Government faces two no-confidence motions

The government led by the Liberal Florin Cîțu is the target of two no-confidence motions at the same time.

Roxana Vasile, 29.09.2021, 13:50

In the wake of last winter’s parliamentary elections,
the parties ranked second, third and fifth went on to form a ruling coalition. The
senior partner was the National Liberal Party, which got over 25% of the votes,
followed by USR-PLUS with some 16% and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians
in Romania with about 6%. Tensions between the Liberals and USR-PLUS were
visible from their very first year in power, but they peaked when the Liberal
prime minister Florin Cîțu sacked the latter’s health minister in April, and
then its justice minister in September. It was too much for USR-PLUS, so all
its ministers resigned from the cabinet, with the prime minister later also
sacking its under-secretaries, prefects and sub-prefects.

It wouldn’t take long
until the next political move, as USR-PLUS joined forces with a nationalist
party in opposition, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, and filed a
no-confidence motion against the government, withdrawing their political
support for prime minister Cîțu. If the motion passes, USR-PLUS says it is
willing to sit at the negotiation table with the National Liberal Party and the
Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania to re-enter government; if the
motion does not pass and Cîțu stays on as prime minister, it will be in
opposition. Cîțu has been accused of being incapable of running a coalition
government, of not being able to overcome a narrow party mindset and of
seeming determined to sacrifice general interest and the welfare of the
country’s citizens.

The government challenged the no-confidence motion in the Constitutional
Court, which on Tuesday accepted the existence of a legal conflict between the government
and Parliament but ruled that the motion must continue its course. Having already
been read out in a plenary session, the motion now needs to be debated and
voted on. Except that, on the very day when the Court published its verdict,
the Social Democratic Party, which won the parliamentary elections but is in
opposition, filed its own no-confidence motion. So at the moment, Cîțu’s government
is faced with two such documents. The Social Democrats’ motion is the first to
be voted on, on 5th October. USR-PLUS and the Alliance for the Union
of Romanians say they will be voting in favour.

Faced with this prospect, Cîțu,
who sees everything that goes in Parliament as a competition among those who
want to destabilise the country on the verge of winter, says the Liberals are
open to dialogue and collaboration with USR-PLUS unless the latter votes in
favour of bringing down the government. So, with the coronavirus pandemic surging
again, the situation on the Romanian political scene is extremely hectic and
unpredictable. (CM)