CTP attacks Ilie Bolojan after consistently supporting him, criticizing Adrian Peiu’s promotion in PNL

Cristian Tudor Popescu has turned Adrian Peiu’s rapid political journey into a sharp indictment of the National Liberal Party under Ilie Bolojan. Peiu moved from AUR to SOS and then to PACE before joining the PNL and becoming head of its Ilfov organization.

“Peiu has moved to the PNL. Fake news? Or breaking news? Both,” Popescu wrote on Facebook. He recalled that Peiu had voted for a no-confidence motion aimed at “freeing the Romanian people from the Bolojan government,” yet was later made a liberal and given a senior party position.

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Peiu has moved to the PNL. Fake news? Or breaking news? Both.

Popescu also revisited the word “party-hopper,” which he says he coined more than a quarter-century ago after Mircea Coșea, a minister in Nicolae Văcăroiu’s government, who allegedly changed parties as readily as cars. He questioned what might have driven Peiu’s rapid transformation into a PNL figure, writing that Bolojan’s decision forced him to reassess the party leader.

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Powerful, but now, it turns out, a Carpatho-Danubian politician in the full sense.

A month earlier, Popescu had described Bolojan as both a competent, determined administrator and a powerful politician. He now says Bolojan has revealed himself as a “Carpatho-Danubian politician,” citing changes involving PNL figures in Ilfov and Brașov. He referred to Marian Petrache as the former power broker of Ilfov and to Brașov Mayor George Scripcaru, mentioning corruption investigations and allegations reported in the source.

Popescu also recalled meeting Bolojan in Oradea in 2023. Bolojan had remembered Popescu’s opposition to what Popescu described as a major bribe connected to the proposed transfer of Casa Scânteii to the Romanian Press Club. Popescu said he had threatened to resign and publicly explain the deal if it went ahead. He once felt honored that Bolojan remembered the episode. Now, he says, the episode has made him wonder whether Bolojan valued his stance as a clever political maneuver.

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In 2023, during a meeting I had with him in Oradea, Mr. Bolojan told me that he remembered very well how I was the only person who stopped a large-scale bribe.