On Tuesday, the National Liberal Party (PNL) and Save Romania Union (USR) asked Transport Minister Felix Stroe to resign, after he did not attend the debate on the Transport Ministry’s draft budget for 2018. Parliament’s joint committees on transportation issued a favourable report on the draft budget.
“I believe Minister Stroe must step down from the helm of the ministry! I’m demanding Minister Stroe’s resignation for the absolutely inadmissible way in which he, as Transport Minister, is treating these debates. It’s inadmissible for him not to be present today at these debates. Knowing the timetable of the debates, he chose to take part in a different activity,” Lucian Bode, Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, stated after the meeting of the joint committees.
In his turn, USR House member Catalin Drula demanded the resignation of the Transport Minister.
“Mr Stroe, if you have honour, resign, don’t be absent! Being absent is cowardice!” Drula said.
Parliament’s joint committees on transportation issued a favourable report on the 2018 budget for the Transport Ministry, report adopted with 11 votes in favour, 9 against and one abstention. However, the amendments to it were not debated or put up for vote.
PSD Senator Ionel Butunoi, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation, proposed that the 187 amendments to the Transport Ministry’s draft budget should not be debated, nor put up for vote, but should instead be forwarded to the Committee on Budget and Finances. The proposal was adopted with the majority of votes.
“We are living times that I, personally, thought I would never again experience in the Romanian Parliament. The way the PSD majority chose to behave at the debates on the Transport Ministry’s draft budget for 2018 is inadmissible. As far as I recall, the minister was never absent, not giving MPs the possibility to back their amendments was out of the question,” PNL House member Lucian Bode pointed out.
