NAD becomes Office

Yesterday, president Traian Basescu together with the leaders of the political parties, decided to subordinate the NAD (National Anticorruption Department) chief-prosecutor, Daniel Morar, to the general prosecutor, Ilie Botos. The National Anticorruption Department becomes the National Anticorruption Office, and the NAO decree will be sent to the Parliament with these modifications.

Yesterday afternoon, the decree regarding the NAO functioning got to the Parliament again after it had been rejected and modified by the President. After an hour-and-a-half-long meeting between the President and the leaders of the parliamentary parties, the National Anticorruption Department became the National Anticorruption Office. There might not be much difference in the name, but it means the loss of the independence of the NAO. According to yesterday’s agreement, the NAO will be included in the General Prosecutor’s Office, and the chief-prosecutor of the NAO will be subordinated to the general prosecutor, but not coordinated by him, as it had been until now. In the same time, NAO loses its position as main credit commander by becoming a secondary one with precise budget mentioned in the budget of the Prosecutor’s Office of the High Court of Justice and Cassation.

CAUTION. According to the President, the changes in the NAO decree target the elimination of all the suspicions regarding its unconstitutionality, taking into account the terms of the 72nd Article in the Constitution, according to which the Parliament Members can be investigated and sentenced by the Prosecutor’s Office only. This way, by avoiding a complaint of the Opposition at the Constitutional Court, Basescu hopes to have a quick voting procedure in the Parliament in such a way that the law for the approval of the decree would appear in the Official Gazette by the 6th of March.

INDEPENDENCE. Basescu says these changes don’t "influence in any way" the activity of the NAO. "Subordination doesn’t mean involvement in the prosecutor’s file. The NAO Chief-Prosecutor cannot get involved in the prosecutor’s file due to the incompetence of any other prosecutor of getting involved in the file of the case prosecutor", Traian Basescu stated and he showed that this is how there won’t be any time thrown away on moving the file from one office to the other, which led to the change of the case prosecutor.

The President wanted to assure the "entire force of the institution remained intact", the NAO attributions have remained the same, and he thanked the political parties that didn’t try to suggest the diminution of the NAO power.

THE NAO CHIEF IN LITIGATION. The paragraph that caused a little argument yesterday is the one regarding the naming of the NAO chief-prosecutor. At present, he is named by the President at the proposal of the Minister of Justice, after the consultation of the Supreme Council of Magistracy, which is what the liberals and the democrats preferred. SDP (the Social Democratic Party) supports the naming to be done directly by the President at the SCM proposal, and GRP (the Great Romania Party) accepts the proposal of the Minister of Justice, but with the agreement of the SCM.

PM Tariceanu stated yesterday that he had no objections against the fact that the NAO chief-prosecutor would not be named by a representative of the Executive, but he showed that the issue is not regulated by the present NAD decree, so it might appear in a future decree. Basescu promised as well that, at a future date, they will reach a formula that would guarantee the "disappearance of the suspicions regarding the political schemes in the NAO activity".

THE CP LEADER WASN’T PRESENT

A public statement of the party’s press office shows that the CP (Conservatory Party) leader did not take part in yesterday’s meeting with the President and named the conservatory deputy Sergiu Andon to take care of the technical problems. "Since all the other parties have already showed a similar political position, Dan Voiculescu considers that today’s meeting is useless and is no more than another opportunity for a media show of President Basescu", the public statement says. The quoted document also reads that the position of the conservatory leader has been expressed during last week’s meetings when he stated "the Conservatory Party will firmly support the fight against corruption, especially the fight against the high-level and political corruption". The politicians that have taken part in the meeting: Mircea Geoana, Cristian Diaconescu, Nicolae Serban (SDP); Corneliu Vadim Tudor, Lucian Bolcas (GRP); Marko Bela, G. Frunda (DUHR); Calin Popescu Tariceanu, Teodor Melescanu (NLP); Emil Boc, Daniel Buda (DP); Sergiu Andon (CP); Varujan Pambuccian, Liana Dumitrescu (the Minorities’ Group). (by Dana Piciu)

PRIVILEGES

During yesterday’s meeting with the political leaders, Basescu talked again about the privileges that the Parliament Members have "prepared" for themselves, asking them to find a formula that would fix their behavior because he cannot send the law back to the Parliament once again. The DP (Democratic Party) leader, Emil Boc, wants the temporary elimination of the articles with the privileges in the law, while the GRP leader, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, proposes the diminution of the pensions by half and he complained to the President that the party leaders are not able to control the Parliament Members in this matter. "You establish certain things with your party colleagues in the Parliament, but they vote independently. The older ones think they will not have another mandate and want to vote exaggerated pensions for themselves!"