Government in triple trouble

Romania is in the throes of a “triple crisis: social, political and economic”, and “it needs 22 million solutions!”, one for each inhabitant, exclaims Cotidianul, now that the governing coalition is falling apart at the seams. The tug o’ war between prime minister Emil Bloc, a free-market liberal, and his right-hand man, Social Democrat (PSD) Dan Nica, minister of the interior, has caused a rift between the two government leaders and the resignation en bloc of all the Social Democrat cabinet members. Cotidianul explains that PM Bloc, disgruntled with Nica’s tardy reaction to this summer’s strike by the police force and the crime wave that has hit the country, now wants his head on a platter. The Social Democrats, for their part, accuse the free-market liberals of coveting the Ministry of the Interior “with a view to controlling the 22 November parliamentary elections”. In Romania, as the Bucharest daily puts plainly, “Whoever controls the ministry controls the local and national police, the borders, the prefectures. It is a coveted post, as it means money, information and power.” “Romanians are on the verge of utter exasperation,” the article warns: all they needed, after the judges and teachers’ strikes, was a “harababura (i.e. a mess) inside the government!”