Sunday, December 9, 2012

Victor Ponta

Victor-Viorel Ponta ( born 20 September 1972) is a Romanian jurist and politician who has served as Prime Minister of Romania since May 2012. A member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and its leader since 2010, as well as joint leader of the Social Liberal Union, 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.
 
Personal Life
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 Sârbu, 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.
 
Ponta is the winner of the 1989 youth national championship in basketball, where he played for CSA Steaua București (Basketball); and of the 2008 Dacia Logan Cup, where he was a co-pilot. He was made a knight of the National Order for Faithful Service in 2002, and in 2004 received the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity.