Emil Boc - 2008-2012
Emil Boc served as Prime Minister of the Republic of Romania from December 2008 to February 2012. At the age of 42, Emil Boc was the youngest prime minister of post-communist Romania – and also the lest affluent. Seen by many as a new breed of politician – open, modest and not corrupt. His openness, straight-talking and competence had made him increasingly popular.
Boc was the president of the Democratic Liberal Party, which proposed and supported him as Prime Minister in late 2008, from December 2004 until June 2012. He served as Prime Minister of Romania from December 2008 to February 2012, during one the most difficult economic times in post comunist Romania, managing to avoid the global crisis in risks for the country.
The leader of Romania's government was seen by others as the poodle of Traian Basescu, the country's president. Emil Boc was perceived as a politician loyalto the head of the state, in whose shadow was constantly placed by his opponents. A man with a great theoretical background, Emil Boc was a politician who, except for the leadership of Cluj, had not occupied important positions in the state apparatus.
The two parties that won the most seats in the Romanian Parliament during elections on 30 November 2008, agreed on 14 December 2008 on a German-style “grand coalition” to govern the country until 2012. EURACTIV Romania reports. The agreement saw former adversaries the PDL (Democrat Liberals close to President Traian Basescu) and the PSD (Social Democrats, until now in opposition) sign a coalition agreement called “A Partnership for Romania”. The coalition would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament, with the PDL having won 115 seats in the 334-member lower house in comparison to the PSD’s 114. With only 65 seats, the National Liberals of current Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu lost their majority and was now forced into opposition.
The new PDL-PSD coalition government announced a ruling program full of campaign promises and political sweeteners prior to officially taking power on 22 December 2008, but has just as quickly begun to back away from many of those positions in its first two weeks in office. New Prime Minister Emil Boc's first official statements have emphasized fiscal policy "prudence" and "coherence" in the face of the economic downturn, and his government has taken some early steps to cut expenditures. Apparently eager to demonstrate responsiveness to voters who supported them on November 30, the PSD and PDL cherry picked the most popular parts of their respective economic platforms and linked them together into one shared statement.
A coalition of disciplined PNL and PSD successfully toppled the minority government led by Prime Minister Emil Boc. On 06 October 2009 a coalition of the PNL, PSD, and Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) filed a no-confidence motion following the October 1 collapse of the governing coalition and the resignations of nine PSD ministers in protest of President Traian Basescu's dismissal of PSD Interior Minister Dan Nica (reftel). This marked the first time since the 1989 revolution that a no-confidence motion has succeeded in bringing down a cabinet. the PNL and PSD were able to maintain party discipline and pass the no-confidence motion by a vote of 258 to 176. The vote needed a minimum of 236 to pass. Despite the no-confidence motion, Boc and his cabinet continued to serve on an interim basis. The political drama is largely posturing, in preparation for the upcoming Presidential election, rather that an issue of day-to-day governing.
Traian Basescu was sworn in for a second five-year term as president on 21 December 2009. Basescu tapped his loyal side-kick, Emil Boc, as Prime Minister despite the no-confidence motion that brought down the previous Boc Cabinet on 22 October 2009. Boc's proposed Cabinet is filled with Basescu loyalists such as Elena Udrea and Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) heavyweights like Vasile Blaga and Adriean Videanu.
Emil Boc was born in 1966 in Rachitele, Cluj county and graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy (1991) and the Faculty of Law (1995). He completed several internships and scholarships abroad at the University of Nottingham, England, in the field of socio-psychological sciences; the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and the Michigan State University, East Lancing under the "Transylvania Political Leadership Program".
Boc also had a university career, taking the position of associate professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration and at the Faculty of Law of "Babes-Bolyai" University of Cluj-Napoca. He was a Doctor of Political Sciences and Political Philosophy at Babes-Bolyai University since 2000 and is also a PhD candidate in Constitutional Law and Political Institutions.
He was a member of the American Political Science Association since 1994 and of the Romanian Society of Political Science since 1999. Since 1996, he had been a lawyer at the Cluj Bar.
He was the mayor of Cluj in 2004. His mandate was renewed at the local elections in the summer of 2008. He has held several positions within the Democratic Party - President of the Cluj County Political Bureau since 2000, when he obtained his first deputy mandate. He was also the deputy chairman of the Legal Commission of the Chamber of Deputies in 2002 and the leader of the PD parliamentary group in the Chamber, respectively the DP's executive president in 2003.
Divisions between the PDL and PSD had festered since the beginning of 2009 after the Social Democrats accused President Basescu of interfering in the government decision-making process. Also in January, the PSD's interior minister, Gabriel Oprea, resigned in a dispute over the appointment of an intelligence officer considered too close to the coalition partners. In February 2009, the newly appointed Liviu Dragnea quit the same post, citing insufficient funds allocated to his ministry.
The new cabinet of Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc was given parliamentary approval in December 2009, ending a political crisis in the country and reaffirming Boc's leadership two months after parliament rejected his previous cabinet.
Tens of thousands of Romanians took to the streets of Bucharest on 19 May 2010 to demonstrate against a series of planned budget cuts. The protesters also called on the government to step down over the measures. The protesters, which police said numbered between 20,000 and 30,000, demanded the resignations of President Traian Basescu and Prime Minister Emil Boc over austerity measures they say will diminish their quality of life.
The spark that triggered the population's demonstrations against the Emil Boc government in January 2012 was the resignation of Undersecretary of State Raed Arafat of the Ministry of Health. He did not share the Executive's vision of reforming the sanitary field. On January 12, two days after Arafat's resignation, a lot of unauthorized protest actions took place in Bucharest and several cities in the country. After four days of confrontation, some politicians, others on the street, Emil Boc, recalled Raed Arafat at the Ministry of Health.
The gesture could not stop the protests in the street, and on February 6, under public pressure, Emil Boc announced his resignation and submited the mandate of the entire Cabinet. President Traian Basescu thanks Boc's resignation for "profound devotion" and, on the same night, proposes Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, for the post of prime minister.
Romania's prime minister resigned after weeks of nationwide protests of his government's tough austerity measures. Addressing his Cabinet, Prime Minister Emil Boc said he will give up his mandate, saying he is resigning to "ease the social situation."
Boc's announcement follows protests by thousands of Romanians who have braved freezing temperatures in the past month to voice their anger at his government over spending cuts and other austerity measures. Although most of the protests were peaceful, some clashes between demonstrators and police turned violent. The spending cuts were required as part of a multi-billion-dollar loan from the World Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Emil Boc was elected in June 2016 for a forth time Mayor of Cluj-Napoca, the second-largest city in Romania, representing the National Liberal Party and is now actively involved in the everyday life of the city. He served his first mandates as a Mayor in 2004-2009, when he was also the President of the Democrativ Liberal Party, a center-right party promoting the democratization and modernization of Romania and also the consolidation of its position as member of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
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