The Boc Government will have to face a few serious hurdles over
the next few days, two censure motions, as well as pass through
Parliament the 2011 budget bill, which, unless it gathers the votes
it needs in order to be adopted, will be equivalent to the
Government’s removal from office, in terms of consequences.
Whilst the opposition does not have, mathematically speaking, the
necessary votes to remove the Government from office through the
motion (it is short of 24 votes), the Government needs to mobilise
its people when it comes to voting for the budget bill, because it
has only 12 votes more than the 236 (half the number of MPs)
necessary to adopt the year’s most important piece of
legislation.
Opposition parties PNL (National Liberal Party) and PSD
(Social-Democratic Party) yesterday submitted a censure motion,
with another one set to be submitted today, after the Government
yesterday assumed responsibility over the law of uniform salary and
over the law on public sector salaries in 2011. Even if the
Government is not toppled, i.e. if the laws are considered as
adopted, their enforcement could be put off even beyond January
1st, because the opposition intends to challenge them before the
Constitutional Court. The adoption of the salary laws is
conditional on the release of a loan tranche in January, as part of
the arrangement between the Government and the IMF.