Having survived (easily) a motion of no-confidence just a few days ago, the government in Romania has collapsed as a result of internal tensions.

Recall that the government was a two-party coalition of Social Democrats (PSD) and the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL). Both the president and the PM are from the PDL. Anyway, on Thursday the PSD ministers left the coalition.

The problem concerns the (now former) Interior Minister, Dan Nica. Minister Nica was from the PSD. Recently, Minister Nica made a statement in which he implied that there would be vote-rigging in favour of the PDL at the November presidential election. Following his remarks, Prime Minister Emil Boc announced that he was dismissing Minister Nica. The PSD responded by saying that they would leave the government if President Băsescu approved the decision. (Technically, PM Boc sent a letter to President Băsescu requesting the Minister’s dismissal).

On Thursday, President Băsescu signed the dismissal request and appointed an interim interior Minister who is from the PDL. The PSD then immediately left the coalition.

Interim Ministers, all from the PDL, have now been appointed. There are 45 days to form a full government.

Obviously, the upcoming presidential election on 22 November is the background to the difficulty. The opinion polls (see previous post) show that President Băsescu and the PSD leader, Mircea Geoană, are likely to contest the second ballot against each other and that the race is neck-and-neck.

The distribution of seats in the legislature is as follows:

PDL: 115 seats
PSD: 114 seats
PNL: 65 seats
UDMR: 22 seats
Others: 18 seats
Total: 334 seats

So, the PDL is 53 seats short of a majority.

All of this information was taken from various posts at the Bucharest Herald site.