What the newspapers say: June 26, 2008

The news of the day is that the House of Deputies broke its own regulations when it was decided to annul the vote in the Nastase criminal inquiry case and postpone the decision until autumn. Other newspapers unveil the reason why: instead of hearing Nastase, deputies of all political colors rushed to comfort the former PM, even promising that they would do anything to avoid seeing anyone in his position.

Evenimentul Zilei has the hottest news of the day on Thursday: the deputies were mistaking when they annulled the vote designed to decided whether former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase should be inquired in some corruption cases or not. The vote was declared as void because only 208 deputies voted, out of the 250 who were present, and 220 votes were required in order to reach the two thirds presence requested for such cases. Well, according to Evenimentul Zilei, a House of Deputies rule says that the deputies who are present but, for some reason, do not vote, are considered as participants in the quorum. So the vote should not have been annulled.

On the other hand, Cotidianul got their hand on some transcripts of the discussions in the Juridical Commission in the House of Deputies, from the session when Adrian Nastase was heard and the Commission decided to recommend deputies to vote against his criminal pursuit. Social Democrats (Nastase’s party) teamed up with Democrat-Liberals, Liberals, Conservatives and Hungarian Democrats to praise the former Prime Minister. „Believe me when I say that I would hate to see anyone, not only you, under criminal inquiry”, said deputy Corneliu Stirbet. And the others followed in the same voice.

Instead, the Parliament chose to vote for something else: the Senate decided to approve a law draft forcing radio and TV stations to publish an equal amount of positive news, along with the negative ones. All in the name of the populace’s mental health, Gandul notes.

Well, saying that this was the good news of the day, we shall just mention (in brief, so it doesn’t take too much space) that the Government’s promise (issued in a Government Order) to raise the minimum wage from 500 RON to 540 RON on July 1 was broken and the wage will remain 500 RON until 2009. Strikes and street demonstrations are expected throughout the year.