THE RUMORS ABOUT THE PRIME-MINISTER'S RESIGNATION Victor Ponta keeps changing his mind

Prime-minister Victor Ponta was indicted yesterday, as the DNA is charging him with 17 counts of forgery in private deeds, complicity in tax evasion and money laundering, together with senator Dan Şova and the head of the Rovinari complex at the time, Laurenţiu Ciurel. According to the Romanian constitution, the prime-minister can not even be suspended by the Romanian president, because the offenses he is being charged with were not committed during his prime-minister term.

The action of the DNA yesterday generated rumors about the potential resignation of Victor Ponta as prime-minister. Some claimed that he would resign in a few hours, while others were skeptical. By the time the newspaper went to print, Victor Ponta had only posted one response on his personal Facebook page, deliberately overlapping the country's situation with his personal issue: "In three years Romania will economically surpass many European countries - that's what the IMF says! I strongly believe that this is achievable, through the Romanians' work and through a more effective government (and then, in 2018, we will think that the times when the economy is growing, salaries and pensions are growing, we are absorbing European funds and we are helping the Republic of Moldova, and the country's only problem is the obsession of a completely unprofessional prosecutor to further his career, by making up untrue facts and situations ten years ago)!".

Just one day earlier, senator Ilie Sârbu, Victor Ponta's father-in-law, was appointed by the Romanian Parliament as vice-president of the Audit Authority of the Romanian Court of Audit, for a nine-year term. His nomination was possible despite the fact that he is being criminally investigated in the restitutions case, in which Viorel Hrebenciuc, his former colleague in the government and in the Parliament, has been indicted. The Romanian legislation does not view as a problem holding an important position within the institution which supervises the manner that public funds are spent, while the suspicion of having committed criminal offenses looms over them.

Victor Ponta have a common past, based on their kinship and their simultaneous holding of multiple functions within the Romanian government. They now also have a similar present, at least where the criminal legislation is concerned.

The deeply vicious way that both of them have looked at and hungered for the nation's wealth now explains why each of them clings to a public position and hopes to extend as much as possible, the life duration of the obscure species that they belong to.

It is a matter of survival, but not of the individuals, but of a hybrid species of "pink rats", born before 1990, at the confluence between the communist regime and the foreign capitalism, and subsequently raised through the spoliation, regardless of the means, of the public resources managed by the Romanian government which they completely mistreated, because formally it wasn't theirs and " they" didn't feel like they belonged to it either.

"They" are the ones who have created, for 25 years, laws that facilitate if not their perpetuation, at least the withdrawal into nooks such as the Court of Auditors, to escape the general disinfection which is, at its core intended to redistribute the public resources towards the security pillars of every modern democratic country: army, education, healthcare. In order to achieve that goal, the remaining rats and their heirs have to be driven away from the barn, and the mice that would inherently remain should be afraid to steal more than a few grains.

Victor Ponta's departure as prime-minister is not a matter of "if", but of "when". The structure that has raised him and supported him has been slowly but surely eroded, and Victor Ponta now hangs in the strings that have always dictated his moves. On his own, he doesn't know what to do and he becomes receptive to the suggestions of his friend and basketball partner Sebastian Ghiţă.

The successor of the current prime-minister will need to have the ability to negotiate an apparent or partial pact with the species that Victor Ponta is the exponent of and to secretly join the disinfection campaign, at risk of falling victim to it themselves eventually. The next prime-minister will have stability if they understand that the state apparatus is going through a transition imposed by the scale of the transformations that Romania as a whole has gone through over the last decade and which has been progressively accelerated by the dangerous developments in Romania's eastern side.

Political sources claim that after the possible resignation of Victor Ponta, his successor will be Gabriel Oprea for a few months, who could also be invited to take on the management of the PSD. In this scenario, a minority PNL government could be formed which would be active until next year's general elections.

Winter is getting close and with it, the usual snow-ins of cars, trains and people. Perhaps the Victoria Palace will set up a crisis commandment led by a strong person, experienced in dealing with difficult situations and dedicated to the nation's interest before winter comes. Maybe, if they are also endorsed by the foreign nations.