TRAIAN BASESCU has many qualities, but the good ones (earthy humour, boundless energy) are wearing thin and the tiresome ones (unpredictability, poor judgment) increasingly rile even his supporters. Now Romania's president has lost his prime minister, the low-key Emil Boc, amid protests over austerity, corruption and general incompetence.

In January Mr Basescu, in typically impulsive style, phoned a live television programme to denounce Raed Arafat, a popular Palestinian-Romanian who founded and ran the ambulance service, for his “leftist views”. Mr Arafat promptly resigned. After violent demonstrations, the government junked plans to privatise the emergency services and reinstated Mr Arafat. Two members of the Senate then defected to the opposition, costing Mr Basescu's Democratic Liberal party, which languishes in the low teens in the opinion polls, its hold on the upper house.

The street protests have continued. Their causes range from ecological to monarchist, but are mostly about government arrogance. After two weeks Mr Basescu apologised for the “blunders I sometimes make in public”. Mr Boc, in office since 2008, stepped down on February 6th, along with his cabinet, to “diffuse social tensions” and stabilise the economy.

By the standards of nearby Hungary and Greece, Romania's economy is actually quite stable. This is chiefly thanks to its central-bank governor, Mugur Isarescu, who is the country's most-respected public figure and was a linchpin of a $27 billion IMF-led bail-out in 2009. This year's growth forecast is 1.5-2%, only marginally down on previous estimates despite the euro-zone crisis. That said, the deal still requires Romania to cut the budget deficit from 4.4% of GDP in 2011 to 1.9% this year.

The government plans to adopt the euro in 2015. Romanians, weary of tax rises, pay cuts and poor public services, would find austerity policies more palatable if politicians stole less and communicated better. On that count, many find the opposition National Liberals and Social Democrats, though riding high in the polls, not much better than the incumbents.

Another big task is meeting European Union worries about the rule of law, which are holding up Romania's accession to the Schengen passport-free travel zone. An ex-prime minister, Adrian Nastase, has just been sentenced to two years in jail for fraud (part of a vendetta by Mr Basescu, say his supporters). But no big fish have been netted on big charges; a culture of impunity is barely dented. An EU report on February 8th praised some modest progress in corruption prosecutions, but bemoaned “clear shortcomings” in dealing with criminality among judges.

Mr Basescu has nominated Mihai Razvan Ungureanu as prime minister. A polyglot Oxford-educated historian who previously headed the foreign-intelligence service, he should win approval this week in parliament's lower house. The ruling coalition (including an ethnic Hungarian party and independents) still has a majority there. It will be hard for his fresh-faced new team to regain lost ground before parliamentary elections in November. Mr Basescu's own mandate lasts until 2014. Most Romanians already seem tired of him.