Political Activities
In 1991, Voiculescu founded the Humanist Party of Romania, which changed its name to the Conservative Party (PC) in May 2005. Under Voiculescu's leadership, the party also markedly changed its doctrine to embrace conservative values in line with the views of the European People's Party in the European Parliament. The PC, however, did not join the European People's Party.
The PC, then called the PUR, supported the Social Democratic Party (PSD)-led government from 2000–2004, and ran in coalition with the PSD in the 2004 Parliamentary and Presidential elections.
The PC was also part of the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu from December 2004 until the party withdrew in 2006. According to Freedom House, one reason the government of Popescu-Tăriceanu included the small PC, which received support from only 2 percent of the population, was due to the strength of Voiculescu family's Antenna 1 television station. Tom Gallagher, a Romania specialist at Bradford University, stated in January 2005, shortly after the PC entered the government, that Voiculescu "is a potentially major problem if the government decides to introduce legislation that will challenge vested interests which have profited through the questionable sale of state assets."
PC ran in a coalition with PSD in the 2008 legislative elections, and Voiculescu was elected senator in a Bucharest district.
As member of the Romanian Senate, Voiculescu has been strong in his opposition to Romanian President Traian Băsescu, who he states has exceeded constitutional boundaries and abused power. In March, 2007, he established a special commission within the Parliament to investigate Băsescu's actions as president and sponsored the legislation in the Parliament that led to a national referendum over whether Băsescu should remain in office. Voiculescu was also strongly opposed to former Minister of Justice Monica Macovei.
In April 2007, the Parliamentary Committee led by Senator Dan Voiculescu, has managed, for the first time in the post-revolutionary Romania, the suspension of an acting president. The report drawn up by the "Voiculescu Committee" was adopted in the Romanian Parliament, with 322 votes "for" an 108 "against", President Traian Băsescu thus suspended from his function.
Voiculescu opposed a draft law proposed by Justice Minister Monica Macovei and supported by the European Commission to set up a special agency for checking assets declarations for MPs and other senior officials. He subsequently supported a version characterized as "watered down" by the international media.
On September 2007, Dan Voiculescu resigned from his senator function as a form of protest against the blocking in the Romanian Parliament, of various important social laws. They were about promoting his projects on extending the contracts of tenants in the nationalized houses, reducing VAT on food, solidarity fund for pensioners and non-taxation of reinvested profits, legislation designed to bring more money to pensioners with low incomes, to lower prices on basic food or assist companies to reinvest their profits.
On November 2008, by occasion of the first elections held in the plurality system, Dan Voiculescu returns to the Romanian Parliament, obtaining 21,708 votes in the 8th college in Bucharest, and in December 2008 he is elected Vice-President of the Senate of Romania, with 83 votes for and 2 against.
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