Romania's Embattled Ruling Party Sticks With Current Chief

Thousands of members of Romania's ruling party, the Social Democrats, are to gather on Saturday in Bucharest for their annual congress.

However, they will not be voting for a new leader this year. On March 5, the party leadership extended current leader Liviu Dragnea's mandate for another year.
Representatives from the eight regions at the congress will only select the party's 16 vice-presidents and the executive president, who ranks in second place in the party hierarchy.

For the first time in its history, party members are obliged to select two vice-presidents for each region, a man and a woman.

The decision was made after Dragnea vowed to promote more women in the leadership.  He also insisted his support for women in the party was no "caprice".

"It's a given. I have done everything I could for them to take a more important role," he said before the party Executive Committee meeting on Monday.

Dragnea, who has been head of the Social Democrats since July 2015, when former leader Victor Ponta resigned due to graft accusations, explained that he did not need to run to be reconfirmed as president, after representatives of the regional branches told him "there was no need".

Changes anger prominent members:

The change to the party rules has drawn complaints from several members who cannot run for any of the available positions, however.

MP Catalin Radulescu said on Monday, after the executive committee meeting, that he was unhappy with the way the party statute had been changed because, if it created more positions for women, it also restricted the number of candidates and ended real competition in the party.

He said he had filed a complaint against the decision. "I would like to run for...