Romania’s Former Leftist Leader Backs New Nationalist Party

The former president of the Social Democratic Party, PSD, Liviu Dragnea, who was released on parole in June, said he will support a new party, the Alliance for the Fatherland, which preaches nationalist values and calls for Romania to leave the European Union.

The new party was formed during Dragnea's time in jail, on the initiative of his close friend and former PSD party colleague, Codrin Stefanescu.

"In October, Codrin told me that he felt the need to support the emergence of a new party that internal compromises would not crush. And I told him I would support him with all my experience," Dragnea stated.

Dragnea, a former president of Romania's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, cannot hold office until 2023, after being convicted of corruption and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail in May 2019. He said that at the moment, he cannot hold any position in the new political party.

Stefanescu was elected as an MP in 2000 for the right-wing extremist Greater Romania Party.

Dragnea insisted that the Alliance for the Fatherland is not a xenophobic and anti-European party.

However, its name echoes that of a far-right extremist party called For the Fatherland, which was the successor to the Everything for the Country party set up by former members of the World War II-era fascist National Legionary State regime.

Well-known panpipe player Nicolae Voiculet, a former candidate of the right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians party for the Senate, said he supports the new party founded by Liviu Dragnea, who he characterised as a "great Romanian".

"We live in a state of siege against the national sovereignty of Romania generated by foreign agents who have infiltrated the highest power...