MP Radu Miruță, USR Gorj chair, told the party congress in Timișoara on Saturday that opposition is not a pause for USR and that the party still aims to build a reformist pole that can win future elections, Agerpres reports.

Miruță said he represented USR in three ministries where the idea that “you can’t do anything, they’ve been here 30 years” “breathed through the walls,” and that USR ministers proved otherwise. Eleven days after PSD took back government seats, he said, Social Democrats complain they no longer find the arrangements they left — which USR ministers had dismantled.

The party unanimously refused, he stressed, a government run “from PSD headquarters with an AUR-backed majority.” He contrasted 223 PSD ministers since 1990 with the five USR ministers in the recent cabinet, whom he cast as people who held non-performers to account.

Miruță, who leads one of three lists for the National Bureau, made three pledges: USR will stay “in their shadow” in every ministry, bringing contracts and irregularities into the open; every criticism will come with proposals, people and figures; and the party will leave the big cities, because “Romania is won at the gate of the person who never voted for us” — aiming for 100 mayoralties.

He also mocked Grindeanu’s hunt for a budget “hole,” with asides about Ciolacu’s baccalaureate diploma and Mykonos meetings — congress rhetoric after USR’s exit from the coalition.

Image: Radu Miruță (Wikimedia Commons, public domain).

Sources consulted: Radu Miruță: Opposition is not a pause for USR - AGERPRES.