The Liberal Ministers Were Scolded By Their Colleagues

Parliamentarians in the National Liberal Party are unhappy with their ministers, because a lot of their people did not make it yet to positions in the ministries, which are still filled in by civil servants who served under the Social Democrat administration.

The raw started Tuesday evening, at the first meeting of the newly elected Executive Committee of the NLP. The Bucharest deputy mayor, Ludovic Orban, opened the subject saying that Government Decision 92/2004, which does not allow for new vacancies to be open for competition, should be annulled. Orban said that the Bucharest City Hall has 380 vacant positions it may not fill and, furthermore, the leading positions may be taken only by experienced public servants, "which means those that served under the SDP Government," Orban said.

Sources in the NLP say that ministers were reprimanded for not completing the organizational chart of their respective ministries; the only one completing the job was the minister for agriculture, Gheorghe Flutur.

The liberal leadership decided to set up a committee analyzing the necessary changes of legislation, including the Statute of the Public Servant, which provides for strict rules for replacement of public servants.

Liberal sources say the NLP-Democrat Party alliance cannot get rid of public servants hired by the SDP administration because they "asked for their activity to be checked and received positive qualifications."

Yesterday, ministers Ionut Popescu, Mona Musca, Mircea Cinteza, and Gheorghe Flutur were again summoned in front of the liberal parliamentarians, who wanted to know why the changes in the local divisions of the central administration are so protracted.

Some 15 institutors were at stake, among which the Direction for Penitentiaries, the Administration for the Danube Delta Biosphere Reservation, the Romania Film company, local directions of the agriculture and education ministries. The minister for finance, Ionut Popescu, was the one to take the most criticism for lagging behind with the changes; his liberal colleagues complained that they "took the central power in the capital city but are still in opposition in the territory."

The NLP parliamentarians believe that the heads of the local directions of the finance ministry should be replaced, because they already "sabotage" the minister’s work. They said they conduct financial controls at companies held by SDP members giving them a clean bill of health, which precludes for a long while further checking of the businesses and also the collection of the right amount of taxes.