

Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila (C) addressing lawmakers of both chambers of parliament as she faced a no-confidence vote, 10 October 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

The Social Democratic-led government of Viorica Dancila in Romania was ousted on Thursday in a motion of no confidence that received the support of 238 members of the two-chamber parliament.

Only four parliamentarians voted against the motion that needed a simple majority of 233 among the total of 464 deputies and senators to succeed.

The ruling party, PSD, had ordered its MPs not to take part in the vote. But some PSD lawmakers broke ranks and voted in favour of the motion, drawing cheers from their opposition colleagues.

President Klaus Iohannis reacted to the vote in a speech to the nation, in which he invited all the parliamentary groups to discuss the nomination of a new prime minister.

Making clear his satisfaction with the outcome of the vote, he declared: “The fall of the PSD government is the natural result of society’s reaction to the abuses of this government.”

In her first reaction after being axed, Dancila said she had no regrets, and praised the government she had led for taking “very good measures for the people”. She dismissed the idea of resigning as PSD leader and confirmed that she remains its candidate in the November presidential election.

The main opposition centre-right National Liberal Party, PNL, tabled the motion last week. It charged the Dancila government with politicizing state institutions by appointing incapable ruling party members that have allegedly damaged the economy and the administration, while failing to carry out much-needed investment.

The motion also deemed her cabinet “the most toxic” in Romanian post-communist history.

The fall of the government means President Iohannis will now have to nominate a new prime minister who needs the support of a new majority in parliament to take office. If parliament rejects his proposals twice, early elections will be held, most probably in the first quarter of 2020, experts say.

Dancila watched the voting procedures, conducted with white and black marbles that each MP had to place in urns of the same colour to vote, standing only yards from the urns, as if studying who had a hand in her demise.

[To vote yes to the motion, MPs had to put their marbles in urns of the same colour; to vote no, they had to do the opposite.]

Several MPs also recorded the procedures on their phones, seemingly also noting which marble was introduced into which urn by all those who took part.



Photo: BIRN

Minutes before the vote started, Dancila called those behind the motion “amateur and irresponsible”. She accused them of plunging the country into “a state of instability” and deplored the fact that they wanted to oust her cabinet without having a team of their own to take office or a governing programme.

Dancila also accused President Iohannis, who is standing as the PNL candidate in next month’s presidential elections, of openly supporting the motion. She deemed his attitude “a dangerous precedent for democracy and for the separation of state powers”, as the President is obliged to be politically neutral according to a constitutional principle, albeit one rarely respected in Romania.

But opposition lawmakers said urgent change was required. “This motion is a chance for the country to return to a normality of a European kind, to re-establish the legal and constitutional order at the top of the Romanian state,” Raluca Turcan, leader of the PNL parliamentary group, told the debate.

Before the vote, former prime minister and PSD dissident Victor Ponta accused Dancila of offering ministerial positions to various opposition parliamentarians ahead of the vote.

“If the motion doesn’t scceed, Mrs Dancila will have to perform a biblical miracle. She will have to create one hundred ministers,” said Ponta, who now leads the centre-left opposition PRO Romania party.

Opposition MPs declared they had beenoffered positions in the government in exchange for their failure to vote for the motion, but said they had turned the offer down.