To the Parliament of Romania

President of the Senate, Mircea Geoana

The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Roberta Anastase

Leaders of parliamentary groups

The "Stop Codes!" Coalition, made up of civil society organizations, asks you to stop parliamentary proceedings on the drafting of criminal, criminal, civil, and civil procedure criminal proceedings. We therefore call on the Joint Standing Bureau of the two Chambers to take a decision to resubmit these legislative initiatives to the government to be debated in an honest and open consultation process.

It is not surprising that civil society organizations, professional media organizations and the business community alike claim that there was no real consultation process. The Ministry of Justice has not subjected to public debate any of the codes, as required by the Transparency Law. Codes are fundamental laws that protect citizens and the rule of law. They can not be promoted discretionary, even in the face of a crushing majority in Parliament.

We draw attention to the fact that a simple act of amending the drafts in a short and condensed calendar is an act of disregarding the parliament as an institution, can lead to superficiality in the act of lawmaking, violates the right of civil society to participate in the debates, elected uninominal to consult with their citizens in their colleges and to represent their interests in parliament.

55.7% of MPs are at their first term. We appeal to these politicians not to start their legislature's career by linking their name to a legislative act to become the most ugly failure of the post-communist Romania lawmaking act. The grave consequences of the application of hurriedly adopted codes will strike the Romanian society for many years from now on and will reflect on the reputation of those who have adopted them in a way that is not transparent.

There are serious conceptual and drafting errors. This stahanovist legislative process will not be able to address code conception errors nor correct drafting errors. So even if Parliament were to decide to adopt the same attitude of disregarding public opinion in this process of building the country's legislative infrastructure, it would be a lack of efficiency and added value, it would be only a five-year period in two and a half months , but the toxic effect for Romania will last for decades.

We, the signatory organizations, consider that the code projects should be stopped and we are asking you, through this open letter, for the following punctual issues:

stopping the existing procedure

reshaping the codes to the Government in order to make real public debates on them

explicitly stating the point of view of the procedure in which it was worked and the requests as a gesture of transparency, accountability and political commitment

to establish procedures for a nominal and transparent vote, both in committees and in plenary, for each article, at the moment when these codes return to parliamentary process so that the company knows what the vote of its representatives was

We ask you, as chairmen of the chambers and leaders of parliamentary political formations, to show respect for: the citizen's right to opinion, the values ​​of open and participatory democracy, the responsibility to reform and build a new society, the role of the parliament in the democratic system for voters' vote, and prove this respect by publicly assuming your position, whatever it is.

No one can decide discretionary what the Romanians need, without asking them what their needs are. In the hope that reason will succeed and that the rule of law will not be just a plate of delicacies for the turning of the transition, we ask you: "Stop the Codes!"

Contact:

Victor Alistar

(Stop@opriticodurile.ro)


Data publicare: 30/03/2009