After four years during which the Romanian government had beenteaching Europe a lesson in economic growth, Bucharest MPs are nowin the shameful position of deciding salary cuts for public sectoremployees and pensioners in order to curb the debt spiral.
The two chambers of Parliament will decide today in a plenarysession the outcome of the motion of censure introduced by PSD(Social Democratic Party) against the Government, after PrimeMinister Emil Boc's team assumed responsibility for a unprecedentedpackage of austerity measures, which includes cutting pensions by15% and salaries by 25% in order to achieve 10 billion RON insavings until the end of the year.
Rejecting the motion means the set of measures will be consideredas adopted by Parliament, and, unless challenged in theConstitutional Court, it will go to President Traian Basescu forpromulgation.
The tough measures meant to cut public spending come after a yearand a half of procrastination, during which time no minister wasable to talk honestly about the web of agencies and publicinstitutions, say clearly what the total number of the publicsector employees was, or curb the uncontrolled wage spending bycutting "outrageous" perks.
None of those in power since 2004 have given coherent explanationsfor the state's increased spending, or for their failure to noticethat Romania was one step away from defaulting.
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