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PNL chief resigns, PM’s favourite to succeed him
The leader of the National Liberal Party (PNL), the largest centre-right party in Romania, has resigned while he was on an official visit to the US, and current Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca is favoured to succeed him, euractiv.com reads.
Florin Citu, former prime minister and current speaker of the Senate, has lost his party’s support only six months after being named president of PNL following an acrimonious battle with the former party leader, Ludovic Orban.
But Citu soon learned that his victory was a pyrrhic one, as President Klaus Iohannis named Nicolae Ciuca, a former army general, as Prime Minister, after Citu’s government lost a confidence vote in parliament.
Now the party leadership seems to have rallied behind Ciuca, but the prime minister said he has not yet decided if he will run for the post of PNL president.
On Sunday (3 April), just one day after Citu’s resignation and just a few days after most of PNL’s regional offices called for an extraordinary congress to change the party’s leader, the National Council decided to organise the congress for next Sunday (10 April).