IMAGE: Romania's President Traian BASESCU after meeting the parliamentary parties' representatives at 'Cotroceni Palace' (on Monday, Mar 6)Following a hostile media campaign, President Traian Basescu Monday said he will ask the Supreme Council for Homeland Security (CSAT) to agree making public the transcripts of the CSAT meeting three weeks ago, to prove he did not specifically want homeland security draft bills to be classified, as some commentators and political leaders alleged.
The new homeland security bills pack seems to follow the U.S. model and, if adopted, it would eventually provide more powers to the intelligence community and to the country’s President.
Therefore, ‘liberal’ politicians and media put Basescu under fire in the past days for allegedly planning to pass the homeland security bills, without any prior public consultation, thus granting immunity to intelligence agents while on mission. “It is regrettable and a little bit of a dirty play,” said Basescu about the intentions attributed to him by the National Liberals.
Basescu said that – during the latest CSAT meeting – he asked the heads of the parliamentary committees in charge with defence and homeland security issues to look into the six drafts and provide their comments, before considering the bills once again in the Council.
“The draft laws needed anyway major improvements, since many of them had unconstitutional provisions,” said Basescu. He also pointed out that some of his today’s critics (i.e. Liberals, Social-Democrats, etc) had nothing against voting for a police officers’ statute, back in 2002, which included the same now alleged unconstitutional provisions to be granted to intelligence agents.
Basescu made his comments on the occasion of his meeting Monday (Mar 6) with the leaders of Romania’s political parties to discuss various issues, including constitutional changes and draft laws regulating the national security, the status of minorities, and the fight against money-laundering.
Political leaders last week expressed their views concerning the topics that are to be discussed. The National Liberal Party, senior member of the ruling four-party coalition, requested the draft laws regarding the national security to be publicly debated, in spite that the Liberal boss agreed upon the initial proposal to classify parliamentary debates.
Mircea Geoana, the president of the Social Democrat Party (in opposition), last week said the party did not agree with what it perceived to be Basescu’s attempt to subordinate the intelligence community to the presidential office.
Corneliu Vadim Tudor, president of 'Greater Romania' Party (in opposition), Friday said his party did not agree with the proposed constitutional changes that would introduce a mix of first past the post and proportional representation voting systems, and a single chamber of parliament.
The actual issue under discussion is the post-communist Romanian constitution, which basically shapes a semi-presidential republican regime – as fear for granting too much power to the president emerged from the ‘Ceausescu’s syndrome’. Pragmatically speaking, the ‘presidential republic’ constitutional pattern – as in U.S. and/or France – would be more appropriate for Romania.
Romania Report and sources
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