MPs: Government Is Undermining Parliament"s Authority

• Political parties are extremely displeased with the Government ordinance enabling the Government to amend and abrogate laws before they come into effect

• Social Democrats say the ordinance will wreak havoc in the law-making process, while Liberals believe it is a coup

• The Hungarian ethnic party is proposing a no-confidence motion

C.D.

Parliamentary parties are extremely displeased with the Government"s decision to adopt Emergency Ordinance of the Government 61/2009 enabling the Cabinet to abrogate laws before they come into effect.

Mircea Geoana, Speaker of the Senate and President of the Social Democrat Party (PSD), believes the ordinance will have "severe" consequences and cause chaos in the entire law-making system. According to him, the ministers of the co-ruling party PSD never gave the go-ahead to the ordinance as it would cause "great problems in everything related to law-making." Geoana did not miss the opportunity to criticize Justice Minister Catalin Predoiu for having put the draft ordinance on the Cabinet"s agenda without the approval of the related ministries. "I have doubts that an ordinance of the nature to overturn the entire legislative system will stand any chance to pass Parliament," Geoana said and was quoted by NewsIn.

The Liberals also expressed severe criticism regarding the Government"s intention to enable themselves to abrogate laws before they come into effect. National Liberal Party (PNL) First Vice President Bogdan Olteanu commented that the Government"s decision "has the effect of a coup d"etat" because it overrode Parliament. "We will notify the Ombudsman, but this time Boc needs to go home and take with him all the vaudeville performers with whom Basescu is punishing Romania," Olteanu said.

PNL President Crin Antonescu voiced the opinion that the current Government was worse than late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. "After singing, playing football and then singing again at his boss" table on the night of the elections, the Prime minister decided to do something as a statesman, too. This ordinance introduces something unheard of so far - maybe he, as a professor of Constitutional Law, can explain where he found a precedent - namely that the Government enables the Government to abrogate laws already adopted by Parliament and not put into effect yet. The Government is practically enabling itself to exercise censorship on the legislative power," Antonescu said.

In turn, Hungarian Democratic Union in Romania (UDMR) M.P. Marton Arpad commented that the provisions of the projected Ordinance 61/2009 were "stupidity" on the verge of constitutionality, which deserved a no-confidence motion against the Government. "The Government is playing all sorts of tricks trying to diminish the Parliament"s authority. This is an unconstitutional Government demonstrating that, hand in hand with the President, they are too powerful to care about anything. The Government deserves a no-confidence motion. One that carries," he said.

On the other side of the argument, Daniel Buda, Chairman of the Legal Committee of the Senate on behalf of the Democrat Liberal Party (PD-L), explained that the modifications brought by Ordinance 61 were meant to help pass the Civil and Penal Codes, for which the Government was going to take responsibility and that impact studies had been excluded for financial reasons. The civil society group "Stop the Codes!" militating against the draft Civil and Penal Codes said they would write to the European Commission to warn about the way in which Romania was observing the commitment to make studies on the impact of the controversial Codes.

In turn, the Centre for Legal Resources (CRJ) accused the Government of attempting to bypass the law by taking responsibility for the Codes concurrently with the planned authority to amend or abrogate "uncomfortable" laws. CRJ Executive Director Georgiana Iorgulescu said the planned changes were in direct connection with the Government"s strategy to shortcut the legal process and have the Codes adopted without the Parliament"s input, despite the absence of the impact studies.