My reasons to vote YES for the impeachment of President Basescu

I was thinking not to write anything about the referendum, but eventually I decided to endorse it when I read an article earlier today about the coal miners. It looks like these workers have been threatened to leave their ID cards at the administration, so that they can’t vote and thus express their constitutional and democratic right. On July 29, I am going to vote YES for the impeachment of Traian Basescu, hoping to have presidential elections later on this year. Here are some of the major reasons I want Romania to have a new president:

Firstly, I feel offended by the way the president’s daughter, Ms. Elena Basescu, became a Member of the European Parliament. It wasn’t illegal, but it was profoundly immoral for the “de facto” president of the Democratic Liberal Party to instruct that for every voting section, 10 DLP members would vote for her, who was running as an independent candidate.  Overall, there were 18.317 voting sections, so she got 183.170 votes this way. Elena Basescu had a total of 204.280 votes, so the real number of votes she raised were just 204.280 – 183.170 = 21.110!! What is even worse, is her below-an-average-student performance in the European Parliament, where she is still representing Romania. How many capable young people do we have in Romania, who would really represent our country decently, but who don’t have the luxury of being “daddy’s daughter”?

The fraud when the pensions law was passed. At the moment this piece of legislation was passed, the DLP had the presidency of the Deputies Chamber and the majority in the Parliament. In order to pass a law, they needed to have about 170 deputies in the room to endorse it. However, when the pensions law was to be aproved, there were only 90 deputies in the room, while the Speaker, Roberta Anastase, counted 175!! All the press was present so the case went viral. However, President Basescu not only that he didn’t ask for the resignation of the Speaker, but he approved the law! This was a fraud that we witnessed on TV, taking place in the supreme institution of our democracy, the Parliament.

Monica Iacob Ridzi and the over-evaluated stage. Mrs. Ridzi, as Minister of Youth and Sports, paid EUR 75,000 for a wooden stage, to an apartment company. During the same short tenure, she brought to the Ministry many young relatives and friends of the DLP seniors on executive positions, on criteria other than competence.

I have many more reasons, but these are enough, given that I witnessed the events myself. Although I am not a member of the now-ruling coalition, the Social – Liberal Union and am not a big fan of Prime Minister Victor Ponta and the temporary President Crin Antonescu, I have to admit that during the last two months the Government took some very good decisions that will positively impact our economy: lower VAT for food products, payment of VAT to the state budget when the invoice is paid by the buyer, waiver to pay contributions when hiring young people below 25 and older people above 55, to name just a few. Moreover, I see more competent people in the executive position of the central government than when DLP was ruling, so I feel a little more optimistic that our country will recover on the medium run. I am going to vote to get rid of incompetence in government and to bring a little hope that some highly-trained professionists will join the government, who are eager to perform well and stop corruption.