RO Parliament: Former PM voted as Deputies Chamber speaker, ex FinMin heads Senate

Former prime minister Ludovic Orban, the president of the National Liberal Party (PNL), was voted president of the Chamber of Deputies.

Orban and PSD deputies’ leader Alfred Simonis were the two candidates for the job.

A total of 289 deputies cast their vote, of the 322 who were sworn in. Orban received 179 votes in favor and 110 against. Alfred Simonis received 110 votes in favor and 179 against, News.ro reported.

At the same time, USR-PLUS senator Anca Dragu was voted president of the Senate, the first woman to hold the job.

She received 75 votes in favor, and 51 votes against, of a total of 133 votes cast.

PSD senator Lucian Romaşcanu, a former culture minister in the Government of Mihai Tudose, also ran for the job. He received 51 votes in favor and 75 against.

Dragu was a finance minister in the technocrat government led by Dacian Cioloş between November 2015 and January 2017. An economist by training, she previously worked as an analyst with the Directorate‑General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission. She also worked in the Romania office of the IMF and as an economist with the National Bank of Romania (BNR).

The ruling center-right ruling coalition formed after the December 6 elections, made up of PNL, USR-PLUS, and the ethnic Hungarians’ party UDMR, decided to support finance minister Florin Citu for the prime minister position while Orban received the coalition’s endorsement for the position of Chamber of Deputies speaker. USR-PLUS named the head of the Senate.

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