Senate passes general election law

The Senate on Wednesday passed a legislative proposal concerning election to the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and the operation of the Standing Electoral Authority (AEP) initiated by parliamentarians from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the National Union for Romania's Progress (UNPR), the Conservative Party (PC), the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) and national minorities.

At the plenary debate on the law, Senate Deputy Chairman Ioan Chelaru of PSD called on chairman of the meeting Cristian Dumitrescu of PSD to put up for a vote an amendment to make the mention of the Senate prevail over the mention of the Chamber of Deputies, both in the title and the contents of the law.

'The amendment refers to a switch of the mentions of the chambers in the law and all articles therein, more specifically the law should read ?Legislative proposal for election to the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.' (...) I suggest this switch because the Senate is the upper chamber,' said Chelaru. His proposal passed by 102 ayes.

PNL Senator Puiu Hasotti said the passage of the election law marks the resumption of normalcy.

'As the chair of the joint committee Mr Mihai Voicu said, the aye vote was unanimous. Representatives of all the political formations in the committee voted for the proposal. From the very beginning, I have to tell you that we move back to normalcy in that the vote will be proportional on lists. That is the system that worked perfectly until 2004, it is a system that is valid in most of the countries with proportional representation using lists. Two series of elections in 2008 and 2012 proved that the general election law in force is profoundly wrong and generating political disputes,...