Even if at bay right now, the PD (Democrat Party) isn't falling to pieces. The Democrats are going through difficult times because of taking Traian Basescu's advice and doing their best to quit power. They wanted to reach the opposition and try to win the next elections, which won't be early at all. Now in the opposition, the PD will have to deny all the decisions the 2nd Tariceanu Cabinet will make, although most of them will be in keeping with the programme the PD got committed to during the 2004 electoral campaign. This is why the risk that they should lose electors is high. And it grows even higher if we take into account the fact that in 2004 the adepts of socialism voted for the PD, whereas the party is nowadays claiming to be Conservative. And the jump from left to right may be fatal. The PD is politically isolated. It only collaborates with the PLD (Liberal-Democrat Party), the group derived from the Liberal Party. It is difficult to assume that the PD will proceed to some alliance in the future, be it an informal one., in both the near past and future that depend only on Traian Basescu. But the idea of a PD rejecting Traian Basescu may also be considered. This is what I am developing upon today. It is not meaningless that Basescu put the PD to an extreme situation. He first pushed the Democrats to become some bizarre dissidents within the governing coalition and then he pushed them to shameless complicity with today's Liberal Democrats and in the end to complete isolation from all the other components of the political class. It was the President's single chance to push things towards the making of a party with a call for presidency. An alliance with the PLD, now possible, is something else to Basescu and to national and international public opinion than a small party like the PD, whose image is degraded and whose representation in the Parliament is weak. A new alliance with Basescu as the brains and then as top of the list may mean a successful image. The PD is a very pragmatic party, a pragmatism that is close to cynicism. The party must be deprived of means for governing and be made vulnerable by political isolation in order not to betray. This is the situation to which Basescu has led the Democrats. But an alliance with the PLD is problematic as well. There may follow a denouement as dramatic as that of the National Christian-Democrat Party. The Christian Democrats failed admission to the Parliament simply because of approaching elections by themselves, not by alliance. Apart from such an obvious risk, I find it hard to believe that the Stoica-Stolojan group, who claimed for years that the Liberals could do social politics, will now get to claim the opposite, for the sake of the same PD. In this case the opposite means that the Liberals who left or were driven away from the National Liberal Party may take up rightwing Conservative politics and give up the Liberal identity for a second time. And I don't think they will agree to have party fusion. The situation the PD is in will get even more complicated if the head of state is suspended or if he resigns in order to avoid the shame and push things towards early presidential elections. If Basescu throws himself into the abyss in a desperate attempt to recuperate what he has been struggling to lose in the last years, the PD may not follow him out of the instinct of preservation. Without Traian Basescu the PD can become a party the other parties can talk to and collaborate with. It is only then that the National Liberal Party will be in great danger.

Sorin Rosca STANESCU