USR PLUS requested the Speakers of the Chamber of Deputies, Ludovic Orban, and the Senate Speaker, Anca Dragu, to convene the joint plenary session of the Parliament for debating the motion of censure, as the motion text was presented to the MPs last week.
“Since reading the motion, it is now in a straight line. It must be debated and voted on. I don’t understand why it’s being postponed. I expected the presidents to convene already, as they did in accordance with the Constitution last week to read the motion. In the meantime, something has happened and things are not going as fast. My colleague Anca Dragu wrote a letter to the president of the Chamber of Deputies yesterday to convene this plenary session to debate the motion. Today, Ludovic Orban is gone and delegated the duties to a fellow PNL vice-president. Today, as things stand, we will not have a plenary meeting to debate the motion. The only ones who really want this debate are us, the ones from USR PLUS and the ones from AUR, who signed the motion. PSD and PNL are teaming up behind Florin Cîțu in this unprecedented abuse that we have been seeing for almost two weeks “, said Ionuț Moșteanu, the leader of the USR PLUS deputies.
Ludovic Orban, the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and the head of the PNL, is away in the country for campaign activities before the internal elections of the liberals, which will take place on September 25. He delegated his duties to Florin Roman, vice-president of the Chamber.
Senate Speaker Anca Dragu (USR PLUS) believes that the censure motion procedure cannot be stopped by the challenge filed by the Government with the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR), with the presidents of the two chambers of Parliament currently analyzing the possibility of holding a joint plenary sitting this week to debate on the motion.
As for convening of the joint plenary session to debate and vote on the motion of censure, Dragu said: “On the one hand, this decision belongs to the joint standing bureaus, but, on the other hand, the presidents of the two chambers too can convene the plenum. We are trying now to make this call, but we need to make get sure that the motion of censure follows its constitutional path.”
Asked if she was already discussing the matter with Ludovic Orban, the Speaker of the Deputies’ Chamber, Anca Dragu said: “Yes, we are discussing since the group leaders asked us last week to convene the plenum this week for the debate and vote.”
She also noted that the motion needs to be voted by half plus one of the total number of MPs.
“Given the current formula, it will probably be difficult to meet a quorum, for we see how PNL (National Liberal Party) and PSD (Social Democratic Party) won’t take part in this process,” said Dragu