Minority rule, majority inconsistency
October 9th, 2007 by andreidumitrescu
Last Thursday a no-confidence vote in the Tariceanu II government, made up of the liberals (PNL) and ethnic Hungarians (UDMR) was defeated in the Romanian Parliament. It needed 232 votes and only received 220.
The no-confidence vote was initiated by the social-democrats (PSD). No one is really sure if it was just a feint or a full blown attempt at bringing down the government. Why possibly a feint? Cause president Traian Basescu, which is empowered by the Constitution to name the Prime Minister, already had stated he would never name a social-democrat for the job. His first choice would be a member of the democrats (PD), his former party. So the no-confidence vote could have been just a feint designed to make the PNL concede some jobs to the PSD.
A full blown attempt at bringing down the government? Certainly so for the democrats (PD) who cast their votes against the government. PSD + PD should have commanded somewhere over 250 votes (there are, apparently, quite a high number of sick reprezentatives in the Romanian Parliament). As such we should now have been talking about the next Romanian government: who was going to lead it and who was going to support it in Parliament. Yet the no-confidence vote failed and the Tariceanu led government look set to rule until the next parliamentary elections due next fall, in 2008.
What’s the aftermath? PSD, the social-democrats, have real internal issues. Mircea Geoana, the current president of the party, seems poised to seek exclusions for the members that did not vote the motion, which include former PSD president and president of the country Ion Iliescu. His attempts could create a rift in the party and maybe even a split into two new political entities.
PD have quickly moved to exclude two of their own members that did not support the no-confidence vote and seek to push their image as the only real political opposition.
PNL and UDMR still have the government, but it might not help them much. Their support in Parliament is around 20% and PSD has vowed to only support laws which have an explicit social-democratic component. It will be tough governing in the minority…
What do you think of a political system in which the opposition is made up of three sizeable parties (PSD, PD and the right-wing PRM) that all claim to oppose both the government and the other two “opposition” parties? What do you think of a country where the government can’t be taken down, even if commands only about 20% of the votes in Parliament?
Romania, over and out. For the moment…
