Luxurious Headquarters with Rain Inside

Yesterday’s heavy rain got to the Parliament’s plenum room, paying a short visit to the few senators that had woken up and had managed to get to work before 9:00 a.m.

The rain’s choice was the DP (Democratic Party) Senator Jan Vraciu, who saw his new desk in the last row, in the central part of the plenum room, getting wet. When he looked up to the room’s cupola, Vraciu was amazed to see that the drops of water were real and there were others to drop on his desk-mates and they were as cold as the first ones.

SHELTER. Vraciu sees his own umbrella ("’cause the Senate didn’t think of giving us umbrellas, they only gave us cars" - Jan Vraciu), which was abandoned somewhere under the desk, and opens it. His colleagues come to help him: one brings a rag, another one a word of solidarity… President’s Vacaroiu hawk eyes notice the movements in the back of the room and commands: "Mr. Senator, please put your umbrella away because it isn’t raining anymore!" Where? Outside? Because in the superb new room of the Senate, in which billions of lei were invested, the rain drops continued making themselves at home. Moreover, they conquest some other territories as well.

Somewhere, right behind President Vacaroiu, other drops begin to fall. The foyer in front of the plenum room is in the same situation, and the puddle on the marble floor is the "wet" proof of the fact. Meanwhile, in the room, the phenomenon of parliamentary migration goes into another phase: DP member Vraciu, wet from the rain and forced by the circumstances, brings all his stuff in the GRP (Great Romania Party) side.

In the same time, DP member Verginia Serbanescu tries to wipe her rained chair and says the Senate’s General Secretary had warned them in the morning to take their umbrellas because it was raining, but she had taken it as a joke! Actually, the Senate’s General Secretary admitted that, in the morning, at about half past 7, he had been announced about the raindrops in the plenum room. However, he had announced only some of the Senators about the natural phenomena in the plenum.

EXPLANATIONS. Questioned about the rain in the luxurious headquarters of the Senate, Dan Vasiliu came with good news: the warranty period for the work hasn’t expired, so the company will be forced to repair all the cracks in the room’s cupola with its own money. Actually, as Vasiliu says, the total payment hasn’t been done and the rest of the sum will be given only after the situation is improved. The bad news is that there are other places where the rain reached, like the protocol room.

AFTER A THOROUGH INVESTIGATION… The works for finalizing the spaces for the Senate have started in 2001 and swallowed 800 billion lei (ROL), as Dan Vasiliu, this Chamber’s General Secretary, estimated. The money was spent mainly on luxurious materials, but the work is scamp. For example, even though the terraces made 20 years ago have been repaired here and there, the doors are made of oak, and the walls of the first two levels are covered in Ruschita marble. At the same levels, the armchairs are made of brown leather, and the curtains of plush.

The Senate area covers an entire building block, oriented towards the September 13 Ave, which was initially projected as a protocol area. Here, the Ceausescus were supposed to welcome their guests, and some saloons and bedrooms were to be built. Now, the huge rooms have been separated by cardboard walls and transformed into offices.

FRAGILE LUXURY. The first raindrops have got through the glass cupola of the plenum room yesterday. On the interior, the cupola is made of brass insertion and blue and white opaque glass. The walls are covered in beige marble from Gura Vaii, combined with Antigua, brought from Iraq, which is green, and the doors are made of nut wood. In the places where the marble hasn’t been inserted, the walls are covered in sound-absorbing materials, so that the years of the Senators wouldn’t be scratched by any unpleasant noises. The sides of the room have two colors, separated by marble columns and glass panels. The victims of yesterday’s rain were the precious nut desks and the green-leathered armchairs, which were pretty wet. So was the green carpet. The installations on the Senators’ desks were also in danger: the electronic voting system and the plugs where the Senators can connect their laptops. Since the water got to the walls, the microphone and video cameras installation could have ceased as well. Behind the ostensive luxury, there are scamp works. During the plenum meetings on last Tuesday, a desk fell off showing the bad quality of the glue used for the leather panels covering it. Moreover, the microphones never work when they should, which upsets the Senate’s President, Nicolae Vacaroiu, who has to shout at the personnel to turn on the microphones for the ones that want to speak.

The deadline for the workers has been successively postponed from one session to another for two years. The Senators eventually moved in on the 5th of September, when the present parliamentary session began. (Monica Iordache)

THE TERRACES HAVE TO BE REBUILT. The designer of the Parliament’s Palace, Anca Petrescu, said she expected the terraces and the cupolas of the building to cease under the rain, because they had been built 20 years ago. "The materials are old, the hydro -isolations have been made 20 years ago, the siphons are sunken, the drains clogged", Anca Petrescu explained to us. She said the hydro-isolation should be re-done completely, but they preferred repairing it here and there, because there never was enough money. "The repairs were done only for some segments. There have been only local repairs at the cupolas and it was a normal thing for them to cease under a heavier rain", Anca Petrescu emphasized. She said the warranty period lasts until the beneficiary takes the building over. Since there are some works yet to be done, the general reception is yet to happen, the constructor being forced to repair the problems that appeared in the meantime.

WE BUILD, WE DESTROY. This is the principle that seems to be the basis of the Carpati Construction Company, the company that owns the project and has the monopole for the works from the Parliament’s Palace. Former part of a state enterprise, the Carpati Company took care of the construction even from the time when Ceausescu was ruling. The Parliament’s Palace has been an endless source of funds for this company. Besides the fact that the building surface is huge, the things done have to be re-done. One example is the terrace above the Izvor entrance and the parking lot in front of this side, which were both re-done in 2003, because the Senators had raindrops in the restaurant and cracks in the flagstones in the parking lot. In the Senate area, the investment came from the budget of the Deputies’ Chamber, and the General Secretary of this Chamber, Mihai Ungheanu, supervised the spending of the money.