Romanian President Klaus Iohannis starts talks with political parties on Thursday in order to pick a new prime minister, with the stated purpose of hastening early elections in the country, as the current PM Ludovic Orban was dismissed in a censure motion on Wednesday, after three months in office.
Both Iohannis and Liberal (PNL) party leader Orban have made it clear they wanted early elections to take advantage of the current popularity of the PNL and diminish the power of the Social Democrats (PSD), the biggest political party, in the Parliament.
The Orban government fell in a censure motion tabled by the PSD on Wednesday, which appeared to be what Orban and Iohannis wanted. For early elections to be called, a very limited number of things can happen - and one of them is the dismissal of the government.
The situation has prompted speculation of political maneuvering between the PNL and PSD, considering their electoral goals in local elections in June and general elections initially scheduled for later this year.
President Iohannis has said that he would pick Orban as prime minister again. The expectation is that Orban would lose in Parliament as he himself stated his party would not vote for the government team. This would have to happen twice for early elections to be called.
But Iohannis said that, should he find conditions were not met in the Parliament to dissolve it and call for early polls, he would "insist" on a government built around PNL.
