Vosganian: "Dismissing The Current Government Is The Best Thing To Due During This Crisis"

Cristina MihalaŞcu

The no-confidence motion headlined "The Great PDL-PSD Hoax," signed by 124 MPs of the PNL and UDMR against the "abusive" measures taken by the ruling coalition - deconcentrated services and the lump sum tax - was presented yesterday by PNL Spokesman Varujan Vosganian. In his opinion, the solution to mitigate the crisis is to dismiss the current Government.

"The current government is incapable of prioritization and is running a policy of contempt towards the people. Because they do not keep their promises, over 800,000 people will become unemployed by the end of the year," Senator Vosganian said.

The signatories of the no-confidence motion claim that the Boc Government has created confusion among public servants, teaching staff, medical staff, businesspeople and pensioners, because of their inconsistent communication and measures. "Now they tax copyright, now they don"t. Now they freeze salaries, now they don"t. Or they commit to increasing salaries only to change their mind immediately," he said.

The Liberals are primarily criticizing the decision to levy a lump sum tax, which they claim to be driving small enterprises into bankruptcy. "This way, the Finance Ministry is labelling all businesses as tax fraudsters," Vosganian said.

On the same note, the Government ordinance on deconcentrated services is deemed to nullify the entire reform effort Romania has been making since 1999 to modernize the administration, build a public servant corps and finally depoliticize the public servant corps and the public administration. The signatories of the no-confidence motion believe that the ordinance in question does nothing but politicize all of the deconcentrated services.

No representative of the Government attended the formal reading of the no-confidence motion, with the exception of Victor Ponta, the Parliament Liaison Minister. However, the law expressly requires that the Government be represented during the reading of any no-confidence motion. At the end of the formal reading, Senator Puiu Hasotti, the leader of the PNL Group in the Senate, pointed out the aforementioned non-compliance.

"I will not speak about a procedure in the Regulations, because it does not exist. I will speak about customs. For nearly 20 years, every time a no-confidence motion was formally read, the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet, if not all of them, were present. The fact that neither the Cabinet, nor the Prime Minister is here today is an offence to the Parliament. Not necessarily to us, the opposition, but to you, the ones who invested them in office," Hasotti said.