PM Ponta: I support having early parliamentary elections together with local ones or week apart

The chairman of the Pro Romania party, Victor Ponta, said on Thursday that he supports the organization of early parliamentary elections together with the local ones or a week later. 

"We are a new, small, center-left party but we have a big objective - we want to represent and defend the interests of the left-wing electorate which, unfortunately, was betrayed by the PSD [Social Democrat Party] leadership. The discussions with the PNL [National Liberal Party] could not progress to the point we say we're voting for the government, nothing of the sort, we are 35 MPs from Pro Romania, quite united. (...) In what regards more concrete subjects that we did get to discuss, Mr. Citu was present, and I said that we expect the future Government to tell us, firstly, how the budget for 2020 looks like. The second thing, politics this time, I said that we support and we desire and that it's a good thing to have parliamentary elections together with the local ones or, anyway, one week apart, because in this way the parliamentary procedures can be done," said Ponta at the Parliament Palace, after the meeting he had with the Prime Minister designate, Ludovic Orban. 

He added that the representatives of the Save Romania Union (USR) "either don't know what they're talking about, or they'll fooling you" when they tell you that early elections can be organized in January and February. 

"It can't be done, because you have some constitutional procedures, but they can be done together with the local ones or a week apart and it would be good for Romania not to spend the entirety of 2020 in crisis, in elections. We should by May know clearly who has a majority, who rules Romania for the next four years, who's in the Opposition for the next four years, because now things are very complicated. We also discussed some small aspects regarding the fact that we would like a substantial reduction from the state subsidy, because for me, as a Social Democrat, it's absolutely revolting to know that the PSD receives 3 million euro from the budget. Those 3 million, as a Social Democrat, I would have used for hospitals, for schools, for something else. We said we would discuss it next week," Ponta explained.