The electoral code commission yesterday passed by consensus a mixed uninominal voting proposal, which means half of the electoral colleges will be adopted by majority uninominal voting and half on a compensation list, Commission Chairwoman Sulfina Barbu announced. After the Commission session, she made the point that 13 ballots were cast in favour of the mixed voting system, a compromise solution given all the other proposals, including the genuine uninominal system or the current voting system failed reaching the number of votes required in order to be adopted. “During a two-hour session of the electoral code Commission, the parliamentary groups passed by consensus the uninominal majority voting in half of the electoral colleges, with the other half to be subject to a compensation list to contain proposals from the Permanent Electoral Authority,” Mediafax quoted Barbu as saying, who added that both the Democrat Liberal Party (PDL) and the Social-Liberal Union (USL) upheld the uninominal majority alternative, which has nonetheless been opposed by the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) and the minorities. “This is an acceptable compromise, rather than the system in place or a return to the list-based system,” Barbu stated, adding that the electoral threshold issue will be discussed next week, although, in principle everybody agrees to a 5 per cent threshold, expressing her hope the bill will be adopted by the end of the legislative session, under an emergency procedure if necessary. Given that both the Social-Democrats and Liberals agreed with the PDL on the uninominal voting, it is expected they would return to Parliament in order to vote the proposal. Anyway, according to Ilie Sarbu, leader of the PSD Senators, the opposition attended Senate sessions over the past two weeks, with the USL to decide next week whether it will bring the legislative strike to a stop.Dan Voiculescu, founding president of the Conservative Party, said yesterday that it would be time for the USL to get back to Parliament, to remove Government, suspend Traian Basescu and hold parliamentary and presidential elections in three months at the latest. Voiculescu said: “The ruling power has lost Senate majority for good and so will in the Chamber of Deputies in the coming days. The PDL-UNPR-UDMR voting machine is disintegrating irreversibly. In this context, I believe that the parliamentary protest by the opposition reached its goals, the B?sescu regime no longer controls the legislative body,” Voiculescu said, in whose view, “it is highly likely that once the current Executive is no longer in place, Traian B?sescu will try and play for time, endorse an interim government, prolong the disease of this society and of the Romanian economy.” Referring to Senator Dan Voiculescu’s statement on USL’s return to Parliament and its steps aimed at taking the Government down and suspending the president, Ilie Sarbu said that, while the USL will take such decisions next week, the opposition nonetheless lacks majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
