Romanian Elections&Politics (June 9th - Local and europarliamentary elections)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This may have been asked earlier in the thread, but why did the original USL come to be?

And another: I was talking to a Slovak the other day and they said in Romania pretty much every minority is respected (save the Romanii/gypsies), that even the Czech-speaking minority have 1 reserved seat. Is this true?

Because of then-President Traian Basescu and his party PDL, through which he tried to control the entire political spectrum, PSD and PNL were increasingly drawn together to survive. After Basescu managed to defeat in 2009 an alliance of literally everyone else against him and after he imposed PDL as the sole governing party despite it winning 30% of the vote, they saw no other way. It is a very simplified version of what happened, but I think you get the point.

Yeah, there are 19 minorities entitled to a seat in Parliament (through the Hungarians do not benefit from theirs because UDMR passes the threshold on its own). And the Democratic Union of Slovaks and Czechs in Romania does have one of the seats. But I think it all comes down to the fact that Romania is a very ethnically homogenous country, with over 90% of the population being ethnically Romanian and the minorities, with the exception of Hungarians and Gypsies, being a few tens of thousands of people living in very narrow areas of the country, so it is rather easy to accept them. I am not sure how tolerant the people would be if Romania was actually ethnically diverse.  

Have the Hungarians ever swung a Romanian general election?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A new movie is coming to Romania, courtesy of PNL. It's called "Coalition or: How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love the PSD"
Coming soon to a parliament near you!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yikes, what a mess. The "legalize corruption" policy is quite funny. It seems that PNL is divided between two faction: one that closer ties with PSD and another who wants to a total break with the PSD. Though the first one seems to be the majority.

Which could be the consequences for Iohannis and the party's possible candidate(s) for next year's Presidential election?

I am also wondering this.