The husband of the economist who could have become the premier, is rumoured to have sympathies for the wrong people.
President Klaus Iohannis said he had “carefully weighed the arguments for and against” and decided not to nominate Sevil Shhaideh, 52, a relative political novice, to the post of prime minister.
He called on the Social Democratic Party, which won the recent elections and put her name forward last week, to find another candidate. Iohannis’ refusal has prompted anger from the Social Democrats.
The party chairman Liviu Dragnea said the party would consider impeaching Iohannis “if … we reach the conclusion it is good for the country.” He blamed Iohannis for wanting “to start a political crisis”.
Dragnea said the party could not find a “constitutional reason or other reason … connected to possible risks” for refusing the party’s nomination. He has promised to fight the president on the matter: “If Iohannis rejects our proposal, I’m not going to make a second one. We’ll see each other in some other place.”
Shhaideh, also a member of the country’s Muslim Tartar minority, was nominated by Dragnea because he is unable to nominate himself for prime minister after being convicted of electoral fraud, according to the British daily The Express.
If President Iohannis rejects the second candidate, another election will be held.
Sergio Miscoiu, a Romanian political science professor, said: “Dragnea has nominated a loyal person… it will be a government controlled by Dragnea.”
But according to the non-profit investigative journalism group the Rise Project, Shhaideh’s husband has expressed support for the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and for the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah.
Her husband had worked in the Syrian agriculture ministry for 20 years before emigrating in 2011, according to media reports. He then served as an adviser to the Romanian agriculture ministry and gained citizenship in 2015, the Guardian reported.
Cătălin Predoiu, a former justice minister from the centre-right National Liberal party, said on Facebook that he could not see how Shhaideh could get the security clearance needed for the job. It would “give her access to defence information classified as secret, including from NATO,” he said.
Another political analyst, Andrei Ţăranu, also thought the US might not have been happy about her appointment: “In the absence of any explanations by the president, I suppose that his rejection is linked to questions of national security and because the United States would not have been very keen.”
Iohannis signed the decree appointing Sevil Shhaideh to the position of Minister of Regional Development and Public Administration, in May 2015.
