No-confidence motion read in parliament

The Liberal Government must leave because of its poor management of the situation created by the pandemic, reads the no-confidence motion presented in Parliament on Thursday

Ştefan Stoica, 21.08.2020, 14:00

Its a year of local and legislative elections in Romania, and the crisis triggered by the pandemic has opened a wide front, a field conducive to political battles. Just a few days before the congress to elect its leadership, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the most important parliamentary party, filed a motion of no-confidence against the Liberal minority cabinet led by Ludovic Orban. The document was read in parliament on Thursday.

The Social Democrats criticize the National Liberal Party for how it has managed the health crisis caused by the new coronavirus and claim that not enough medical equipment was purchased to fight the epidemic. They say the Liberals have got things out of control, they have destroyed the economy and the consequence would be a decline in the standards of living. Even worse, the executive is corrupt, say the Social Democrats, invoking a report by the Court of Accounts and an investigation into public procurement conducted by the National Anticorruption Directorate, to support the accusation. In the document presented in parliament by Senator Lucian Romascanu, the Orban Cabinet is blamed for the lack of concrete economic measures and the loans that have been made over this period of time.

Here is Lucian Romascanu: “In only nine months of governing, the public finance minister has borrowed over 105 billion lei, four times more than the Social Democratic government. At a rate of 1,000 Euros per second, the share of government debt exploded to 40% of the GDP in May 2020.”

Prime Minister Ludovic Orban has denied the allegations and called his political opponents irresponsible:

” Its a big lie, from head to toe, and the idea of filing a motion of no-confidence in the current context shows irresponsibility, a total defiance of the fundamental interest that Romania has today. How can one leave the country without a government, when we are fighting the pandemic, when we are fighting the economic crisis and we have to implement an economic recovery plan, and to prepare the start of the new school year?”

For the motion to pass, it needs the votes of parliamentarians other than the Social Democrats. The Social Democratic Party has the promise of a pro-motion vote from Pro Romania. The Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians has not made a decision yet. The Save Romania Union and the Peoples Movement Party seem to be supporting the government at the moment. The submission of a motion of no-confidence during an extraordinary parliament session is a first in the more than three decades of post-communist parliamentarism. That is why the National Liberal Party sees it as running counter to the fundamental law and calls on the Constitutional Court to take a stand on this matter. According to the Social Democratic Party, the approach of the National Liberal Party has no grounds and shows nothing but despair. (M. Ignatescu)