PNL-PDL joint candidate for President to be revealed around Aug 4-5.
Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) chair Vasile Blaga on Thursday announced that the new party to result from the merger between the Liberals and the Democrat Liberals will keep the name of the National Liberal Party (PNL), and it will use PDL’s traditional headquarters in Modrogan Alley 1, Bucharest.
‘On July 26 we are going to hold our congress to focus on the merger between the PDL and the PNL. The newly created political entity will be called the National Liberal Party and all the documents will say it very clearly – and we will continue to mention this when communicating officially – that the PNL will be the result of the merger between PDL and PNL, PNL+PDL that is.
The headquarters of the new party will be close to here, on Modrogan Alley 1, and the party anthem will be the one that you already know, ‘Verde inrourat’ (Dewy Green),’ Blaga stated.
According to the Democrat Liberal leader the statute of the new party considered very carefully the two parties’ clear path until July 26 in observing the rule of law state and the EPP values of dignity, justice, freedom and solidarity. ‘We won’t keep any of the documents secret, we will make public the statute of the new party, the merger protocol and our political programme as soon as we decide who will be our candidate running in this autumn’s presidential elections,’ said the PDL leader.
Blaga also mentioned that one of the two parties involved in the merger will give the candidate for the presidency and the other the future Prime Minister. ‘Obviously, one of the two parties will give the candidate for presidency and the other one the Prime Minister. We will see at the right time how we are going to proceed, since we have to decide first on who will be our candidate for presidency,’ said Blaga.
On the other hand, PNL leader Klaus Johannis said that the new entity was not created for the sole purpose of winning the presidential elections; its main purpose is rather to change Romania for the better. ‘We concluded our negotiations for the unification of the Right, the merger between the National Liberal Party and the Democratic Liberal Party that is […] We didn’t create this party for the sole purpose of winning the presidential elections, but we created it to change Romania for the better.’ Blaga also specified that negotiations between the PDL and the Civic Force are also almost ready.
Common candidate for President on behalf of an electoral alliance
The common candidate for President of the PNL (the National Liberal Party) – PDL (the Democratic Liberal Party) electoral alliance will be made public around Aug. 4-5, PDL chairman Vasile Blaga announced. ‘According to my estimates and those of Mr. Johannis, [the name will be made known] around August 4-5, when we shall have also a campaigning team and of course, the pre-election and election schedule, which is extremely tight. We must table our candidate with the Central Electoral Bureau no later than September 15, and the electoral alliance on September 8. In the meantime, we must collect the required signatures, mandatory by law, to endorse our candidate,’ Blaga said after a PDL-PNL meeting.
He also said that in the presidential elections, the two parties will run as an electoral alliance whose name will be made public at the beginning of next week. ‘We do not run under the name of our new party because it’s not possible in legal terms. The new party will be most likely registered at the end of this year, the beginning of next year, considering the transition period, given that as of January 1, 2015 the elections of the county branches will be held and completed no later than 2017, with the Congress, actually the Convention of the new party to elect the leadership based on motions as it currently happens in PDL,’ Blaga explained.
