A draft law on
extending the mandate of the local authorities is expected in Romania
this week, after the Constitutional Court has ruled out a government
ordinance in this respect. In the meantime the opposition Social
Democrats held talks with all the party leaders to issue a draft,
which besides the extension of the present mandates also stipulates
the new election date. Here is The PSD interim president Marcel
Ciolacu
Marcel Ciolacu: If we don’t
intervene quickly, local authorities can no longer continue their
activity. I would like to also include a date for the future
election, come up with an amendment so that if experts say that the
population is still at risk, we may extend the date for these
elections.
Liberal President Ludovic Orban,
believes the Court’s ruling over who is going to set the election
date remains unclear.
Ludovic Orban: We
believe that a good date would be late September or early October.
Now we are waiting as we haven’t clearly understood from the
Court’s ruling who is going to set the next election date – the
government, through a decision or Parliament. Until we see the
court’s motivation, we cannot precisely say tell that.
Local election should be staged in
autumn and the ones for Parliament on the set date – was a message
conveyed last week by politicians during a round of debates over the
political parties’ scenarios concerning the upcoming elections.
The Social Democrats have made an
appeal for consensus among all the political forces, based on
dialogue including with civil society. USR president Dan Barna
pointed out that these local and Parliamentary elections might have
the lowest turnout in the past 30 years at the same time pleading for
the implementation of the postal voting. The measure was supported by
the Liberals as well. Other proposals include a lower number of
signatures and the possibility of forwarding online applications.
In turn, the PRO
Romania leader Victor Ponta believes the period of time between the
two election rounds must be as short as possible.
One week, two
weeks between them is the most logical option, also from the point of
expenses, organisation, the risk of spreading the disease etc. And it
also make sense from a political viewpoint, says Victor Ponta
adding that PRO Romania will be supporting any modern voting measure
provided all the security guarantees are respected. In another
development, Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, president of ALDE last week
announced that his group together with PSD and Pro Romania were
holding talks on forging a center-to-left coalition in order to run
in the future local and Parliamentary elections.
(translated by
bill)