Ordinance on Party Switching
A government emergency ordinance gives local elected officials 45 days to switch parties.
Florentin Căpitănescu, 03.09.2014, 13:41
The low approval rates reported for the Romanian politicians in all national public confidence surveys are neither surprising, nor ungrounded. Over the past few years, anti-corruption prosecutors have brought to Court politicians of all political affiliations and from all administrative levels, going from mayors and local councilors to MPs and ministers and culminating with the former Social Democratic PM Adrian Nastase.
The public distrust is fueled not only by politicians breaking or bending the law, but also by their generally low moral standards, reflected in the primacy of personal and party interests over the nation’s well-being, or in shady dealings between private companies and public institutions.
One of the most heavily criticized practices among politicians is party switching, which is so common in the Romanian Parliament that it helped form or bring down governments. This is precisely why, political analysts say, the Government of Romania, made up of the Social Democratic Party, the National Union for the Progress of Romania, the Conservatives and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, further stained its image when it passed an emergency ordinance that gives local elected officials 45 days to change their party affiliation without losing their offices.
The Cabinet claims that in many cases the activity of local authorities gets stuck because of the reorganization of parties and of political and electoral alliances.
The piece of legislation is strongly opposed by the National Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats, which have recently formed the Christian-Liberal Alliance. They announced a censure motion on this topic, on grounds that the ordinance paves the way for political proselytism attempts. Other observers also share the view that the Social Democratic Party will try to manipulate budget allocations so as to win over as many mayors as possible, who would then support PM Victor Ponta’s presidential candidacy in November.
