ALDE decides to support Mircea Diaconu's presidential run

The Permanent Delegation of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) has voted, on Monday, to exit the governing coalition and to support the candidacy of Mircea Diaconu in the presidential elections of November 10, the leader of the formation, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, announced, adding that he will resign the leadership of the Senate. "This morning I had a meeting with the Prime Minister, Viorica Dancila, as she is the chair of the PSD [Social Democrat Party], (...) to discuss saving the situation - remaining or leaving the governing coalition. And I expected from the Prime Minister to say if she has in view an articulated plan to relaunch the governing act which would imply several components - a new governing programme, a restructured governmental team, the number of state secretaries reduced to half with the [ministerial] cabinets diminished accordingly, a projection for the budget revision of November (...), the public perception regarding the lack of competence by the Government and the administration. I expected all these questions to have a positive answer, so that the coalition could continue (...), unfortunately we had no sort of counter-offer. (...) The colleagues decided to renounce continuing to govern together with the PSD," Tariceanu stated after the ALDE leadership meeting. He mentioned that it is not "an easy decision", but that in his opinion "governing cannot continue in the defensive benchmarks in which it has ran up to now", adding that "both at the local level, as well as the central level it worked weakly, faultily". Tariceanu explained that he proposed to his colleagues that they support an independent candidate for the Presidency of Romania - Mircea Diaconu, and ALDE will provide logistic support and will establish an electoral alliance with PRO Romania. "The public opinion expects a president that would represent all Romanians and not the one vetted by a political party as being the candidate of the party - who offers him unconditional support - towards which the candidate has certain obligations and who, once in Cotroceni [Presidential Palace] cannot renege on his political past and thus brings with him the political sympathies and antipathies of the party he is part of. I believe that there is need for an independent candidate to address all Romanians. (...) I discussed this matter with PRO Romania as well, with the chair of the party, Victor Ponta, who also stated he agrees to give this support for Mircea Diaconu. In this sense, today, colleagues gave their approval to establish an electoral alliance composed of ALDE and PRO Romania to support the candidacy of Mircea Diaconu," Tariceanu said.AGERPRES(RO - author: Livia Popescu, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Razvan-Adrian Pandea, editor: Maria Voican)