USR leader Barna: PM agrees with two-round mayoral elections objectives for second Gov't

USR (Save Romania Union) leader Dan Barna on Tuesday stated that he agreed with Prime Minister-designate Ludovic Orban that the latter's second Cabinet must have as main objective the election of mayors in two rounds, as his party wants to get sure that this goal will remain in place for the Legislative, in case that the PSD (Social Democratic Party) will "force" the investiture of the Cabinet and there will be no early polls. "The discussion took almost two hours. (...) We discussed the political agenda right now, the snap polls as one of USR's priorities and of USR PLUS Alliance's too. It's very clear what we need to do next, namely to reject this first proposal of a Government, which is now on the table of Parliament, in order to get to the second nomination, which we also need to reject in order to reach to what entire Romania wants: snap polls. I told this very clearly to Prime Minister Orban that both USR and the USR PLUS Alliance are ready for the elections, be it early polls or time elections," said Barna, upon his exit from the Victoria Palace, after meeting Prime Minister Ludovic Orban. The USR head specified he told the PM about his "disappointment" that there is "a general feeling in the society that the two-round mayoral elections objective, which is important for the Romanian democracy, was sacrificed for the snap polls objective, which involves further risks." "We will see what PSD's next move will be and if they will act to Romania's benefit or they will begin to delay things in the standing bureaus by invoking a lack of quorum, which risk actually exists," said Barna. He specified that the head of the Executive agreed with his proposal that the main objective of the second Orban Cabinet must be the election of mayors in two rounds. "I asked the PM and he agreed that his second Cabinet's first objective in the governing programme must be the election of mayors in two rounds, and also the other items of the political agreement that we signed with the PNL on the occasion of the first PNL Government's investiture last autumn, so that, in the event that the PSD will delay the investiture of a Government, the Government must have take this objective to Parliament, of the two-round mayors elections, the same as the other objectives in the environmental area, for instance, or related to the Special Section, which are all items currently included with the agreement with the PNL," explained Barna. He added that the discussions started from the fact that the Government, which will have its hearing next week in Parliament, "will fall" and "in any of the scenarios, at stake is the governing programme of the next Executive, and the two-round mayoral elections objective." Asked about the possibility of a PNL -USR PLUS Government in case there will be early polls, Barna said: "This is the most probable scenario for Romania, but we will see, depending on the electoral results, obviously." "Of course, we also tackled this topic, but let's see first how things evolve, and our first objective is to reject this Government that must not be invested by Parliament so that we will be able to take the next step and, I hope, the last step, before early polls. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Florea, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Cristina Zaharia)