Political migration and perversion of senses

Political migration has again become a problem in Romanian politics, placing under the question mark the representativeness of the present Parliament. Six members of Parliament, of whom two former ministers of the PDL-PSD coalition government - foreign minister Cristian Diaconescu and labour minister Marian Sirbu, resigned on Friday after discussing with Victor Ponta to join the government camp. They all joined the group of independent MPs created in November 2009 by those who resigned from PSD and PNL.

All these resignations were stimulated by PDL, and we are not talking about the intense actions to attract new members which started last fall, but about the explicit measures taken so that the independents could be fully integrated in the Parliament political flow.According to parliamentary customs, those who resigned could no longer be part of specialized commissions which had been attributed according to the political proportion obtained in elections. Those who left their political party had to pay by being politically set aside.There is no law forbidding political migration - although the Democratic Party militated in 2004 and 2005 in favour of such a restriction - but there was, until recently, a provision meant to preserve in commissions the proportion obtained in elections and which indirectly was meant to limit resignations from political groups.

By mid February this provision (par. 3 art 40 in Regulations of the Chamber of Deputies) was changed so that the people who had resigned could keep their positions in commissions.In the 15 February meeting, PNL deputy Eugen Nicolaescu called that provision "dangerous", while former premier Calin Popescu Tariceanu was against the amendment, warning about the degradation of parliamentary life.

According to the latest news liberal deputies Ioan Timis (Hunedoara) and Mihai Banu (Bacau) left the National Liberal Party. Parliamentary sources say the two were negotiating both with PDL and the independent group.