Until recently, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) had been in crisis, a leadership crisis, an ideology and message crisis, and a popularity crisis. Although the party’s new president, Mircea Geoana, managed to get re-elected after a two-year term, he is still experiencing difficulty being acknowledged as the spearhead of the party. Some see him as too soft, others as too much of a peacemaker, while yet others suspect him of biased reformism within the party. Many however believe him to be a transition leader and are awaiting a serious contender to emerge. Others accept his leadership, as they prefer him to the all too authoritarian leaders of the past. For now, his team mates do not manage to distinguish themselves in the leadership department either, burdened as they are by too heavy a past, or blocked by the divisions in the party. Geoana would not force some of them to withdraw, opting to wait for their (almost) natural death. He understood quite well that his survival very much depends on the tensions between various rival groups. Those internal convulsions aside, the core problem is the public image of this party. What kind of party is today’s PSD?
Is it the only genuine party of the left? Or a western-type Social-Democrat party well integrated in the capitalist dynamic? Or the expression of a native post-communism? Despite its plethora of image experts, from the Cluj-based Vasile Dancu and up to the Israelis, PSD has yet to find a new convincing identity. Used to an electorate that is both heterogeneous and massive, the party is yet to learn on which segment it should focus its attention. Gone are the times of the old Iliescu’s memorable leftist fits against the inequalities of capitalism. However, the political marketing picked from western manuals has not paid any dividends either, so that the Social-democrats themselves do not know who they are really, whom to address to and what to say to those they are supposed to address. As a result, their decline in the polls was sharp, denting their morale and projecting their dreams of power somewhere in the distant future. Nonetheless, the new circumstances brought some unexpected changes. Mircea Geoana has become a partner in top political negotiations, governing stability depends on PSD, and the prospect of joining the exercise of power is on the agenda. All of a sudden, Social Democrats recalled it was they who won the elections actually and they can no longer be ignored when it comes to major decisions. The situation is as such that it appears the next government is plotted at the PSD headquarters, with its leaders only to decide whom they should ally with, the Liberals or the Democrats. And this is how the man that introduced the ban on an alliance with Social Democrats, has become the artisan of their return to power. Through his election victory, President Traian Basescu managed to also turn the tables on the parliamentary majority as well, ruling PSD out of a role that appeared to have been its due. What followed however was a campaign against the premier and an implicit torpedoing of the Democrat-Liberal alliance. |