Romanian MPs give reading to request to suspend President Basescu. Vote to suspend him expected on Friday

Romanian MPs convened in an extraordinary session on Thursday morning for the reading of a request to suspend President Traian Basescu. Basescu was present in the Parliament when the reading started. As the final debate and a vote on the request are scheduled for Friday, the President has the right to present his own point of view before the MPs.

The governing alliance of Social Democrats and Liberals (USL) invokes seven reasons for its call to suspend the president:

1. The President usurped the role of the prime minister and substituted himself in the constitutional roles of the Government

2. The President violated the fundamental rights and constitutional freedoms of the citizens repeatedly

3. The President breached the principles of the separation of powers and the independence of justice

4. The President initiated an unconsitutional project to revise the Constitution and breached the procedure to review the Constitution

5. The President instigated for non-compliance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court and pressed directly on Court judges by „visiting” them prior to important decisions

6. The President breached systematically the principle that the president must not belong to a political group and abandoned the constitutional role as a mediator between the state and the society

7. The President seriously breached Constitutional provisions and the principle of representative democracy when he said he would not name a prime minister from USL, despite that the formation was to obtain an absolute majority in the Parliament.

Once the President is suspended, a referendum must be organized as only the people can decide whether the president stays or not in power. Political sources told HotNews.ro on Wednesday that the USL alliance planned to schedule the referendum for July 29.