Thuma calls for bottom-up internal PNL elections after Ilfov mayors' meeting

The call for bottom-up elections

Hubert Thuma, president of the Ilfov County Council and one of the critics of the current PNL leadership, said on Thursday, 12 November, that the party needs internal elections held from the bottom up. He made the case in a Facebook post after gathering all PNL mayors from Ilfov at the county political bureau. According to his account, every mayor was heard, and the conclusion, adopted unanimously, was that branch votes should come first and national elections second.

“We listened to each one. Without exception. It was not a meeting to tick off.”

Thuma argued that the party's direction should come from members in the territory, not from the centre. He said decisions should be reached through consultation rather than through announcements or communiqués issued from headquarters.

Criticism of the current leadership

Thuma said interim presidents who received their posts 'by a signature, not by a vote' cannot rebuild the party. G4Media reports that the branches controlled for years by the same leaders provide political support to Ilie Bolojan, and that Thuma's appeal is aimed at destabilising those organisations. Thuma himself placed the party's renewal in its branches and town halls.

“A party is not rebuilt from the top down. It is reformed from the branches, from the town halls.”

Who should be a congress delegate

Thuma wants the national congress that will choose the party's new leadership to be made up of delegates elected in the branches. He named mayors, locally elected officials and members who had worked for the PNL for years as the people he has in mind. He excluded employees brought in from state-owned companies and people placed in positions because of who they were close to at the right moment. Ziare.com and Mediafax both report the same list of criteria.

“Then when we get to the congress, let this time be a congress of the party.”

Thuma also wrote that Ilfov had said what it had to say and that he is waiting to hear from the other counties. The articles do not give a date for the internal votes or for the congress.

The June background

The articles recall that on 23 June the Liberals announced that leadership mandates had not been extended for 12 branches. Among them were Argeș, led by Alina Gorghiu, and Ilfov, led by Thuma. The party also began procedures to expel former premier-designate Adrian Veștea and those who backed him, but said these would be completed only after the new Statute was registered with the Tribunal.

The Ilfov appeal therefore comes from a county whose leadership was already sidelined in June. Thuma's critics inside the party are now pushing for a vote that would reach from the branches upward, rather than a decision taken at the top. HotNews.ro and G4Media frame the move as a challenge to the current leadership, and Ilfov's stance is the first reported from a county branch in these articles.