Absence - the Senate, a Job without Attendace

During the last moments of this mandate, Senate’s works are getting harder and harder to be held due to the senators’ absence. You can hardly see three or four senators at the commissions, not enough in order to make the reports and the notices. Yesterday only the ordinary laws could be discussed because the organic ones need 71 favorable votes, and in the hall this was hardly the number of all the senators. The bell rang until 10 o’clock in the morning when, by nominal calling, more or less correctly, 73 participants at the debates were "calculated". However at 10:30, the DUHR (Democrat Union of the Hungarians in Romania) senator, Peter Eckstein Kovac, rises and asks for his colleagues assent who were to be present at the Marko Bela candidacy for the presidency registering. Gyorgy Frunda, held in the commission president chair, urges the leaving with some hand gestures.

ATTENDANCE

The meeting president, Doru Ioan Taracila, noticed that in the Omnia hall was no quorum and postponed the organic laws’ debate for the end of the meeting, stating that in the meantime there will be some more senators arriving. After some ordinary laws have been voted through open vote, NLP (the National Liberal Party) senator Nicolae Vlad Popa asked again for the attendance record. He stated he numbered his colleagues and that there was no quorum. The SDP (Social Democratic Party) senators accused him of having no respect towards them. After the senators present have been counted for the second time, Taracila refused saying their number, about 48, as we numbered. He asked for a final vote for a law which was being discussed, and, after that, he suspended the meeting reasoning that there were left only the organic laws to be discussed, and in the hall there was no quorum.

LITTLE TIME AT WORK

Next week will be the last one in which the senators will come to work from Monday until Thursday. Starting from next week, the schedule will only have Monday and Tuesday, the first being for political statements and debates, and the second for working in the commissions. During the other days the senators are free to take part in the electoral campaign, even if many of them aren’t eligible to be in the Parliament next year as well.