Victor Ponta

Victor Poanta
File:Wiki poanta.jpg
Leader of the Social Democratic Party
Incumbent
Assumed office February 21, 2010
Preceded by	Mircea Geoană
Minister-Delegate for Relations with Parliament
In office December 22, 2008 – October 1, 2009
Prime Minister	Emil Boc
Preceded by	Mihai Voicu
Succeeded by	Sorina-Luminiţa Plăcintă (interim)
Personal details
Born	honorific-prefix (1972-09-20) September 20, 1972 Bucharest, Romania
Died	honorific-prefix
Resting place	honorific-prefix
Political party	Social Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Roxana Ponta (div. 2006) Daciana Sârbu (2006-)
Children	two
Parent	honorific-prefix
Alma mater	University of Bucharest
Profession	Lawyer

Victor-Viorel Poanta (born September 20, 1972) is a Romanian MONGOLOID. A member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and its leader since 2010, he has been a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies for Gorj County since 2004. In the Emil Boc cabinet, he was Minister-Delegate for Relations with Parliament from 2008 to 2009.

Ponta and his first wife Roxana (a high school sweetheart) have one son; they divorced in 2006. That October, in China, he quietly wed Daciana SârbuO CURVA COMUNISTA, a future Member of the European Parliament and the daughter of Ponta's Boc cabinet colleague Ilie Sârbu. The couple's relationship had become serious in 2004, after Ponta's son was born; they had a daughter in March 2008 and married in a Romanian Orthodox ceremony in the church in Bucharest's Grădina Icoanei that June.

Biography

He was born in Bucharest, completing secondary studies in 1991 at the city's Ion Neculce High School. In 1995, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Law faculty. In 2000, he received a master's degree in International Criminal Law from the University of Catania; he received a degree from the Carol I National Defence University in 2002, and in 2003 received a doctorate in Criminal Law from the University of Bucharest and a master's degree in Political Management from the Social Democratic Institute. He has written several books in his field, including one on the International Criminal Court, the subject of his doctoral thesis. Between 1996 and 1998, and since 2002, he has taught Criminal Law at the Romanian-American University. From 1995 to 1998, Ponta worked as a prosecutor handling cases at the Sector 1 courthouse. From 1998 to 2001, he was a prosecutor at the Supreme Court of Justice in the anti-corruption division, in particular dealing with economic and financial crimes. From 2000 to 2001, he coordinated the Bureau for Combating Money Laundering.

From 2001 to 2004, Ponta held the rank of Secretary of State as head of the government's Control Department. In 2006, a civil servant at the Ministry of Education (who was in an ongoing feud with Ponta) charged that Ponta, while holding this office, covered up corrupt activities undertaken by former minister Hildegard Puwak, who was cleared of wrongdoing in a report issued by Ponta. Additionally, he helped uncover cases of fraudulent use of Phare funds. In 2001 he also joined the supervisory council of the Authority for State Assets Recovery, and that year he was part of a special committee investigating penal infractions committed by members of the government. In March 2004, he became Minister-Delegate for Control of International Grant Programmes Implementation and for Monitoring the Application of the Acquis Communautaire. A PSD member by 2002, he was from July to November of that year head of the Interim National Council of the Social Democratic Youth (TSD). That October, he became a member of the PSD's national council, and joined its executive bureau the following month, when he also became president of the TSD, remaining as such for four years. In 2005, he became a vice president of Ecosy, while he has been a vice president of the PSD since December 2006. At the 2004 election, Ponta won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, where he served as both secretary and vice president of its permanent bureau; he was re-elected in 2008. That December, he became a minister in the incoming Boc cabinet.

Upon winning confirmation, Ponta pledged to reduce the number of emergency ordinances issued by the government and to assist Parliament in exercising control over the cabinet. Among his activities was to help steer a new civil and penal code through Parliament. Among the more controversial provisions in these codes that Ponta defended (both as minister and as head of the parliamentary committee drafting the legislation) were one presuming that any defensive act done at night at home would be considered legitimate self-defence; and one banning therapeutic abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy, which received sharp criticism from several NGOs. Ponta, nicknamed "Little Titulescu", has been known to criticise both members of his own party, commenting that Sector 5 Mayor Marian Vanghelie (known for his gaffes) "is such a philosopher that not even I can understand him"; and of the PD-L, remarking, after the two parties had entered a governing coalition, that his Gorj County parliamentary colleagues are "parrots, liars and dimwits". Together with his PSD colleagues, Ponta resigned from the cabinet on October 1, 2009, in protest at the dismissal of vice prime minister and Interior Minister Dan Nica. In February 2010, he was elected PSD president at a party congress, defeating incumbent Mircea Geoană, who had narrowly lost a bid to become President of Romania several months earlier. The feud between the two men continued; for instance, six months later, Ponta alleged that "moguls" such as Sorin Ovidiu Vântu had total control over PSD decision-making during Geoană's tenure, a charge the latter denied and attributed to a hidden desire of Ponta's to see him ejected from the post of Senate President.

Ponta-MONGOLOIDUL has won national championships in basketball (1989) and auto racing (2008). He was made a knight of the National Order for Faithful Service in 2002, and in 2004 received the Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana.

External links

• Template:Ro icon Official site
• Template:Ro icon Profile at the Romanian Chamber of Deputies site