Is there a price for Piedone’s withdrawal? Ciolacu’s choice

Mr. Nicușor Dan and his supporters have every reason to pray that Mr. Piedone will not withdraw from the race for the Capital. And this for several reasons. Some downright mathematical.

Gabriela Firea and Cristian Popescu Piedone broadly share the same electoral pool. Until Mrs. Firea entered the fight, Piedone took most of it, because Mr. Cîrstoiu had no grip in that area. Ms. Firea is taking back a large part of the Pesedist electorate, enough so that Piedone no longer has any real chance at first place, but not enough for her to win.

Another reason would be that from the moment of Piedone’s disappearance from the scene, paradoxically, Mrs. Firea would have a better chance of winning than if she had entered from the beginning, without Piedone. In the first phase, she was the biggest evil, with asylums, companies, bunnies, etc. and she had the greatest capacity to raise the tide of hatred in favor of Nicușor Dan.

But at this moment, the biggest evil, with the ability to mobilize around Nicușor Dan, is Piedone. If he disappears, Ms. Firea may even seem tolerable, especially if she doesn’t go to excess. Eliminating Piedone would mean a kind of dangerous relaxation for Nicușor Dan.

That is why the mayor in office is trying to keep him in the ring and for that, on the one hand, he continues to validate him as the main opponent, but he also invokes his withdrawal to provoke new denials that will make it even more difficult future retraction.

Dan Voiculescu’s stake

I don’t think that Piedone and, especially his political patron, Dan Voiculescu, are so naive as to think that he still has a real chance to win after Ms. Firea’s entry into the race. They should plan to butcher Gabriela Firea in order to leave her without the PSD electorate, which is very difficult. To hope that the electorate of the PSD Bucharest branch, which Ms. Firea controls very well, will abandon you to go to Piedone is unrealistic.

And then it is obvious that the current configuration is in favor of the current general mayor, which is also shown by the first polls taken after the great fiasco of the common candidate. However, I do not suspect either Piedone or Dan Voiculescu of any hidden sympathy for Dan Nicușor.

Obviously, the stake for Dan Voiculescu, as I said before, is not necessarily the General City Hall. The big stake is raising the PUSL score for female parliamentarians.

With an active and exotic Piedone, shown on all screens, it is certain that the hitherto absolutely obscure party gains great visibility and can amplify its score, primarily in Bucharest, but also at the national level. PUSL reached 12% in Bucharest, only 3 percent behind PNL.

So, obviously, there is only one price that Piedone would perhaps retire, but not a personal one. Most likely, the price would include an electoral alliance for the autumn elections, with which the PSD would treat the PUSL in the Parliament with a much higher number of seats than the party could obtain only through the increase provided by Piedone and Antene.

Is Marcel Ciolacu willing to pay the price?

It is difficult for him to make the decision to make Gabriela Firea the savior mayor who will become a dangerous rival in the party. It is difficult to decide this donation of mandates that he would settle in the party. Of course, it would suit him to have a hinge in the parliament, a party with which he could stick a majority, but not in the PSD seats, it would not help him at all.

Plus Dan Voiculescu is not necessarily a reliable partner. There was once the immoral solution that left Adrian Năstase with his eyes in the sun.

And there is something else, perhaps the most difficult to overcome. There are many signals that the Voiculescu area is betting on Mircea Geoană for the presidential election.

For now, it seems that beyond the public messages, apparently more than the eyes of the world, Marcel Ciolacu has not even opened a serious negotiation about the right price. This is what Piedone tells us, “I don’t negotiate with anyone. He didn’t call me and I don’t call anyone.”

And even before opening it, Marcel Ciolacu announced that he had closed it: “I have ended any dialogue and any offer for Cristian Popescu Piedone. I said that we have to think about what we have to build for Bucharest, not to try to get stuck in our personal dreams. Everything I wanted to convey to Mr. Cristian Popescu Piedone, I conveyed to him, until today. I didn’t see myself, I sent them through you. It made my pleasure much greater”.

So if Piedone will not retire, it is because Marcel Ciolacu chose that way.