO Lia Olguța Vasilescu,
“With 25% in the Parliament, that's all it took”, wrote Lia Olguța Vasilescu, on Wednesday, on Facebook,
In her post, Olguța Vasilescu related two episodes from the past to support her point of view.
“Seeing the parliamentary debates where our colleagues tried to increase pensions, I remembered two scenes. The first happened in 2018, when a gentleman approached me in a supermarket and told me that he had voted PNL all his life, but in the upcoming elections he would vote PSD. I asked him what his job was and he told me he was a doctor. «Ah! Vote because we increased doctors' salaries!» . «Not! That I don't get to enjoy him anymore. But next month I will retire and I know that the only party fighting for pensioners is the PSD» – he answered me.
The second scene took place in the Unirea commune, last year, during the presidential campaign, in May. An elderly gentleman complained to me that the pensions were not indexed at the beginning of the year, with the inflation rate. «Okay, but pensions increased last September by a historic percentage. Matale, how much did your pension increase?». «A thousand lei!» «And a thousand lei is no longer money? Watch what you vote for, maybe others will come and cut that tooa!””
“Many preferred a party that sat in the hall today and watched, without voting”
The mayor of Craiova also made political accusations against the AUR MPs:
“The truth is that only 16 percent of pensioners voted for PSD in the last parliamentary elections. Many preferred a party that sat in the hall today and watched, without voting. If they had left the hall at least, the amendment would have been approved. The same party whose parliamentary candidates were tearing their shirts off on TV that they had to increase pensions. There was also a lady who had worked at the Pension House and who she was present every day to argue that pensions should be higher. Would she have sat with her hands today, enjoying the invectives that the PSD parliamentarians were subjected to? Or did they vote for a party whose representative shouted to my colleagues: «Shame on you!»because they insisted on increasing pensions and allowances for disabled children. A grobian who gives daily lessons, also on TV, about how others should behave“, Lia Olguța Vasilescu wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
The social democrat added in the same post:
“Out of 2,000 billion in Romania's budget, 1 billion is not approved, which is the Social Package requested by the PSD, to increase pensions, allowances for disabled children or mothers! It's a shame!”.
Scandal in the budget committees
We remind you that Wednesday's meeting of the budget committees, to which the social democrat referred, was marked by tensions. The PSD amendment on the granting of one-off benefits for low-income pensioners was invalidated on the grounds that the regulation had been misinterpreted. The Social Democrats left the hall, accusing PNL and USR of trying to “steals a democratic vote”.
On the same day, the PSD amendment was rejected once again.
Decisive day for the 2026 Budget. The coalition reached a compromise: take money from the magistrates to cover the aid requested by the PSD
The draft state budget for 2026 arrives on Thursday, March 19, in the combined Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced, before the plenary session, that the leaders of the coalition reached a solution that allows the support of the social package under discussion in Parliament. According to him, the measure was made possible by reducing expenses related to the payment of rights won in court by magistrates in the past years.
“We decided to reduce the component of expenses related to the payment of rights obtained by magistrates through sentences won in the past years“, said Bolojan.
The Prime Minister specified that the debates in the Budget Committee will resume at noon, and the goal is for the budget draft to reach the plenary during the evening.
