Another important element was inflation. At the time, inflation ran to the tune of 300% annually. I was in Romania in 1993. I didn't see a single coin in circulation. In 2005, a new Leu was introduced, worth 10 000 old leu. Therefore, I think you may assume that none of these coins actually circulated, so the design must have been a purely political matter.
At the time, Romania was politically very unstable. The results of the elections of 1990 were generally not accepted and said to have brought a
rightist party of ex party-bosses and Securitate members back in government fraudulently. From that time on, leftist nationalists (
FDSN) were slowly taking over the country. My guess is that it is the change of regime in 1992 that brought about the change of the design.
Peter