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Romania Think Tank
Whose Parliament?

If Romania is ever to achieve a functioning democracy voting and electoral systems need a complete overhaul, and parliamentarians need to be forced to become more accountable to their electorates

by Paul-Andre Baran
November 2005

The past several months have brought a series of debates on issues involving the makeup, power and structure of the Romanian Parliament. According to the 2005 Open Society Opinion Barometer, 74 per cent of Romanians have little to no trust in Parliament. The most remarkable of the public institutions, for its notably low percentage of public trust, is now the spectacle of evening talk shows and political commentary. The only thing less trusted in the minds of Romanians are the political parties that make up Parliament. Eighty per cent of Romanians have little to no trust in them.

Today, Romania’s citizens vote for a party list, which literally means placing a stamp next to the party emblem of choice, and based on the percentage of citizens who placed a stamp on the exact same emblem the corresponding number of party representatives are sent to Bucharest. This occurs for both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. According to the same barometer, 52 per cent of Romanians do not know any of their representatives in Parliament. There is no residency requirement, meaning any citizen may be placed under any list in any county. Once in office, our unknown representatives from possibly other parts of the country begin voting legislation and the annual budget, without having to make public their vote on any legislation. For example our famed former President Ion Iliescu, who was born in Oltenita in Calarasi, has been living in Bucharest since before the Revolution and now is senator for Alba county. Why Alba?

Direct voting would change Romania’s electoral system, from stamped party emblem to stamping representatives’ names. This way a person would have to vote for a candidate and not a party. But things are a bit confusing and the political parties, civil society, and the media have varying opinions on the matter. Basically, there is talk of three systems. First, maintaining the current party lists system, second, going to a direct vote system, and third, creating a mixed system of voting, where by a percentage of seats are voted by party lists and the remaining seats through direct vote, something similar to how Germans vote. The party lists system or proportional system requires that each political party reach a minimum threshold of five per cent to enter Parliament. Of those parties that surpass the five per cent threshold the parliamentary seats are divvied proportionally. But this is not enough. Citizens must have the ability to hold their representatives accountable by accessing voting records.

Then there is the parliamentary stalemate, in which the ruling coalition wishes to oust the presidents of both the chamber of deputies and the senate, namely Mr Nastase and Mr Vacaroiu. In order to change the two presidents, both chambers must amend their internal regulations to allow them to do so, hence the eternal filibuster. What is interesting about the internal regulations, yet hardly known, is that one of the articles prescribes that our representatives votes are not made public. That is, my representatives in the Senate and in the Chamber of Deputies vote as they wish and I can never hold them accountable, because I can’t receive an official nominal tally. Last week at lunch with a journalist friend of mine, I brought up the fact that in Romania I can’t know how my representative votes in Parliament, and he was stunned - though he covers Romania he didn’t know that fact. Why isn’t the issue of nominal voting covered by the Freedom of Information act? The Institute for Public Policy (IPP) has convinced certain senators and MPs to propose amendments to the internal regulations during the debates, and hopefully they’ll stick. My bet is they won’t.

And lastly, according to President Basescu, in a sudden declaration prior to his visit to the US, Romania needs to hold a national referendum in order to cut Parliament’s two chambers down to one, insisting that costs are too high for their relative inefficiency. It is generally accepted that efficiency and saving taxpayers money is a wonderful thing and if there were to be a referendum on the subject tomorrow a majority of Romanians would be in favour: 41 per cent according to a Gallup poll as opposed to the 38 per cent in favor of keeping the two chambers. The only problem is that the referendum will be held next year, in conjunction with EU parliamentary elections and only if Romania gets the green light in April to join the club. So why bring it up now? Prior to the president’s declaration there was plenty of debate around the direct vote issue. Would it not have been so difficult to support the reform measures and then change focus to unicameralism?

Confused? Well, I am. It’s taken 16 years to finally address the most important aspect of a representative democracy: the notion of accountability to the electorate and their money. But our politicians act more like buskers rather than leaders deluding the public with a drawn-out filibuster abundant in acts of verbal abuse and immaturity. Liberal Party Deputy Cristian Boureanu recently stated, “I give changing the current electoral system to a direct vote system a 20 per cent chance of success”. Where are civil society and the media on this?

The truth is we need to have a majority of our elected officials placed in office through a direct vote by their constituents and the means to verify their activity once in Parliament. Without these two elements Romania will never have an accountable, democratic Parliament.

Paul-Andre Baran is the executive director of Romania Think Tank; more on Romania Think Tank can be gleaned by visiting its website, www.rtt.ro