June 19 (SeeNews) - Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) and its coalition partner, the Liberal-Democrat Alliance (ALDE), filed a censure motion against the government on Sunday, a day earlier than initially announced.
The motion, which criticizes the government led by Sorin Grindeanu for failing to meet the aims of the governance programme, was read during an extraordinary session of parliament attended only by MPs of the left-wing PSD and centre-right ALDE. The session was broadcast by Digi 24 station.
The leaders of the other parties in the parliament - the right-wing National Liberal Party (PNL), the centre-right Save Romania Union (USR), Popular Movement Party (PMP) and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) - have commented that the motion is a PSD intra-party affair in which they do not wish to be involved. It is yet unclear what their vote will be on Wednesday.
The motion was signed by only 222 MPs, as some of PSD members were out of the country, PSD's leader Liviu Dragnea said on Sunday.
In order to pass, the censure motion needs to be backed by 233 MPs.
Following December 11 regular general elections, PSD won 221 of a total of 463 seats in the two houses of parliament in the election. After the vote, PSD joined forces with ALDE to secure a comfortable majority of 250 seats.
There are signs that not everybody in PSD will support the motion, as various PSD members, including ex-prime minister Victor Ponta have declared publicly that they support Grindeanu.
On Friday, Grindeanu named Ponta chief of government's general secretariat.
Grindeanu refused to step down last week after PSD's executive committee withdrew support for his six-month old coalition cabinet citing poor performance.
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