Politicians and Amendments to Criminal Law

The risks of any harmful effect of the decree through which the Romanian government tried to bring amendments to the Criminal Code have been eliminated after the aforementioned ordinance was repealed by Parliament.

Ştefan Stoica, 22.02.2017, 13:52

Commenced on January 31st, the saga of the famous
emergency decree 13, aimed at relaxing, in an arguable manner, the criminal
legislation, thus favouring certain corrupt politicians, came to an end exactly
three weeks after it begun. The decree was repealed after the MPs, irrespective
of their political colour, overwhelmingly voted in favour of decree 14 on the
abrogation of decree no.13. The move
came against the large-scale anti-government protests that erupted on January 31st and haven’t
stopped yet. Emergency decree 13 was an error, seriously undermining the
country’s credibility, the head of the National Liberal Party Raluca Turcan has
again stated:

Fortunately,
the abusive and non-transparent measure that enraged the entire country seems
to have been wiped out. There is an irremediable evil though, an evil that we
all know, namely Romania losing its credibility, the lack of trust in this
government, the lack of predictability in the actions of this government.

The MP Attila
Korodi, member of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, has
pointed out that criminal law must be amended in order to observe the
Constitution, but this cannot be done through government decrees:

It was a
mistake last year, it’s a mistake now and it will always be a mistake.
Presently, under the Romanian legislation the Constitutional Courts’ rulings
aren’t transposed into law, they aren’t regulated. It is the responsibility of
all the political forces in the Chamber of Deputies to make sure the criminal
codes are drawn up so as to eliminate any ambiguity from the public space or in
court rulings, ambiguities generated by the fact that the legislation is not
complete.

Dan Barna, a
member of the Save Romania Union, believes though that something good may have
come out of these events:

If there were to find out something good
in the abuse that we saw perpetrated on January 31st, that would be
the fact that the idea of justice and law implementation in society has been
brought to the forefront to a larger extent than any debates on the
Constitution or any other laws could have done. Citizens of all walks of life are
talking about these ordinances, which, all in all, is quite a positive
element.

From the ruling
coalition, the Social-Democrat Ana Birchall has said she hopes the future
discussions on criminal law will not allow justice to be politically
instrumented.

I believe that through the vote in the Chamber of Deputies a line
can be drawn in this public discussion over the two decrees. The government’s
stance has been expressed also through the vote today, namely in support of
repealing decree 13 and I believe that constructive things will be taken into
consideration in all public debates. I would also like to see that justice
cannot become a battlefield with
political stakes.

We recall that
Ana Birchall has been appointed interim Justice Minister to replace Florin
Iordache who promoted the infamous decree 13 and stepped down a couple of days
after its abrogation.