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PACE President Mignon advises Basescu not to turn his back to the ruling coalition
Suspended President Traian Basescu on Thursday welcomed a delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) at his election headquarter. Head of the PACE delegation Jean-Claude Mignon said they are worried about the situation in Romania, but they did no come to Bucharest to pass judgment.
'We came to Bucharest and decided to stop looking behind and instead looking ahead. Romania is an important country that is a member of the Council of Europe and the European Union and it is true that today we are somehow worried about what has been happening in Romania. We decided to come to Bucharest because we will inform, we have to inform, but we are not here to pass judgment or take sides,' Mignon said at the beginning of the meeting.
President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Jean-Claude Mignon told a news conference on Thursday in Bucharest that the incumbent political majority was hasty when taking decisions, but suspended President Traian Basescu should not turn his back to the incumbent ruling coalition, but work together with it.
He said there is a majority coalition in Romania's Parliament that was hasty to apply things in the letter of the law without thinking about the consequences. Romania should keep a positive image, since nobody can know who will win the referendum to recall President Traian Basescu. He said his advice to suspended president Basescu is not to turn his back to the incumbent ruling coalition, because it is the majority in Parliament, but instead to work with it for positive results. He said he does not know whether slippages would be the right words to describe what happened in Romania, because they could distort reality. He said he would rather call this excessive haste in a democracy like Romania. Haste does not serve as hasting things does not either, he said, adding that in a big country where you want to have a constitution nothing is more important than good communication between institutions. We would rather time had been given to these decisions, said Mignon, adding that discussions should be conducted among various parties, as it is done elsewhere. He added that acting hastily and multiplying emergency ordinances or decrees is no good democratic practice, mentioning that he said so openly to whom he discussed in Romania.
Asked whether after the current fact-finding PACE mission ends in Bucharest a report on the political situation in Romania will be drawn up, Mignon said the PACE Bureau will make a decision about the conclusions of the talks of the visiting European officials with the Romanian authorities.
Mignon said the mission is not in Romania to draw up a report, but their wish was to meet the Romanian political class in order to understand certain things. There is nothing worthier than coming to the site to understand the situation, said Mignon, adding that the PACE delegation will draw up a communiqué on their fact-finding visit to Bucharest. The PACE Bureau will make a decision at a meeting in Nice. The result can be either an urgent debate or a resolution.
Chair of the PACE Liberal Democratic Group Anne Brasseur argued in her turn that the image of the political institutions of Romania has been seriously damaged of late, although the situation that triggered this series of events started before the ruling Social Liberal Union (USL) coalition came to power, as the country was governed under emergency ordinances, which the PACE does not find normal.