Iuliu Maniu - PNR Leadership

PNR Leadership

Together with such figures as Vasile Goldiş, Gheorghe Pop de Băseşti, the Romanian Orthodox cleric Miron Cristea, and Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, he engaged in an intensive unionist campaign, leading to the Alba Iulia gathering on December 1, 1918 (during which Romanians demanded separation from Austria-Hungary). On December 2, Maniu became head of Transylvania's Directory Council - a position equivalent to interim governorship.

After the creation of Greater Romania, the PNR formed the government in Bucharest—a cabinet led by Al. Vaida-Voevod and allied with Ion Mihalache's Peasants' Party. It entered in competition with one of the traditional parties of the Romanian Kingdom, the National Liberal Party, and with its leader Ion I. C. Brătianu, when the Peasants' Party deadlocked the Parliament of Romania with calls for a widespread land reform.

After King Ferdinand I dissolved the Parliament, Iuliu Maniu found himself at odds with the national leadership, especially after the new Prime Minister Alexandru Averescu (with support from the National Liberals) dissolved the Transylvanian Council in April 1920. Consequently, Maniu refused to attend King Ferdinand's Crowning ceremony as King of Greater Romania (held in Alba Iulia, in 1922), seeing it as an attempt to tie multi-religious Transylvania to Orthodoxy. At the same time, the PNR rejected the centralization imposed by the 1923 Constitution favored by Brătianu, and demanded that any constitutional reform be passed by a Constituent Assembly, and not by a regular vote in Parliament. Citing fears that the PNL had ensured a grip over Romanian politics, the PNR and the Peasants' Party united in 1926, and Maniu was the President of the new political force, the National Peasants' Party (PNŢ), for the following seven years, and again between 1937 and 1947.