Coalition Partners Fight over Who Decides on Romania’s Security

The war between the two major ruling coalition partners, the National Liberal Party, or PNL, and the Democrat Party, or PD, has at its center now the fate of the authority deciding over Romania’s security, or the Supreme Council for Defense.
The PNL wants it dismantled, to give the authority to decide on the matters of security to - who else? - the prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu, also the PNL leader.
While the PD obviously objects to the move.
Bogdan Olteanu, House Speaker and also PNL member, put the issue on the table over the week-end, calling the Supreme Council an "obsolete institution, of Soviet times"" origin, designed by the 1991 Constitution samended in the mean timet as a vehicle to enhance the powers of the then social-democrat President Ion Iliescu."
Olteanu added that no similar authority existed in the European Union member states, where security and defense issues were decided upon by the head of the government.
Romania vies to join the EU in 2007 or 2008.
PD deputy and former defense minister Sorin Frunzaverde objected, saying Romania was a semi-presidential republic, hence an enhanced role for the president inside the Supreme Council came natural.
Social-democrat George Maior, in opposition, and also the head of the Senate Defense Committee, objected too to the liberals’ proposal. Maior said Poland and France both had offices for national defense, where the respective presidencies and governments came together in the decision-making process.
Therefore, the Supreme Council should not be dismantled, but reformed, following talks among political parties, Maior said.

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