ALDE's Tariceanu: Backcountry sensitive information suitcase affair should be taken with large grains of salt

Chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) Calin Popescu-Tariceanu said on Monday, commenting on the newly emerged affair of the suitcase with sensitive information found on a Teleorman farmer's property, that it's highly impractical for everything to revolve around Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea, as there are other subjects that need attention too. 

"I don't want to be misunderstood, particularly by Mr. Dragnea, but he is just an individual, it cannot be that everything revolves around him. The others should give this some thought too. After all, he ran for office and was legally elected. Couldn't we just put this aside and move on? Couldn't we also discuss other issues? Or is Dragnea everything we discuss, day in day out? Why doesn't a formation like the National Liberal Party (PNL) rise in the polls? Because they are incapable of more. I think the people's reaction when they look at PNL is like: OK, they told me once, they told me N times that PSD is the red plague (...), is there anything else? If that's all you can do, you lose trust," Tariceanu told broadcaster TVR 1. 

He voiced his opinion that the suitcase affair is a frame-up meant to discredit the PSD leader. 

"I found it laughable, after all, it's an attempt to fool the people, claiming there was a suitcase dumped on a plot and found by a farmer who then contacted the Rise Project representative in Teleorman County. (...) To me this seems a scheme devised on purpose, I don't know who the mastermind is, I could make some suppositions, but I'd say it's for discrediting Dragnea, distracting him, render him fragile, there could be multiple motives to think of. As we spoke of attempts to grab power, what does this imply? Removing the PSD-ALDE coalition from power, and this could indeed deal Dragnea a blow, but he wouldn't be the only affected, this would harm the entire party," Tariceanu said. 

The Rise Project platform announced on Saturday having gotten into the possession of a "suitcase with vital insider information from Dragnea's Tel Drum corporation", information the prosecutors did not have access to when they searched the company's offices in 2017. According to Rise Project, the suitcase was found in rural Teleorman, on the property of a local.