The odds of an anti-Basescu referendum are now under doubt. The Parliament has grown hostile to the President and the latter may therefore get suspended for one month. But there is no such attitude hostile to Basescu from citizens. There is also the fact that, given the present referendum law, it is almost impossible that more than half of citizens should go voting. And this is the only way Basescu may be driven away from Cotroceni Palace, as he is now halfway through his mandate, so that another President would take over. How can such an effect be achieved? Do parliamentary parties, except for the PD (Democrat Party), really want to sack the President? Or do they just want him to become the object of public opinion critique? In a TV talk show served on the tray Traian Basescu approached the idea to modify the referendum law overtly, accusing that the PSD (Social-Democrat Party) was pursuing political abuse to this end. By taking it up first he tried to counter an offensive predicted by the opposition. What is the real state of things? It is true there is no chance to sack the President as long as the referendum law is unchanged and only the electorate who goes voting is taken into account. This way the PSD and the PRM ("Greater Romania" Party) can avoid a risk as important as people not going voting. There may be lots of absentees or disinterest in politics and there is also the fact that some 1,5 - 3 million Romanians may be abroad by that time. If we take Basescu's criterion, that a law shouldn't be changed when a team's mandate is valid, then we may say he is right. But let's also notice that the use of this principle would make any law of electoral nature never change, because Romania will always have a President. Only exceptions can bring a different situation. But by applying the legislative symmetry principles on the referendum too, we can consider the opposition's project simply because Basescu won elections due to the votes coming from a quarter of the Romanian electorate, that is half plus one of those who went voting in the second tour. Why wouldn't he leave Cotroceni on grounds of the same mechanism? Irony has it that, as President of Romania, Basescu himself sent the referendum law back to the Parliament for revision. And the opposition has now got the opportunity to "adjust" it. Apart from the latter idea, there is also need of cruel negotiations with all the parliamentary parties so that the opposition would win and neither the referendum nor the sacking of the President would be mere plays. There is need of negotiations with the PNL (National Liberal Party) first of all. Here is one single example: unless the PNL causes the Alliance to split and holds on power as one-color government, it will be unlikely to win a referendum, because Basescu has got prosecutors at his feet and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Public Administration, organizer of elections, is also subject to him. The PSD won't put up with a government of Alliance members. But in order to make sure of a great electoral start in 2008, the PSD may put up with a Liberal administration. The party would even pay a price such as withdrawing Vacaroiu temporarily so that Olteanu would become an interim president. This is the only way negotiations can bring referendum victory. A hypothesis claiming that the President and the PD have separated for a while is false. As for the future, by the time opinions poll will have shown people's growing distrust in Basescu, no one will be interested in such a separation any longer.

Sorin Rosca Stanescu