PNL's Raetchi: Interior minister, Bucharest prefect, invited to Chamber hearings

The Chamber of Deputies' Defence Committee Bureau decided on Tuesday to send invitations to Interior Minister Carmen Dan, Bucharest Prefect Speranta Cliseru and Gendarmerie officials to hearings into the August 10 street protests. 

The hearings are scheduled for next Tuesday at 10:00hrs, local. The Defence Committee would like to start the hearings with Minister Dan. 

"The priority is the minister of the interior, it is where our main control power lies, but also those responsible in the Gendarmerie and also the Bucharest prefect, who gave that control order. The hearings should start next Tuesday at 10:00hrs. Our procedural wish is to start with the interior minister Mr Caprar [the chairman of the Defence Committee] has accepted our request to send all the invitations and our priority is the interior minister," said Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee Ovidiu Raetchi of the National Liberal Party (PNL). 

He considers that after the start of the parliamentary session, the lawmakers of the ruling coalition will be less able than in the parliamentary recess to block the hearings on procedural reasons. 

"Our desire will be to also include in these talks the citizens who have been victims of violence, because we are the Parliament of Romania and we have to listen to the citizens," added Raetchi. 

MP Bogdan Rodeanu stressed the importance of starting the hearings with the interior minister, because the minister must "describe how the state bodies worked" on August 10. 

"The citizens who had to put up with the violence of the previous days should address the Military Prosecutor's Office first, but let us not mix politics with the area of investigation," Rodeanu said. 

Defence Committee Chairman Dorel Caprar said before the meeting of the committee's bureau that he did not believe that the protesters on August 10 in Bucharest's Piata Victoriei had come from the diaspora. 

The meeting of the Defense Committee of the Chamber of Deputies was suspended Tuesday for lack of a quorum. The agenda included PNL's request to hear some officials over the August 10 protests.