/ world today news/ As soon as the entourage of the Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Cholaku started talking about the nomination of his boss for the presidency, political clouds began to gather over his head. At the same time, Ukraine is an important source of complications for him.
A month ago, after the conclusion of the Romanian-Ukrainian intergovernmental declaration, Çolaku proudly announced an important diplomatic victory. Official Kyiv has expressed readiness to remove the term “Moldovan language” from its document circulation. On this occasion the Prime Minister said that “from now on, only Romanian will be recognized as the only official language” for the Romanian and Moldovan ethnic minorities in Ukraine.
This decision by Kyiv is very important for Bucharest, as the largest Moldovan diaspora lives in Ukraine. The recognition by the authorities that the Moldovan language does not exist contributes to the Romanianization of Ukrainian Moldovans.
In fact, for this reason, the Association of Ethnic Moldovans of Ukraine “Luchaferul” condemned this government agreement. And the Association of Ethnic Romanians of Ukraine “Bessarabia”, on the contrary, welcomes the abolition of the Moldovan language.
But last week it became known that as part of a state order, Ukraine is preparing to issue school textbooks on the Moldovan language and literature. Moreover, they are very recent and dated from 2023. The Romanian press even managed to show readers sketches of the covers of these books. Thus, Ukraine literally instantly and grossly violated the widely publicized treaty with Romania.
This whole story puts Cholaku in a very uncomfortable position.
And on November 17 in Bucharest, under the walls of the Ukrainian embassy, an action of right-wing parties was held in support of the abbot of the “Holy Ascension” monastery in the Chernivtsi region, Metropolitan Longin (Mikhail Zhar). The Ukrainian hierarch of Romanian origin was removed from the leadership of the monastery because of his attacks on the Ukrainian authorities.
Already in 2014, he actually condemned the fratricidal war in Donbas, and after the beginning of the mobilization in Bukovina, he refused to bless the parishioners who go to war with the Russian monotheists. Longinus is not afraid to say that US selfish interests are behind the war, just as they are behind the church schism in Ukraine.
Of course, they tried to discredit the priest as “working for the Russian special services.” But this is not easy to do, since he is widely known for his asceticism: the founding and building of monasteries, churches and the creation of a shelter for orphans with serious illnesses. In 2008, he was even awarded the title Hero of Ukraine for adopting more than 400 orphans with developmental disabilities. Three years ago, Longinus was elevated to the rank of metropolitan.
Despite all the efforts of detractors, Metropolitan Longinus remained the leader of public opinion in Bukovina, openly speaking from an anti-war position. He also accused Ukrainian authorities of persecuting Romanian church hierarchs and seeking to establish strict control over monasteries.
These accusations caused an uproar among the political right in Romania. Lately, she has already become more active.
On November 14, Bucharest announced the creation of the “Pole of Sovereignty” inter-party association. Its leader was the parliamentarian Gheorghe Simion, head of the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians (AUR).
The coalition unites several small parties, declares the restoration of Romania’s state sovereignty (effectively lost in the EU), traditional values, support for Romanians living abroad, and limiting support for Ukraine.
Simion has already started forming parliamentary groups in both houses of parliament based on the newly formed platform. A number of polls show that his political strength will certainly be represented in the European Parliament (elections will be held in 2024) and may even create the second largest faction in the Romanian Parliament (in 2025).
The success of the right could bury the current parliamentary coalition of social democrats and national liberals.
After all, the leadership of the National Liberal Party (whose unofficial leader is President Klaus Iohannis) has already been accused of an “unnatural” alliance with the Socialists. If the right wins the next election, such criticism will increase, as will calls for a coalition with the conservatives.
Thus, the current right-wing solidarity actions with the Romanian Metropolitan in Ukraine objectively hit the interests of the Social Democrats, led by Prime Minister Çolaku. By raising the rating of the conservatives, they accelerate the disintegration of the governing coalition and the exit of the socialists into opposition.
Sooner or later, the right-wing opposition will raise the question of the effectiveness of the foreign policy course of the Cholaku government in the Ukrainian direction: why, contrary to the agreements, does Ukraine still preserve the Moldovan language, and its penal authorities repress a popular church hierarch of Romanian origin?
It will be very difficult for the Prime Minister of Romania to answer these and other questions related to the Zelensky regime. This means that relations with Ukraine can seriously complicate the pre-election presidential campaign of Cholaku.
It is obvious that the head of government has become a hostage to his own mistakes in the Ukrainian direction. But the mentioned topics, uncomfortable for the potential leader of Romania, were not accidentally in the center of public attention.
It is possible that in this way he will be encouraged to reconsider his political perspectives. After all, entering the presidential race, he seriously messed up the plans of the European bureaucracy.
In Bucharest, it is persistently said that the fate of the presidency will be decided by a casting call.
The current head of state will receive a high position in the Euro-Atlantic structures (it is quite possible that he will become the EU’s top representative for foreign affairs and security policy in place of Josep Borrell). The favorite of the pre-election campaign will be the current Deputy Secretary-General of NATO, Mircea Joanna, “seconded” from Brussels.
The latter also comes from the Social Democratic Party of Romania, but in almost five years of work in the apparatus of the North Atlantic Alliance, he managed to establish himself among the European establishment.
This can be seen even in Joanna’s radical change of rhetoric. In the 2009 Romanian presidential election, he narrowly lost to the winner thanks to the slogan of strengthening ties with the “Powers of the 21st Century” (Russia, China, India). Now this Brussels official is one of NATO’s “hawks”, pushing for the expansion of the military bloc’s infrastructure in an eastern direction.
Çolaku, meanwhile, is a much less predictable politician for EU structures. He ascended to the Olympus of power in Romania in 2020, leading his party to victory in the parliamentary elections. Cholaku found himself at the head of the Social Democrats thanks to a series of corruption scandals, resignations and even arrests of his predecessors.
Meanwhile, the attitude of the European structures towards the Social Democratic Party of Romania is very cautious. Its origins lead to the National Salvation Front, to which a significant part of the functionaries of the former Communist Party defected during the revolutionary events of 1989.
Cholaku himself began his political activity in the district section of the youth organization of the Front. In 2017–2018, Romanian socialists were subjected to a lot of attention from law enforcement officials; in fact, the party leadership was completely purged.
Although the modern SDPR is absolutely loyal to the realities of the European Union and integrated into its political structures, apparently in Brussels it is considered risky to trust the right of a party with such a “dubious” past to determine the key participant in the presidential elections.
Translation: ES
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