Basescu's request to organised the referendum on November 22 was rejected by the Parliament

On Wednesday morning Romanian deputies and senators voted in favour of the judicial Commissions’ report that rejected President Traian Basescu’s request to hold a referendum for a single-chambered Parliament the same day when the presidential elections are due. The judicial Commissions’ report was adopted one week ago with 233 votes in favour and 131 against. The Parliament’s approval has a consultative nature, since the chief of state can go ahead and organise the referendum anyway.

What the parliamentarians said:

• Ioan Oltean, PD-L deputy opinionated that the measure was meant to hinder the President from exercising an attributions backed by the Constitution, which he labelled undemocratic. According to him, the theses featured in the negatve report of the judicial commissions have no legal grounds.

• Victor Ponta, PSD deputy said it was not a big secret that the constitution could be easily modified. He was in favour of having only presidential elections on October 22 and November 6, seeing the referendum as a distraction for the electorate.

• Aura Vasile, PSD deputy claimed that the President’s request was not constitutional. The PSD+PC parliamentarians supported the idea of reducing the number of MPs, but could not agree for somebody to step over the Constitution, she added.

It is also in the Wednesday session that the senators and deputies are to vote on supporting Klaus Johannis, Sibiu’s mayor, for the PM role. When PSD, PNL and UDML started to debate on the matter, PD-L parliamentarians left the room.