No confidence motion in the Bucharest Parliament

The leftist government in Bucharest Wednesday survived a vote of no confidence

Bogdan Matei, 27.06.2018, 13:42

Installed in January, harshly criticized by the media and the
right-of-center opposition and constantly contested in the street by the civil
society, the Government made up of the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance
of Liberals and Democrats and headed by the Social Democrat
Viorica Dancila, Wednesday took its first major test in Parliament. The
no-confidence motion needed 233 votes in order to pass, but it failed with a
vote of 166 to 4, while the Power MPs did not vote at all.

Under the title Toppling
the Dragnea-Dancila Cabinet, a national emergency!, the no-confidence motion signed by 152 deputies and senators with the National Liberal
Party, the Save Romania Union and the People’s Movement Party accused the
Cabinet for the country’s worsening economic situation. The increase in the
ROBOR index, based on which interest rates are calculated, the rapid rise in
the inflation rate, the depreciation of the domestic currency against the euro,
the chaos created by the changes to the Fiscal Code and the lack of investment
in infrastructure were the main reasons put forward by the opposition. The
rightist parties also argued that PM Viorica Dancila is only a marionette of
the facto leader, Liviu Dragnea. The latter, they claimed, is trying to
subordinate the judiciary and the state institutions.

The Power has seen arithmetic work in its favour. The National Liberal
Party, the Save Romania Union and the People’s Movement Party, in Opposition,
have together only 154 votes as compared to the ruling coalition’s 249. The
Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, numbering 30 MPs, is not part
of the Government, but has in place a collaboration protocol with the ruling
coalition. Parliament also has 17 MPs of the national minorities, who
traditionally vote in favor of the Power, and also 15 non-affiliated MPs, most
of whom are against Dragnea.

All these figures made Dragnea voice confidence,
last week, that the motion would not pass. Pundits said he was right and
emphasised, not without irony, that Dragnea is in fact the only one able to
topple a Social Democratic government. That was the case a year ago, when,
having become undesirable for Liviu Dragnea, the then Social Democrat PM Sorin
Grindeanu was dismissed through no-confidence vote, initiated and endorsed by
the very party that put him in office, a premiere in almost three decades of
Romanian post-communist democracy.

Moreover, early this year, Grindeanu’s
successor, Mihai Tudose, was convinced during a party meeting that took only
several hours, to tender his resignation as PM. The media predicted that the Dancila
Cabinet would survive the no-confidence motion.

Nevertheless, journalists say,
that won’t change the lack of credibility and the negative image of the ruling
coalition controlled by Dragnea, particularly after last week the High Court of
Cassation and Justice handed him a 42-month prison sentence for corruption. The
sentence can be appealed. Let’s not forget that in 2016 Dragnea received a
2-year suspended prison sentence for attempting to rig the elections.

(Translated by E. Enache)