Civil servants' law allowing political designation in leadership roles passed

The much disputed law allowing addressing the civil servant status, allowing political designations for decentralised institutions, has been voted today in the Deputies’ chamber. 172 votes went in favour. The minimum number of necessary votes to pass the law draft is 167, Romanian news agency Agerpres informs. Social-democratic and liberal deputies refused to take part and cast their vote. The absentees announced that they will contest the law in the Constitutional Court.

The law draft has been debated and adopted article by article on Monday, march 1, in the Chamber’s plenum, with PSD and PNL deputies absent. The final vote was scheduled for Tuesday, March 3 2010, 12 pm. The opposition deputies did not attend debates either.

Social-democrats and liberal declared they will take the law to the Constitutional Court before it gets the chance of being adopted. They say there was a breech in the deputies’ Chamber procedures, PSD deputy Valeriu Zgonea declared on Tuesday, quoted by Agerpres. He noted that the social-democrats were working with a liberal team to edit the contestation.

According to Zgonea, PSD and PNL will request the Permanent Deputies’ chamber Office to sanction the Administration Commission president LibDem Sulfina Barbu, for procedure breech.

New PSD leader Victor Ponta accused the Executive on Tuesday for keeping its own political clientele in the roles from the de-centralised institutions and said civil servants were not designated according to the law.

„We’re fighting for the law addressing civil servants, because it is clearly an obvious abuse of the Boc Cabinet. The 45 days since the ordinance was declared unconstitutional have passed. The Boc Government holds at this point all the roles from the de-centralised for its own political clientele, illegally, and does not designate public servants according to the law. Plus, Mrs. Anastase tried today to cover the Boc cabinet’s illegality through another illegality, but fortunately my colleagues paid close attention and this will not happen”, the PSD leader declared.