Romanian Liberals set to ask the president to stop the law on deconcentrated public agencies
The Romanian opposition Liberal Party (PNL) will request President Traian Basescu not to promulgate the ordinance on the deconcentrated public agencies which triggers thousands of dismissals countrywide, first vice president Ludovic Orban said.
The Cabinet recently passed an emergency ordinance on the public deconcentrated services meant to change the top directors of such agencies countrywide with people able to implement the central policies.
The law, passed by the two ruling parties, the Democrat Liberal (PD-L) one and the Social Democrat Party (PSD) was stiffly opposed by the former governing Liberals and by the Hungarian Democratic Alliance (UDMR), representing the largest minority in Romania.
The president said yesterday at UDMR’s congress that maybe “ruling parties will reflect some more on the ordinance.” Yet, Orban wonders if the president’s words are really sincere. Basescu, a former head of PD-L until elected president in 2004, was many times accused of ruling the party from the shadow.
Orban labeled the ordinance as an “assault on democracy,” pointing the Liberals are set to bring the issue to the attention of European institutions.
Some of the people heading local deconcentrated public agencies, who should be dismissed through emergency ordinance, can remain in the seats if they are reconfirmed as professionals, executive secretary PD-L Mircea Toader told NewsIn two days ago.
Toader explained the Cabinet’s ordinance through the need to have directors in the local administration agencies able to implement central policies.
Bloc changing of directors of deconcentrated public agencies in the country halts an endless row of continuous changes, Toader said. “They will be replaced with people working on a management contract basis and aware of the risk to be replaced once the ruling party changes,” he added.
However, not all those the ordinance refers to will lose their posts. “I can give you the example of the county I come from, Galati, where 50 percent of such directors will be reconfirmed to their seats as they are professionals,” Toader pointed. As for the number of the people to suffer from this ordinance, he estimated some 30 people in each county which means 1,200 in total.