People's Party – Dan Diaconescu/
Partidul Poporului – Dan Diaconescu (PP-DD)
The People's Party – Dan Diaconescu was founded in 2011 by Romanian TV presenter Dan Diaconescu. The ideology of the PP-DD expressed nationalist and socialist sentiments. The first congress of the party was held in January 2012, when the party was officially constituted. At the 2012 parliamentary election, the PP-DD came third again, successfully entering Parliament with 21 senators and 47 deputies. By June 2013 however, the party became heavily affected by party switching, losing 2 senators and 16 deputies, including its group leaders in both chambers.
Diaconescu will serve five and a half years in jail for blackmail. The Bucharest Court of Appeal issued the final sentence, ruling the jail time, without parole, on 04 March 2014. The court upgraded a previous conviction, of three years in prison, issued by the Bucharest District 1 Court. Diaconescu appealed the decision and got his sentence upped. Diaconescu, owner of the defunct TV station OTV, and leader and founder of the party bearing his name, the Popular Party Dan Diaconescu, is one of the several media owners in Romania who serve jail.
Diaconescu threatened a local mayor in 2009, on several occasions, both directly during shows at his TV station, and indirectly, via his journalists. Diaconescu asked the mayor to pay him EUR 200,000, but only received some EUR 40,000 of it, via one of his journalists. In another prosecution case, Diaconescu is accused of having blackmailed a businessman into paying him EUR 100,000. He received EUR 4,500 of it, via another journalist. Diaconescu used his TV station OTV to blackmail these people, and extort them, threatening to reveal sensitive information about them on TV should they not pay.
The party he founded, the Popular Party Dan Diaconescu, had seats in the Parliament, but its MPs decided to change the name of the parliamentary group to the Democratic and Popular group.
The national conference of the National Union for Romania's Progress (UNPR, minor at rule) and the People's Party Dan Diaconescu (PPDD) congress, reunited in joint sitting 02 August 2015, unanimously approved the merger through absorption with Dan Diaconescu's former political party. "UNPR is a political project we have started five years ago. And I believe we were inspired when we said it is a political project of Romania's national interest. The national interest, the patriotism — one either is born with them or they never have them. Our doctrine is simple, it's Romania," the UNPR leader, Gabriel Oprea, said.
"It is a party of the Romanian state, it is a party of Romania's and this is something we shall get proven. We must, slowly, yet certainly settle in the Romanian public conscience what the UNPR means, what seriousness means. We must strengthen ourselves as the third party of Romania and make a single team. They who wish stability, security and seriousness should come to the UNPR, (because) this is how we could gather one million party members. I know it's hard, but we'll make it," Gabriel Oprea said.
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