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Romania seeks political stability with a center-right coalition government

2020-12-23T19:58:39.599Z


The new Executive has the youngest ministers of the democratic stage and only has one woman among its 21 members


Romania has removed from power the Social Democrats, who have come to dominate Parliament since the collapse of the Communist dictatorship 31 years ago, except for the periods 1996-2000 and 2009-2012.

After two weeks of tensions with sharp diatribes crossed between the leaders of the formations called to reach an agreement since the legislative elections of December 6, Parliament on Wednesday granted the vote of confidence to the new center-right coalition government.

It is headed by Prime Minister Florin Citu of the conservative National Liberal Party (PNL) and backed by the centrist USR-PLUS alliance and the Democratic Union of the Magyars (UDMR).

With the inauguration of Citu, who until now was Minister of Finance, an end to a period of political instability that began with the attack by the center-left against the independence of Justice in February 2017, which sparked massive street protests.

This convulsive stage was aggravated by a motion of no confidence that ended the Social Democratic Government in October 2019, and another motion that ended with the Liberal Executive in February of this year.

In favor of the tripartite, 260 of the 455 seats validated in the two chambers (of the Deputies and the Senate) voted;

186 against it, coming from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), winner of the elections, and from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR, an acronym that means gold in Romanian), a far-right formation that has broken into with force in the political sphere with his speeches against the anticovid measures

"Starting today, I announce that I will personally supervise the objectives that we have set ourselves," Citu declared during his inauguration speech, referring to the biannual control that he will carry out on each of his ministers.

The coalition distributed the ministries proportionally to the vote: 9 from PNL, 6 from USR-Plus and 3 from UDMR;

while one vice-presidency will fall on the liberal side and the other on that of the centrist alliance.

The Cabinet will be the youngest in democratic Romania, with an average age of 45.8 years.

“It is the first time that the 40-year-old generation really takes power in Romania.

It is a symbolic moment ”, explains the journalist of the g4media.ro portal, Cristian Pantazi.

"And this is seen in the Government program, which focuses on the main European trends: digitization, ecology, modernization, sustainability and circular economy," he continues.

However, the discordant note is found in the government's parity: only one woman will be part of the organization chart.

It violates both the Romanian Constitution and the law on equal opportunities for men and women, anti-discrimination experts say.

The Executive runs the risk of falling by decision of the Constitutional Court.

But the Ombudsman, who criticized the lack of gender balance and acknowledged that he has already received complaints, clarified that it is outside his competence, since the Government is validated by Parliament.

Without a doubt, this lack of parity has raised blisters.

"This is the irrefutable proof that Romania still lives under political patriarchy, it has not internalized values, although we have had laws that defend equal opportunities between men and women for about 20 years," says political analyst Dan Tapalaga.

"Even the deepest and most homophobic macho admits only in himself that a government with 20 men and a single woman could be found in Arab countries or in Romania in the early 1990s, not in the European Union," he laments.

The parties justified themselves by claiming that they will weigh the balance with appointments of women to state secretariats or parliamentary committees.

Romania faces a double crisis: health and economic.

The authorities, who have reported 5,459 new coronavirus infections and 130 deaths in the last day on Wednesday, and raised the number to 604,251 infected people and 14,766 deaths since the start of the pandemic, will start the vaccination campaign against the covid- 19.

In addition, Bucharest will have to draw up a budget that restores confidence with Brussels and investors by reducing the public deficit, which is close to 10%, but will also have to carry out reforms to relaunch the ailing economy.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-12-23

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