Radio România Internațional

Tag: 2009 presidential election

  • February 12, 2018 UPDATE

    February 12, 2018 UPDATE

    Report – The Romanian Parliament’s plenary sitting approved on Monday the report of the commission that investigated aspects related to the presidential election in 2009. According to the report, a series of facts likely to fuel suspicions of electoral fraud have been found. The report’s conclusions were backed by MPs with the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats and rejected by the opposition, who voted against it, while representatives of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania and of the national minorities abstained from voting. The report will be submitted to the relevant institutions, such as the Prosecutor’s Office with the High Court of Cassation and Justice, the Presidential Administration, the Higher Council of Magistracy and the Government. The report says that the election was allegedly rigged in favor of the rightist Traian Basescu, helping him win a second term as president to the detriment of the Social Democrat Mircea Geoana.




    Military drills — 100 Romanian soldiers will be training, starting on Monday until Friday, together with around 200 soldiers from Bulgaria, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and the US in the Babadag shooting range (in southeastern Romania) as part of the “Black Sea Rotational Force” multinational drill. Participating in the drill from the Romanian Army are soldiers from the ground and naval forces as well as from the air forces.




    Flu — The National Public Health Institute on Monday announced that the number of deaths caused by the flu virus in Romania reached 21. More than 300 people have got the flu so far and over 800 thousand people have been vaccinated against it. Doctors have reiterated recommendations to the population to get vaccinated against the backdrop of a surge in flu cases. According to health minister Sorina Pintea Romania is not yet dealing with a flu epidemic, adding that prevention measures are very important and hospitals and public health institutions should take the necessary measures in this respect.




    Chisinau — The Audiovisual Coordinating Council in the Republic of Moldova is monitoring, as of Monday, whether radio and television stations observe the so-called ‘anti-propaganda’ law, which came into force on February 11. The law is aimed at eliminating the propagandistic messages from the Russian Federation and at protecting consumers from possible attempts of disinformation or manipulation from the outside. At the same time, the law is meant to eliminate media provocation against the Republic of Moldova, by rejecting TV and radio programs that provide information, analyses, military and political content that are not produced in the EU, the US, Canada and other states which are members of the European Convention on Cross-Border Television.




    Baccalaureate – In Romania, as many as 177,000 high school students and graduates from the previous graduating classes on Monday had started the exams assessing their linguistic and digital competences as part of the national Baccalaureate exam. Exams include oral examination in the Romanian language, and in the mother tongue for the students belonging to national minorities, assessment of digital competences and of linguistic competences in a language of international circulation. This is the first time when these exams are scheduled during the school year, several months ahead of high school graduation. The written examinations of the national Baccalaureate exam are scheduled for June.




    Tennis — 5 tennis players from Romania, among whom world’s no. 2 Simona Halep, are participating in the Doha tournament, in Qatar. On Monday, in the first round, Monica Niculescu (92 WTA) defeated Russian Maria Sharapova (41 WTA) in three sets, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 while Mihaela Buzărnescu (43 WTA) beat Ukrainian Lesia Ţurenko (40 WTA), 7-5, 6-4. On Tuesday, after the inaugural round, Irina Begu (37 WTA) will take on the Australian Samantha Stosur (44 WTA), and Sorana Cîrstea (38 WTA) will play against Maria Sakkari of Greece. Simona Halep, who qualified directly to the 2nd round, will be up against Russian Ekaterina Makarova (36 WTA). Halep won the Doha tournament in 2014. (Translated by Elena Enache)

  • The 2009 presidential election case

    The 2009 presidential election case

    The Prosecutor General’s Office has closed the case on the 2009 presidential election in Romania, as a result of which Traian Basescu won his second term in the presidential office, after defeating the Social Democrat Mircea Geoana. Prosecutors have stated that no illegal acts could be identified, such as abuse of power or electoral fraud. Prosecutors have heard several politicians who back then were holding key-positions in state institutions and have called on the Permanent Electoral Authority and the Special Telecommunications Service to provide them with relevant documents.



    The case was opened following statements made by the journalist and former political adviser Dan Andronic, who claimed that on the eve of the second round of the 2009 presidential election, he ran, in informal circumstances, into a meeting of the Prosecutor General Laura Codruta Kovesi, currently the head of the National Anticorruption Directorate, the former director of the Romanian Intelligence Service, George Maior, currently ambassador to Washington, and his first deputy Florian Coldea. Andronic stated he felt like witnessing the meeting of a crisis team, especially given that all those mentioned before would most likely have been dismissed had Geoana won.



    That, according to Andronic, would explain the tension upon learning the exit-poll results and the relief the next day, when Basescu was announced winner, although the difference between him and his contender was of only several tens of thousands of votes. Irrespective of the Prosecutor’s Office decision, the special parliamentary committee established to investigate into the matter will keep working.



    Here is the chairman of the Legal Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, the Social Democrat Eugen Nicolicea: “As you know, the idea was that one could not carry on a parliamentary investigation if the prosecution in the same case started, or if the public prosecutor’s office is conducting an investigation too. Nobody said, though, that if there is no investigation conducted by the prosecutor’s office, the parliamentary investigation should be affected.”



    From the very beginning, the media has described the parliamentary investigation as a perfectly democratic exercise, but also perfectly useless, and doubted the credibility of the one who set off the bomb in the first place. Arrested for involvement into a case of corruption, the author of the book “100% anti-Basescu” which speaks of his convictions in the early 2000s, Andronic subsequently changed his position and became a political adviser to the re-elected president himself. Heard by the special commission, he admitted he had nothing to add to what had already been discussed in the media and had no evidence that the elections were actually rigged. Hearings of prominent politicians and diplomats did not end in resounding revelations either. Pundits say that nothing can take Basescu’s presidential term back and nobody can turn Geoana into a head of state. The only predictable outcome of this situation is that Romanians will keep losing trust in a political class that has already been severely discredited.

  • Behind the scenes of the 2009 presidential election

    Behind the scenes of the 2009 presidential election

    In a very democratic, although
    rather perfunctory move, a special Parliament committee is investigating the
    unclear circumstances in which in 2009 Traian Basescu won a second term in
    office as president of Romania, after defeating the then president of the
    Social Democratic Party Mircea Geoana in the runoff. The committee was set up
    following disclosures by the controversial journalist Dan Andronic. Heard on
    Monday, he said he had no other information apart from what he had already made
    public, nor any evidence that the election had been rigged. A questionable
    character, arrested last year in a corruption-related investigation, and the
    author of a booklet whose very title, 100% anti-Basescu, is tale-telling of
    his firm beliefs in the early 2000s, Andronic later switched sides and got a
    well-paid job as political adviser to then-president Basescu.


    He said in an interview recently
    that on the night of the runoff 8 years ago, he had met, in an informal setting,
    with the then Prosecutor General of Romania Laura Codruta Kovesi, currently the
    head of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, the former head of the
    Romanian Intelligence Service George Maior, now the Ambassador of Romania to
    Washington, and his deputy Florian Coldea. According to Andronic, the meeting
    looked very much like the gathering of a crisis committee. All the
    participants, Andronic went on to say, risked losing their positions had Geoana
    won the election. Hence the tension with which they received the exit-polls
    indicating the Social Democrat Geoana as the winner, and the sigh of relief at
    the news, made public the next morning, that Basescu had won after all, by a
    very narrow margin.


    On Tuesday, both Geoana and his
    campaign chief Viorel Hrebenciuc, appeared before the committee. Still
    unconsoled after that defeat, which made him a subject matter for many jokes,
    Geoana said there had been a deliberate effort, coordinated by top-level
    leaders of public institutions in Romania, and intended to influence the
    outcome of that election. Hrebenciuc, too, said he suspected a fraud,
    especially in the polling stations abroad, some of which had reported more than
    a thousand voters in only 14 hours.


    The former chief of the Permanent
    Electoral Authority, Octavian Opris, said that, according to documents signed
    by officers with the relevant institutions, the 2009 elections took place in
    normal conditions and all the relevant documents were legal. Opris admitted,
    nonetheless, that the way the vote had been organized at the Romanian Embassy
    in Paris, run at that time by a very pro-Basescu Ambassador, Teodor Baconschi,
    did not look completely right.


    The parliamentary committee will
    next hear other prominent diplomats and politicians involved in that election.
    Commentators note that, even if shattering revelations were made, nothing can
    now take back Basescu’s term in office or make Geoana president instead. The
    only likely consequence of the investigation is that people’s distrust of an
    already unpopular political class would be dramatically reinforced.