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| MEDIA HEADLINES 26/06/2009 |
| (2009-06-26) |
| Last updated: 2009-06-29 14:01 EET |
‘A coalition in shambles’, is the drastic and precise diagnosis set by the daily Jurnalul National regarding the ruling coalition made up of Liberal Democrats and Social Democrats in Bucharest. When they don’t call each other names, theoretically off the record, but carefully leaking the insults to the press, the leaders of the parties that are in principle allied just boycott each other.
Labor junior minister Mocanu, speaking for the daily Gandul, said that he was sorry he did not inform premier Emil Boc of the fact that he decided that 85% of the people covered by the single salary payment system for employees of state institutions should have their bonus marks reduced by 40%. When asked to justify his decision, he said that, quote, ‘at a rough analysis, we should raise the general salary fund by 70% to meet union demands’, unquote, in which the minimum salary for state employees would be 600 lei, or about 150 Euro.
The maximum state salary should be no higher than 15 times the minimum. The stage act continues with Social Democratic Labour minister Marian Sirbu stating for the daily Evenimentul Zilei that, quote, ‘salary quotients have not yet been set by the Executive’, while ‘salary raises will be based on bonuses’. His explanation is not convincing, so that, as the daily Romania Libera headlines run, ‘Minister Sirbu is having a row with the unions’.
Promptly, unions announced that they would protest until the salary system is fixed, or until they bring down the government. The aforementioned newspaper quotes Bogdan Hossu, the head of the Cartel Alfa Union confederation, as saying: ‘If the draft law we agreed on with the government changes, there will be strong reactions from unions, and we are even considering a general strike’. He also accused the government that ‘they are mocking us when they just make changes to the salaries we have negotiated long and hard’.
The epilogue was delivered by Liberal Democratic Prime Minister Emil Boc. ‘We noticed a tendency to create confusion in public opinion, mixing up discussions about the future single salary payment system with the idea that salaries in Romania are going down. I want to be very clear: salaries today are not dropping’, said Boc. The Daily Adevarul called him ‘state budget inspector general‘, after he set up the Council for the Rationing of Public Expenditure, an institution he will lead himself.
The prime minister explained that ‘the draft law on the single salary payment system was debated by the government, and does not provide for present salaries to be cut, but the final version will only be passed after being evaluated financially by the Ministry of Finance’. All these cascading blunders come after Romania has signed the stand-by agreement with the IMF, with the proper restrictions, and the European Commission, according to the daily Cotidianul, is pressing Bucharest to stay within budget.
The daily predicts that ‘if the GDP falls to 9% as predicted, and if the IMF agreement is not renegotiated, state employee salary expenditure could be cut even further’.
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