Ex-PM Ciolos: We must make President's mandate substantial again

PLUS (Liberty, Unity and Solidarity Party) leader Dacian Ciolos on Saturday said that his party must make the mandate of the President of the country "substantial again," and not just through its candidate, but through how it sees state restructuring.

"Presidential elections are very important to us, because you know how important the President of Romania is, not only symbolically, and we need to make the president's mandate substantial again, and not only through the candidate we are going to propose, but also through how we see state restructuring. We wish to have a majority in 2020, to propose a reform of the Constitution, a reform of the state, to restore real balance between state powers, and here the President plays an important role. We will have a solid project to ensure that the one who will be the President of Romania will have our full support and will be part of our political project," Ciolos said at the PLUS National Convention, after being elected president of this party.

He mentioned that local elections are important for "re-establishing" Romania on the basis of another road and in another direction - "honesty, professionalism, transparency and clarity".

"We cannot conceive our political project without winning local elections in as many places in the country as possible and I'm telling you, after spending more than a year in the government, it's no use to have the government and the majority in Parliament if you won't have that connection at local level, because thinking of what Romania needs to do in the coming years, we need a strong local base of competent people to regain the Romanians' confidence that cities, rural towns can be well managed, that public money can be correctly spent. Only like this we can think about good laws in Parliament and a coherent governing programme. For local elections we need to think about the best political alliances that will allow us to win as many local elections as possible," said the PLUS leader.

Dacian Ciolos said that his mandate as president of the party will be of only a year, after which the party's governing structures will be re-established.

He will lead the party along with nine other members of the National Bureau.

Another governing structure elected on Saturday is the National Council, which is composed of 50 members.

All of them are proposed by Ciolos, from among "the people he trusts and knows".

"You will hear all kinds of stuff about them [the members of the National Council - editor's note], because you have seen that lately there have been speculations as to how manipulated we are by one part or another. I want to assure you of one thing - integrity, honesty, beyond professionalism, are the essentials for me and I have been trying to propose people who have no problems from this point of view. However, no matter what problems might appear from today onwards, we will also have an arbitration panel, which, when appropriate, will judge the person in question based on the party's statute, the principles and values. We will be transparent," added Dacian Ciolos.

The PLUS statute, which stipulates inter alia that "persons convicted of corruption, active workers or collaborators of the former Securitate, persons promoting violence, racism, ethnic or territorial separatism" cannot become members of the party.