VZCZCXRO4535
PP RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHBM #0065/01 0221444
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 221444Z JAN 07
FM AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5868
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BUCHAREST 000065 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/21/2017 
TAGS: PGOV PINR PROP RO
SUBJECT: PYRRHIC VICTORY AT THE LIBERAL CONFERENCE: PM 
TARICEANU CLINGS ON BUT NO PARADE IN SIGHT 
 
REF: A. BUCHAREST 1811 
 
     ¶B. BUCHAREST 1810 
     ¶C. BUCHAREST 1646 
 
Classified By: DCM Mark A. Taplin for Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
¶1. (C)  Summary:  The National Liberal Party (PNL) reelected 
Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu as party president at 
the extraordinary party convention held on January 12-13. 
Some leading Liberals, including several Tariceanu allies, 
were defeated in their leadership bids by more populist and 
radical leaders.  After a series of expulsions and defections 
of high-profile, popular figures like Mona Musca and Teodor 
Stolojan, the Liberal Party is increasingly forsaking a broad 
political base for tighter internal discipline.  Whatever 
success Tariceanu might have enjoyed in projecting a positive 
image at the helm of the Liberal conference and to showcase 
party unity was sabotaged by Basescu's political intimates, 
who leaked news of a 2005 note from Tariceanu to the 
President, asking him to intervene with prosecutors on behalf 
of Liberal Party eminence grise and energy oligarch Dinu 
Patriciu.  Since then, the political atmosphere in Bucharest, 
always charged, has heated up to levels last seen eighteen 
months ago, when the Liberal/Democrat alliance first began to 
visibly tear apart.  The Prime Minister,s January 19 sacking 
of the head of the Tax Administration, a Basescu ally, was an 
aggressive countermove.  Despite everything, Tariceanu and 
his allies are still holding on, but their political options 
and margin for error continue to erode. End summary. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Some 1300 delegates at the January 12-13 
extraordinary party convention unanimously elected PM 
Tariceanu as president of the PNL.  Tariceanu was 
unchallenged in the aftermath of the expulsions from the 
party of his most vocal critics last year (reftels). 
Tariceanu's re-acceptance speech pledged unity and a more 
assertive liberal identity.  He asserted that the Liberal 
party and his leadership were the main engines that ushered 
in the EU accession, and Tariceanu insisted that in the 
crucial next two years Romania can achieve progress under 
conditions of political stability and continuity of the 
PNL-PD alliance.  He said, "tensions between the PNL and PD 
are the result of natural competition and are not harmful 
provided that they do not lead to political chaos or endanger 
the fulfillment of the governing program." 
 
¶3. (SBU) The delegates also voted for the 15 PNL vice 
presidents and the 15-member Central Political Bureau (BPC). 
At the 2002 and 2005 party congress, the elected party 
president was entitled to choose his team of five vice 
presidents and eight BPC members.  The 2007 convention agreed 
to a larger leadership formula and returned to direct vote 
for these positions.  Some of Tariceanu's closest 
collaborators lost their elections to party leadership 
positions, defeated in some cases by party radicals and local 
branch populists. 
 
¶4. (C) The biggest surprise of the convention was the defeat 
of the President of the Parliament's Chamber of Deputies, 
Bogdan Olteanu, a former minister and godson of the Prime 
Minister.  Olteanu was defeated by Bucharest vice mayor and 
head of the PNL Bucharest branch, Ludovic Orban, in a contest 
for the important position of Vice President for 
Communications and Public Relations.  Orban is known for his 
outspoken criticism of President Basescu.  For instance, 
Orban is one of the few Liberals openly advocating that the 
PNL put forward a candidate of its own in the next 
presidential elections.  While Olteanu by most accounts is 
the Prime Minister's favorite son, he has himself been 
critical behind the scenes of Tariceanu's political 
shortcomings.  He has not hidden his desire to succeed the 
Prime Minister as Liberal president, despite his relative 
youth.  Olteanu's organizational skills and role as "party 
discipliner" have meant that, behind the scenes, he has been 
a force with whom to be reckoned.  However, one well-informed 
media commentator told us that, in fact, Tariceanu had 
quietly backed Orban's candidacy for the vice-presidential 
post because he was aware of his protogee Olteanu's unloyal 
sniping, and had concluded that the acerbic and uncharismatic 
Orban had less potential to unseat him than did Olteanu. 
 
¶5.  (C)  Another outspoken critic of Basescu, Crin Antonescu, 
was unchallenged for the number two party position, Vice 
President for Political Affairs.  GOR Minister of Culture 
Adrian Iorgulescu, lost the vote for Vice President for Civil 
Society and Equal Opportunity to Senator Norica Nicolai. 
Antonescu, Nicolai, and Orban are generally viewed as the 
leaders of the radical wing of the Liberals:  populist 
(despite their elite, intellectual profiles), ntagonistic to 
Basescu, left-European in their policy outlook.  They also 
were the strongest advocates for expelling the more popular, 
 
BUCHAREST 00000065  002 OF 002 
 
 
ex- party Presidents Theodor Stolojan and Valeriu Stoica, the 
former being far too close to Basescu to be trusted either by 
Tariceanu or the radicals. 
 
¶6. (C)  Another surprise, of sorts, was the defeat of Foreign 
Minister Razvan Ungureanu for the position of PNL Vice 
President for European Affairs by Adrian Cioroianu. 
Ungureanu is believed by some to have been punished for 
insufficient loyalty to Tariceanu and the party, in 
particular for his failure to toe the line when the Liberals 
made their abortive announcement last June supporting the 
withdrawal of Romanian troops from Iraq.  Ungureanu never had 
strong political ties to the party base nor did he actively 
lobby within the party for the vice-presidential position. 
To the extent that Ungureanu was seen as standing more in 
President Basescu's shadow and not Tariceanu's, he was always 
in for an uphill fight.  Yet the youthful and articulate 
Ungureanu polls consistently as the most popular Minister in 
the government, and once again the Liberals seemed to be 
turning away from a political figure who could earn them 
votes.  Instead, someone as unappealing as the dour Teodor 
Melescanu, a former Foreign Minister under President Iliescu 
in the early nineties and the current Deputy Speaker of the 
Senate, was elected PNL Vice President for International 
Relations. 
 
¶7. (SBU)  If the elbowing over the vice-presidential posts 
was not enough to take the luster off the PNL convention, the 
sudden detonation in the media of a story linking Tariceanu 
to an effort to intervene with prosecutors on behalf of his 
friend and patron Rompetrol President Dinu Patriciu 
decisively soured the atmosphere.  In a dramatic press 
appearance on January 17, President Basescu's charged 
Tariceanu with attempting to form "a partnership of 
oligarchs" following revelations first made on television by 
Basescu's close confidant and former presidential staffer 
Elena Udrea.  She revealed that Tariceanu had written a note 
in October 2005 seeking Basescu's assistance in intervening 
with prosecutors in a criminal case against Patriciu and 
others on influence peddling and corruption charges.  Despite 
a lively effort by the Prime Minister and other Basescu foes 
at turning the tables against the President in recent days, 
the damage was already done, and more than a few editorials 
called for Tariceanu to step down.  Last Friday, Tariceanu 
announced the sacking of Tax Administration head, Sebastian 
Bodu who was known as a quiet Cotroceni ally.  This was a 
significant countermove, one that probably will usher in 
another strike on the Liberals from the President,s side. 
 
¶8. (C)  Comment:  The PNL entered 2007 looking battered by 
the expulsions and defections of the likes of big name 
liberals like Stolojan, Musca, Stoica, and, most recently, 
the up and coming former Agriculture Minister Georghe Flutur. 
 The convention was intended to help restore the PNL's 
confidence, assert party unity and promote Tariceanu's 
leadership following last year's fierce party in-fighting. 
It has seemingly come up well short of the mark.  While the 
Prime Minister, despite everything, remains at the helm of 
both the Liberals and much of the Romanian governmental 
apparatus, he in fact has gained little or no forward 
momentum.  Tariceanu will be hard-pressed to keep the PNL-PD 
alliance afloat and stave off a collapse of what is now 
officially a minority government.  As Basescu and Tariceanu 
trade accusations over who is more corrupt or oligarchic, it 
is likelythe more popular Basescu will have the upper hand. 
One irony of the PNL convention is that the Liberal radicals 
and populists may have finally gotten President Basescu right 
where he wants them.  End comment. 
TAUBMAN