The POT parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies is about to be dissolved, after several deputies announced that they will leave the group.
The situation comes in the context of an internal scandal, triggered by the decision of the president Anamaria Gavrila to request the exclusion of the deputy Răzvan Chiriță, appointed a month ago as the leader of the group in the Chamber.
Răzvan Chiriță is accused of not getting involved in the electoral campaign in Bucharest — where the POT candidate got only 0.2% — and of not paying his dues in recent months. On the other hand, he rejects the allegations and claims that the real problem is the lack of transparency regarding how the party’s funds were spent.
“This leadership that guided us throughout this period from entering Parliament, until the last election, proved to have taken us from a percentage of 7-6% upon entering Parliament to 0.2%. The only thing we wanted to score and find out was why the results are not compared to the amounts paid”, says deputy Răzvan Chiriță, who threatens to leave together with several deputies.
The president of POT, Anamaria Gavrilă, however, accuses the protestors of spending their activity “to coffees and spritzes”.
“Their main parliamentary activity was to come to Bucharest and go for coffees and spritzes, like boys”, says Gavrila.
Another POT deputy, Gabriela Porumboiu, describes the atmosphere in the party as tense:
“It’s been a constant pressure lately. She has a stronger style of making her point or imposing it rather. It was a little more democratic way of imposing her own views.”
Controversy also about the party’s money
According to official data cited by a Știrile Pro Tv correspondent, POT received 1.3 million lei in subsidies from the state in October alone. More than 915,000 lei were allegedly spent on political consulting, but party members claim that they do not know who the consultant contracted by Gavrila is. “We’ve always made decisions together about how to spend the money. But some people just want to get to the money because we’ve built up some savings for dark days.” the head of POT defends herself.
The regulation of the Chamber of Deputies stipulates that a parliamentary group must have at least 10 members. Although POT currently has 14, Răzvan Chiriță states that on Monday nine of them will submit their resignations, which would automatically lead to the dissolution of the group.
When asked about this possibility, Anamaria Gavrilă answered briefly and cryptically: “God help!”
