Romania's next leader eyes power shift within weeks

Romania's president-elect Klaus Iohannis has predicted that enough lawmakers could start abandoning Prime Minister Victor Ponta's ruling coalition in the coming weeks to bring down the government next year.

Iohannis, 55, an ethnic German from Transylvania who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, defeated 42-year-old Ponta in a shock victory in a presidential election this month.

Iohannis predicted on Tuesday that the presidential vote will erode the 65 percent majority controlled by Ponta's Social Democrats and their allies.

"Everybody wants to be on the winning side. So, it is possible that during the next weeks or months we will have changes in the Parliament," Iohannis said at the headquarters of his National Liberal Party in Bucharest.

"It's possible that during the year 2015 we will have this shift, which could give the National Liberal Party a majority, which it would then use to change the government."

Iohannis, whose promise to fight corruption helped make him Europe's most popular political leader on Facebook, has pledged to topple Ponta's government.

The presidency gives Iohannis the power to select a new prime minister if Ponta falls in a no-confidence vote, but that would require dozens of lawmakers to abandon the ruling coalition ahead of a general election due in 2016. Ponta's Social Democrats rely on two medium-sized parties and several smaller groups for their large majority.

Ponta has said since the election that his coalition is stable and has ruled out resigning.

Repairing damage

Iohannis is a descendant of Saxons who have settled in Romania since the Middle Ages, and says he can trace his family's roots to 16th-century church records. Unlike thousands of ethnic Germans who moved to Germany in the early 1990s, including his parents and sister, Iohannis stayed on.

A former physics teacher and schools inspector, Iohannis became mayor of Sibiu, also known by its German name of Hermannstadt, in 2000.

During a campaign that most expected him to lose, he made a point of not reacting to personal attacks. Opponents mocked his slow way of speaking and even his lack of children.

Iohannis has pledged a more conciliatory approach than that taken by outgoing President Traian Basescu, who often feuded with Ponta over policy.

"I have to be very clear here. It's obvious that the prime minister and I had a competition and a lot of damage has been done," Iohannis said. "But the competition is finished. We have a winner and we have a country to run."

(China Daily 11/27/2014 page12)