The No-Confidence Motion is Rejected in Parliament

Because of the 17 missing votes, the motion failed to pass, which means that the cabinet led by the Liberal Democratic Prime Minister Emil Boc remains in place. Meant to penalize the severe austerity measures taken in May by president Traian Basescu and the government, the motion appeared to have secured the backing of some of the members of the parliamentary majority.

Many senators and deputies from the ranks of the majority had been very outspoken against the galloping corrosion of the government’s popularity and had switched sides at the previous vote of no-confidence in Parliament. On that occasion, the opposition lacked only 8 votes to bring down the government.

This time around, however, the MPs of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania and the National Union for Romania’s Progress attended the debates concerning the motion, but did not take part in the voting. As they were asked by their own leaders not to cast their votes, the government survived without one single vote in its favor, in a paradoxical situation typical of the Romanian political scene. A winner without glory, the prime minister accused the opposition of populism and said the motion was a collection of illusory hopes and an image-boosting exercise.

Emil Boc: “Today, reason prevailed before the populism and demagogy of the opposition, which all it has to offer, unfortunately, is a bag full of empty promises.”

As for the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, the deputy Gergely Olosz said his party was confident about the outcome of the vote: “I was convinced the opposition would not be able to gather enough votes. We will go ahead, confident that this government can continue its mission and accomplish everything it set out to do.”

Victor Ponta, the leader of the Social Democratic Party in opposition, was not only the main promoter of the motion of no-confidence, but he also led the 30,000 trade union members who picketed the parliament building.

After the voting in Parliament, the impetuous leader of the left-wing opposition was left with nothing but hope: “Today saw the beginning of the end for the Basescu-Boc regime. The way they behaved, bringing in the gendarmes and all kinds of people paid to boo the opposition, the way they bought MPs out and forced them not to vote, clearly shows this is the ending.”

The leader of the National Liberal Party, Crin Antonescu, was also full of sarcasm against the government majority: “This government has turned people with a spine into silent reptiles. We live in a country which is led by a government with a 10% confidence rating and zero votes of support in Parliament from its own majority.”

On a more detached note, the daily paper Romania Libera refuses to adopt an apocalyptic rhetoric and dryly lists the reasons why the motion of no-confidence failed to pass: the disputes between the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party, the discipline imposed by the Liberal Democratic Party on its MPs, and the unsuccessful junction between the opposition and trade union protests.

“The October revolution is postponed”, writes the daily paper Adevarul in an ironic take on the huge socialist-unionist mobilization of crowds, which resulted in an equally huge failure. The newspaper Gandul, on the other hand, writes the Boc government can neither be listed among the victors, because, since the fall of communism, there has never been a bigger divide between the government and the population, and people’s discontent eventually turns into hatred.