Chairman of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) Kelemen Hunor, a candidate in the presidential elections this autumn, believes that we need a republic of the citizens, not of the officials and politicians, but also a state that does not crush Romanians.
„Romania’s most serious problem is, on the one hand, demography and, on the other hand, the lack of hope and confidence. People have no trust in state institutions, because the state cannot defend people and behaves absolutely unacceptable with citizens and businesses. The citizen is not there to serve the state, but the state institutions must serve the citizen. (…) We, instead of raising minds, we are churning out functional illiterates. Of the many billions in debt, the state will recover 8-10 percent through the tax amnesty, but the message conveyed to society is „be smart and I’ll come to forgive you”. (…) The state has grown and is crushing us all. (…) Citizens do not feel safe and here the state and state institutions must do their job,” the UDMR leader told Euronews.
He described the current government as „chaos”, adding that National Liberal Party (PNL) leader Nicolae Ciuca „has forgotten his military colleagues”.
„It is chaos. They call this chaos political stability. I don’t think we are talking about political stability. (…) In an election campaign you certainly no longer expect important issues to be solved, but we see more chaos and improvisations, decisions taken without any analysis, then amended by an emergency ordinance, then amended by another emergency ordinance and amended in Parliament for the fourth time, because they found that something was missing. Take a look at the military pensions – pensions have been recalculated for over a year and now they are realising that military pensions have been forgotten, with Mr. Ciuca in the Government, with Mr. Ciuca in the coalition, with Mr. Ciuca – presidential candidate. Mr. Ciuca being a military man has forgotten about his colleagues. Of course, his pension is not affected and now the military are really upset. (…) Not to mention the other problems of the recalculation of pensions and people with disabilities. (…) The pretext that Mr. Ciuca doesn’t want to, in fact he doesn’t like it, but he has to stay in government with PSD [the Social Democratic Party], because there is war in our vicinity, is not a solid argument. To say ‘I want a right-wing government, but I am staying with PSD’ is not credible. The government at the moment is neither stable, nor coherent, nor efficient,” Kelemen Hunor further said.
The UDMR leader asked the Finance minister where the money from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) is: „Almost nine billion 600 million euros from the PNRR have come to Romania and I am asking the Finance minister this question – where is the money? Because they didn’t pay for the works with this money. There are bills that have not been paid – I’m talking about development, public investment, since May, since June. It’s September, the companies are in stalemate. Where is the money? I raise the question as to why we are taking new loans at a huge cost, with the highest cost in the European Union?”.
AGERPRES
