Radio România Internațional

Tag: December 6

  • Protests and preparations for the presidential election

    Protests and preparations for the presidential election

    The ruling coalition in Romania made up of the PSD-PNL-UDMR last week decided that the presidential election be held on May 4th and 18th. The Executive in Bucharest is now preparing the documents needed for making these dates official. The country’s Social-Democratic Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu, says there is obviously a huge public expectation related to the date of the presidential election. However, the people in the street have conveyed a more radical message: the Constitutional Court cancelled the first round of voting in an unjustified manner and should now re-think the ruling it made on December 6th.

    Such a review appeal was made by the lawyers of the independent candidate, Călin Georgescu, a pro-Russia extremist, who unexpectedly emerged as winner of the first presidential round held on November 24th. The moment of the appeal registration was accompanied by an unauthorized protest staged by thousands of Georgescu’s supporters.

    The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), the flagship party of the sovereignist trio in the Romanian Parliament, staged a large-scale protest in Bucharest, during which people from all over the country called for the resumption of the second round of the presidential election and the sacking of president Klaus Iohannis.

    ‘The Meeting for Democracy’, as it was titled, also included a march between the government and presidential buildings.

    “In a normal Romania, at the end of this day, the illegal resident of the Cotroceni Palace, Klaus Werner Iohannis, will announce his resignation and we’ll rejoin the institutional framework so that we may be able to observe the will of the Romanian people”, the AUR leader, George Simion says. According to him, the protests will continue until all the protesters’ claims are met, and thousands of people will take to the streets on January 24th, when we celebrate the Union of the Romanian Principalities. The USR president, Elena Lasconi, who also qualified for the presidential race together with Georgescu, says that she understands the Romanians who took to the streets in order to point out to the Constitutional Court, quote, ‘the fact that it used its power discriminately’. She says the solution is neither in the street, nor on social networks, though.

    In her opinion, it would be normal for president Iohannis to step down and let the head of the Senate take over the country’s leadership as an interim.

    We recall the CCR cancelled the presidential election in November-December last year, after the country’s Higher Defence Council had published a report on foreign interferences in the election process that favoured Georgescu and the alleged illegal funding of his campaign.

    However, the facts, on which the Court based its unprecedented ruling, have not been confirmed by legal investigations yet, which casts a question mark upon its decision. As a result Klaus Iohannis is still Romania’s president, although he finished its second and last mandate on December 21.

    (bill)

     

  • November 6, 2020

    November 6, 2020

    COVID-19 RO. A new pandemic record was reported in Romania for the past 24 hours: 10,260 new cases of infection with the new coronavirus reported today, mostly in Timis, in the west. Next come Cluj (west) and the capital Bucharest. Since late February, some 287,000 people have tested positive. 123 deaths have been reported today, raising the death toll to 7,663. 1,001 patients are in intensive care. Outside Romanias borders, 6,853 people have been confirmed as infected, and 126 have died of Covid-19.



    RESTRICTIONS. New restrictions to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic will be introduced in Romania on Monday. Thus, at the proposal of the National Committee for Emergency Situations, the mask would be mandatory in closed and open spaces throughout the country. Traffic restrictions will be imposed between 23:00 and 5:00 in the morning. Courses in the pre-university education system will be held exclusively online, public or private meetings and parties will be banned, and shops will close at 21:00. The measures will be valid for 30 days and must be approved by government decision.



    PANDEMIC. The total number of people infected with the new coronavirus worldwide has exceeded 49,000,000, according to data centralized by worldometers.info. The death toll is above 1,240,000. The USA, India and Brazil are the most affected. In Europe, too, the situation is getting worse. France is the European country with the highest number of infections, 1.6 million. Paris authorities have announced a record number of cases of coronavirus infection in 24 hours – more than 58,000. The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, has warned the population that, in the absence of responsible behavior, the second wave will be much more violent and longer lasting than the one in the spring. In Italy, night traffic will be banned next month, museums are closed and shopping malls are only open on weekends. In regions with many cases of Covid-19, such as Lombardy, Piedmont and Vale dAosta, the population cannot leave their localities. Greece will instate a state of national quarantine by the end of the month.



    CAMPAIGN. In Romania, the electoral campaign for the December 6 parliamentary elections has started today. Just like with the local elections, which took place in late September, authorities have limited the number of participants in election rallies and imposed strict sanitary rules. Romanians abroad will be able to vote in two days, on December 5 and 6. The Diaspora will be represented in the future legislature by 4 deputies and two senators.



    US ELECTION. Counting continues in the United States, two days after the end of the presidential election. According to CNN estimates, the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, has so far secured 253 of the 270 required electoral votes, while current Republican President Donald Trump has 213. Electors are nominated by states based on the majority vote in each of them. Joe Biden has said he has “no doubt” about his victory over Donald Trump once all the results are known, while his Republican rival is challenging the vote count.



    HAGUE. Hashim Thaci, who resigned as president of Kosovo on Thursday after being officially indicted for war crimes by the special court in the Hague, has been detained, the international court has announced. In June, 52-year-old Thaci, the former political leader of the Kosovo separatist rebellion, was indicted for war crimes during the 1998-1999 conflict with Serbia. According to the indictment, he is guilty of nearly 100 crimes, involving hundreds of identified victims, Kosovars, Albanians, Serbians, Roma and others, including political opponents. Belgrade refuses to recognize Kosovos independence proclaimed in 2008 after the war in the late 1990s, which left 13,000 dead. Serbia is backed by allies such as Russia and China, while the United States is among the countries that immediately recognized the new Kosovo state.



    HANDBALL. Romanias mens handball national team was defeated by the Swedish team, 33 – 30, on Thursday evening, in Gothenburg, in its first match in Group 8 of the second stage of the EURO 2022 preliminaries. Sunday, Romania will play, on home turf in Baia Mare (northwest), against Montenegro. The mens national handball team has not qualified for a continental final tournament since 1996. Also on Thursday evening, the Romanian football champion, CFR Cluj (northwest), was defeated by AS Rome 5-0, in the Italian capital, in the third stage of Group A of the Europa League competition. On November 26, the two teams will meet again, this time in Romania, in Cluj-Napoca. (M. Ignatescu)