The Prime Minister designate is liked by the Liberal Democratic Party and the other members of the ruling coalition, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians and the National Union for the Progress of Romania, and the endorsement of the future government formula seems a relatively easy mission. President Traian Basescu has already mapped out the future guide lines for the government mandate. Paying attention to the noise made in the street – animated since last month by protests against Power – Traian Basescu views the raising of the Romanians’ living standard as the number one task of the Ungureanu government:

“I think that a new government has to mark a new beginning, based on the successes of the former government, and I am referring to the successes regarding the country’s macroeconomic stabilization. We hope that the measures in the government platform will generate once again economic growth in 2012, and on this basis, I believe that the top priority of the new government is the effort to gradually restore the living standard of Romanians, who have had a hard time bearing this kind of processes of the country’s macroeconomic recovery.”

Though Mihai Razvan Ungureanu lacks economic expertise – and this is one of the things that the opposition objects to, he believes, however, that he has administrative skills, proven while he headed the Foreign Ministry between 2004 and 2007, then the Foreign Intelligence Service. Here is Mihai Razvan Ungureanu:

“Reforms will continue. The plus I will be bringing will be exactly that of a good manager, who has, first and foremost, a logic of efficiency. I have always been loyal to public interest and loyal, first and foremost, to our national interest in the positions I have held, from the academic one to the highest positions in the Romanian state.”

Without contesting his intellectual merits, the Social Liberal opposition is not favorable to the government being headed by a character who was head of an intelligence service. Irrespective, however, of who was designated as a prime minister by Traian Basescu, the Social Liberal Union would have rejected him in order to call for early elections. After rather formal consultations with the president on the appointment of a new prime minister, the opposition accuses the head of state that he is only trying to preserve his power, and that he deliberately ignores the demands of the protesters in Bucharest and other cities. The allies in the opposition say that they are prepared for early elections, firmly opposed by the president and the Liberal-Democratic Party, but also for parliamentary elections on schedule, which they are sure they will win. The president of the Social Democratic Party Victor Ponta:

“We will prepare, as the Social Liberal Union, as opposition, for alternative projects; if early elections are not held, we will win those on schedule, the important thing is that a few important months will be wasted for Romania.”

The players on the Romanian political scene have been on warring positions way before the beginning of the election competition. The Liberal Democratic Party is trying to slow down its alarming drop in the polls, while the Social Liberal Union is trying to preserve its status as undisputed favorite in the future elections.