Update: Romania’s PM resigns after losing his party support

Romania’s prime minister Mihai Tudose announced his resignation on Monday evening, during the Social Democratic Party’s executive committee meeting, according to political sources quoted by local news agency Mediafax. Most of PSD’s executive committee members voted in favor of withdrawing political support for the PM, according to the same sources. When getting out of the executive committee meeting, Mihai Tudose told the journalists that he would go to the Government headquarters to take his stuff and that he would not sit in as interim PM until a new cabinet is invested by the Parliament. The PM's resignation means that his cabinet will be dismissed. President Klaus Iohannis will have to nominate a new PM who has to come up with a new team and get the Parliament's vote. PSD president Liviu Dragnea said he would let his colleagues come up with proposals for the new PM this time. "It seems I don't have a good hand for picking prime ministers," Dragnea said in a press conference. Tudose is the second PSD prime minister forced to leave office after only six months, after a clash with party leader Liviu Dragnea. In June 2017, PSD overthrew its own Government by no-confidence motion only to get rid of former PM Sorin Grindeanu, who refused to take orders from Dragnea any more. The open conflict between Mihai Tudose and Liviu Dragnea started in October 2017, when the PM asked for the removal of three ministers from his cabinet, including deputy prime minister and development minister Sevil Shhaideh, one of Dragnea's most trusted collaborators. Tudose won that round and got the cabinet reshuffle he asked for. The tensions within the governing party started to rise again at the end of last year and in the first weeks of this year, when Tudose asked for a restructuring of his cabinet aimed at reducing the number of ministries. The political commentators saw this as a first step in Tudose's plan to reduce Dragnea's influence in the Government. The party's executive committee postponed a decision for the end of January, but Tudose seemed to be gaining support among other PSD leaders. However, the tensions continued to rise, especially after the case of a pedophile cop started a huge scandal between the Interior Ministry and its main subordinated institution, the Romanian Police. Interior minister Carmen Dan, one of Dragnea's protegees, asked for the Romanian Police head's resignation but Mihai Tudose refused to dismiss the Police head