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| Potential Electoral Law Modification |
| (2012-04-04) |
| Last updated: 2012-04-05 13:42 EET |
The Romanian ruling coalition and the opposition have long disagreed on domestic policy issues, but this year, which will see both local and parliamentary elections, they seem to have reached a consensus on the modification of the electoral law. They set up a parliamentary commission, which will discuss and submit a new draft law to Parliament, by the end of the month.
At the commission’s first meeting, the parties agreed that the main common objective was a one-chamber legislative body, where the number of MPs be trimmed down to 300. Romanians agreed on the idea when they voted in a 2009 referendum. However, the opposition’s priorities regarding the electoral law are different than the government’s. The Social-Liberal opposition strongly calls for the elimination of political party switching (which has reached dramatic proportions), harsh measures against politicians who engage in electoral bribe-giving (a common practice for most parties) and the uninominal vote.
Mircea Dusa is an MP of the Social Liberal Union, made up of the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. He enlarged on the modification requested by the opposition:
Mircea Dusa: “We are talking about the draft law that the two co-leaders of the Social Liberal Union have submitted to Parliament and which refers to the way voting results are set. In other words, legislative elections must take place in one round, with the person gaining the largest number of votes in a constituency being declared the winner.”
Whether or not politicians who have repeatedly switched parties do lose their MP seats is also a debatable issue for the ruling coalition, made up of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania and the National Union for the Progress of Romania. Democrat Liberal Deputy Sulfina Barbu, who is also the head of the electoral law modification commission, had this to add:
Sulfina Barbu: “The debate can be interesting from a public point of view, but we must take constitutional provisions into consideration. Under the Constitution, no MP is subjected to a compulsory mandate. Of course we want to find a solution, but the solution is to amend the Constitution.’’
Other possible modifications relate to the representation of minorities in Parliament and the electoral threshold. It is worth mentioning that negotiations come as the government and the opposition have turned lack of dialogue into the staple of the local political scene. One example is the parliamentary strike that the opposition has been on for the last 2 months, as it repeatedly pointed to “abuses” of the governing coalition.
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