Bucharest General Mayor Gabriela Firea resumed her attacks against the Chairman of the Social Democrat Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea. She stated on Saturday night for Romania TV that Dragnea wants to “liquidate” her and that he plans to make an emergency ordinance be adopted in order to dismantle the Bucharest Municipality and to transform the districts in territorial and administrative divisions. Firea said that several days ago, Dragnea had a meeting with the district mayors, except Robert Negoita, to whom he told that Firea will be removed from the leadership of the PSD Ilfov and Bucharest organizations and this Government’s Emergency Ordinance (GEO) will be issued, and Gabriela Firea will continue to be just a Honorary General Mayor.
“Mister Dragnea announced in a meeting he had with several district mayors that he wants to dismantle Bucharest”, Firea claimed. She said that Liviu Dragnea told the mayors he met that there will be adopted “the GEO by which the six districts will become cities, which is unconstitutional”, and “Bucharest Municipality will either be totally dismantled, or become decorative, while the six districts will become territorial and administrative divisions”.
Gabriela Firea expressed her hope that the Government, or PM Viorica Dancila, or the ministers, or the Secretary General of the Government, who is “an eminent lawyer”, will not accept to adopt this “unconstitutional” GEO.
“Mr. Dragnea wants to totally annihilate me. (…) If he could, he would liquidate me even physically”, Firea stated.
She said that the meeting with Dragnea, which took place on Wednesday evening or Thursday evening, “there were five mayors, all of them except Mr. Robert Negoita”. “He told them this unimaginable and inconceivable thing to attract them by his side based on the principle divide and conquer”, Firea said.
Bucharest Mayor said that her “removal” is being prepared inside PSD. Thus, she is going to be removed from the interim leadership of the PSD Bucharest organization, as well as from the position in which she was elected as the Chairperson of PSD Ilfov.
Firea said that “this is a difficult moment which PSD and the whole country have to face”. “There’s a wrong way that Mr. Dragnea follows – anyone who criticizes his management must be removed. (…) PSD becomes a party of a single person. When you waive so easy the Secretary General, a very good organizer, a person who supported Mr. Dragnea days and nights, just as I did, it means something’s wrong. It would have been better for him to ask himself why things turned like this”, Gabriela Firea added, and she also said that Adrian Tutuianu – also excluded from the party – “is an eminent lawyer who raised an organization”.
“My colleagues told me that I was waited to come back from Madrid and that my removal is being prepared, ad a whole scenario was started. (…) I was told that I am benefitting from a special treatment, and Mr. Dragnea allegedly told to certain district mayors that he doesn’t want to exclude me since it would ease my situation and allow me leave to another party, but he wants to make me suffer and somehow to make my political career end. (…) Of course it hurts me, but I’ll do nothing to show Romanians that I am clinging on positions. If my colleagues in CEx will vote for letting the General Mayor without any political position, I obey”, Firea also stated.
She claimed that the 6th District Mayor Gabriel Mutu is going to be appointed as the Chairman of the PSD Bucharest Organization, and the Bucharest Prefect will also be replaced.
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Codrin Stefanescu: There wasn’t any discussion inside the party in order to dismantle the Bucharest Municipality. Firea is talking nonsense
The Deputy Secretary General of PSD Codrin Stefanescu stated on Sunday for MEDIAFAX that there wasn’t any discussion inside the party in order to dismantle the Bucharest Municipality by an emergency ordinance, and that this is nonsense from the Bucharest Mayor.
“There was never such a discussion inside the party, there’s no such an idea, this is nonsense. In short – Mrs. Gabriela Firea’s interview doesn’t deserve any comment”, stated the Deputy Secretary General of PSD Codrin Stefanescu for MEDIAFAX.
2nd District Vice Mayor: Firea spent EUR 2 billion without leaving anything. I could be a “district inhabitant”
The Bucharest 2nd District Vice Mayor, Dan Cristian Popescu, criticized Gabriela Firea on Sunday, for her statement according to which Liviu Dragnea wants to dismantle Bucharest, mentioning that the Mayor spent EUR 2 billion without having any achievement, and that being a “district inhabitant” could be a solution.
“Taking into account that the General Mayor spent EUR 2 billion, in 2 years, without leaving anything concrete behind, it could be a solution to be a ‘2nd District inhabitant’ !”, the Bucharest 2nd District Vice Mayor Dan Cristian Popescu wrote on Facebook.
Stroe: Firea has started attacks of extreme violence. She is desperate and disappointed by the drop in polls
Gabriela Firea is “desperate and disappointed by her personal drop in opinion polls”, claims the PSD Constanta Chairman Felix Stroe. “She started attacks of extreme violence and launched a number of statements that lack logic and evidence”, the leader from Constanta added.
In a press release released on Sunday, Felix Stroe claims that the statements made on Saturday by the Bucharest General Mayor Gabriela Firea “lack logic and evidence”, and by these statements, she is planning to be excluded from the party.
“She started attacks of extreme violence and launched a number of statements that lack logic and evidence, seriously damaging the party’s image whose Vice Chairperson she is. You cannot avoid thinking that by these actions she actually wants, at any cost, to cause a breach and her exclusion, instead of a resignation of honor, which would make her lose that position by the law”, the PSD Constanta Chairman says.
Felix Stroe reminds that one of Gabriela Firea’s “very serious” statements is that Liviu Dragnea wants to dismantle Bucharest, the state institutions are inventing files, and the Social Democrat leader, together with the Ministry of Interior, organized the protest of August 10.
“It is well-known that Romania’s territorial and administrative organization is established by the Constitution and it cannot be changed otherwise than through a complex and long-lasting legislative process – the idea itself is aberrant and is not included in any way ion the content of the governing program of PSD, which was voted by the overwhelming majority of the voters. (…) Continuing her actions of demonizing the PSD Chairman and his activity, Mrs. Firea claims without any evidence that the state’s control institutions are inventing files and that <we didn’t have so many controls even when PDL or the technocrats were at rule> (?!). Moreover, the same Liviu Dragnea organized the protest of August 10, together with the Ministry of Interior and <his communication team> (?!), adding: <I know more, but I don’t want to say!>, childish assertions, lacked of any ground, of a person who is thirsty for revenge”, the PSD Constanta Chairman claims.
According to him, other “very serious and ungrounded” statements are related to the manner in which PSD is managing the budget allocation for political parties and to the fact that the opinion polls were falsified in favor of the PSD leader, while he claims that she is actually the one who registered a drop in polls.
“The idea that the opinion polls were falsified in favor of the PSD Chairman is automatically dismantled by the fact that other polls ordered by the Opposition parties also presented approximately the same results. Of course, Mrs. Firea is desperate and disappointed by her personal drop in opinion polls, caused by the results registered by the Bucharest Municipality, which are strictly imputable to her. In the end, as for the elections for the Bucharest organization, Mrs. Firea forgets that unlike the PSD Chairman – who was elected through the vote of the party’s Congress, she is only an interim mayor. Perhaps the fear of free and democratic elections inside the party makes her launch these serious, ungrounded and lacked of evidence allegations”, the PSD Constanta Chairman added, “asking “ Gabriela Firea, in the end of the release, to stop “definitively” this kind of public attacks which only seriously affect PSD’s image.
Bucharest Mayor: Liviu Dragnea started the presidential campaign right after the parliamentary elections. Inside the party, he said he wants to run for the President
Bucharest Mayor Gabriela Firea says she doesn’t believe in Liviu Dragnea’s honesty when the PSD Chairman says he would be willing to support Calin Popescu Tariceanu for the presidential elections, mentioning that Dragnea wants to be the Social Democrat candidate for the Romanian Presidency. Firea also claims that the results of the polls presented to Liviu Dragnea are modified, because he is not well-placed in the sociological surveys.
Gabriela Firea stated on Sunday for RTV that Liviu Dragnea suffered because he couldn’t be Prime Minister, and that after the parliamentary elections since two years ago, he actually started the presidential campaign.
“He suffered hugely for not being able to be Prime Minister, he wanted this a lot, and politically speaking, since PSD won the elections and made the majority coalition in Parliament and formed the Government with ALDE, if those legal problems wouldn’t have existed, he should have been the Prime Minister. And from that moment, since he actually couldn’t be a Prime Minister, anyway I think he wouldn’t have been accepted by the current president of the country either, it started a sort of division and denigration campaign inside the party, because the next position he aimed, since he couldn’t be a Prime Minister, was to be the president of the country. So he actually started the electoral campaign right after the parliamentary elections”, the Bucharest Mayor stated.
Firea mentioned that, even though Dragnea was saying that he’s not interested in this position, he was talking to his party fellows about the political path he drawn up.
“In smaller groups, he was saying: I want to run, and I will run with the party’s support, even if he was publicly stating that he is not interested or he hasn’t decided, and the moment when he will talk about it will come, and so on, there were certain shirks in the public statements. But we were told so clearly what is the way, what is the political path he drawn up”, Gabriela Firea explained, mentioning that Liviu Dragnea was considering as an enemy any colleague who might have think about a possible candidacy for the presidential elections.
Bucharest Mayor doesn’t believe in Liviu Dragnea’s honesty when saying he would support Calin Popescu Tariceanu for the presidential elections.
“I don’t believe in Mr. Dragnea’s honesty when he says that in the end, he would be willing to support Mr. Tariceanu for the presidential elections. There’s no way for this to be true, and I know from inside, I participated in such discussions in which he clearly said that such a big party cannot have Mr. Tariceanu as a candidate”, Firea also said.
She warned that the manner in which the EUR 20 million received by the party from the state are spent will be checked, because this money cannot be spent on other things that are not eligible. “Polls are made all the time, and Mr. Dragnea, from the EUR 20 million received by the party from the state, I underline, this is public money that will be checked. I am warning, on this occasion, those who think that these amounts received by the parties from the Government, therefore from the state budget, are money they can spend on things that are not eligible, and I don’t want to say more. I know more, but it’s not my business, they will pay for each coin that is spent otherwise than legally”, the Mayor said.
Gabriela Firea explained that polls are made from these funds, too, and that’s a right thing, but she said that the results of the polls presented to Liviu Dragnea are modified, because he is not well-placed in the sociological surveys.
“Recently, there was a poll in which I was ranked the first in terms of trust in Romania, not in Bucharest, Mr. Iohannis was the second, and Mr. Tariceanu was the third. There were also other few people and Mr. Dragnea was much lower. Our party fellow, who knows the suspicious and awkward way of being Mr. Dragnea has, said ‘I can’t go to the Chairman with this’ and made some changes in the computer. I was totally removed, Mr. Iohannis was the first, Mr. Dragnea was the second, although it wasn’t true, Mr. Tariceanu was placed on a lower place, and so on”, Gabriela Firea said.
