Radio România Internațional

Tag: election law

  • Constitutional Court Ruling on Local Elections

    Constitutional Court Ruling on Local Elections

    Two days before the start of the election campaign, the Constitutional Court debated on Wednesday the challenge of constitutionality in the case of two articles of the local election law. The first article refers to the use of the one-round system, while the second one concerns the minimum number of signatures required for independent runners to have their candidacy validated.



    The two articles were challenged by journalist Liviu Avram, but the Constitutional Court dismissed them as ungrounded. The president of the Court Augustin Zegrean said that from the point of the view of the Court, there will only be one round of voting for the local elections, and that practice would not change from one day to the next, despite other similar cases being brought before the Court.



    The Courts ruling has sparked a diverse response among the political class. The co-president of the National Liberal Party Alina Gorghiu believes two rounds are necessary to elect local officials, as has been the case in Romania from 1992 to 2012. She hopes that next week, when the Court will issue its judgment on the merits regarding the use of the one-round or the two-round voting system, which she says is necessary in order to respect the principles of democracy, it will rule that it is the majority who will decide the winner of the local elections.



    The Social-Democrat vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies legal committee, Ciprian Nica, says that both the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party stand to gain from the decision of the Constitutional Court with respect to maintaining the one-round system. In his opinion, rules should not change in the middle of a game. He said, however, that the Courts arguments could be taken into account in the future, if the law is to be amended at some point during the next Parliament term.



    The co-president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, Calin Popescu Tariceanu, shares the opinion that the voting system should not change one month before the elections, and that the next Parliament elected in autumn must re-discuss the way in which mayors are elected, given that the current law works to the disadvantage of smaller parties.



    The decision of the Constitutional Court is welcome because election rules should not change during the election campaign, agrees Martin Arpad, an MP for the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania.

  • New Election Law in Romania

    New Election Law in Romania

    President Klaus Iohannis has signed into law a bill on elections for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and on the organization and operation of the Permanent Electoral Authority.



    The bill changes the rules for the election of MPs and gives the Authority more powers both during election campaigns and between elections. The most important change for the Romanian political scene is that deputies and senators will be elected in a party-list proportional representation system, which was abandoned back in 2008. The uninominal voting system, which proved unsuitable for the Romanian political life, is thus given up.



    The new law also stipulates that the number of MPs should be lowered by over 100, more specifically, to 466 as against 588 at present. The law keeps the 5% Parliament entry threshold for parties, and introduces a threshold of 8 to 10% for electoral alliances. As a response to the flawed organization of last autumns presidential ballot, when many Romanians living abroad were unable to vote because of the long queues in polling stations, the new legislation introduces a special facility for these citizens. Polling stations will be organized in towns and villages where at least 100 Romanian voters reside. All these citizens need to do is to have their address abroad registered with the Electoral Registry, by means of a written application submitted to the Permanent Electoral Authority starting on the 1st of April, the year when the parliamentary election is scheduled, and no later than 48 hours after the start of the election campaign. Under the new law, the Authority will communicate to the Foreign Ministry a list of the localities abroad where polling stations need to be opened.



    Another novelty is the establishment of the Corps of Electoral Experts. This is a database of individuals who can be presidents of polling stations. The database is to be put together, managed and updated by the Permanent Electoral Authority. The election for the Senate and Chamber of Deputies in 2016 will be the first parliamentary election where an IT system will be used in order to monitor voter turnout and to prevent illegal voting, both in polling stations in Romania, and abroad.

  • The Senate votes for the new election law

    The Senate votes for the new election law

    The draft election law was passed on Wednesday by the Senate and has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for approval. Under the new law, next years elections will use the party-list voting system, while the numbers of MPs will also be cut. At present, Parliament totals 412 deputies and 176 senators. Adopted by a large majority in the Senate, the draft law provides for a representation quota of one Deputy for every 73,000 inhabitants and one Senator for every 168,000 inhabitants.



    The new Parliament will therefore have 308 deputies and 134 senators, 18 MPs representing ethnic minorities and 6 representing the Diaspora. All political factions voted in favour of the bill. Both the Social-Democratic Party in the ruling coalition and the National Liberal Party in opposition have hailed the draft law. Liberal MP Puiu Hasotti believes the draft law will restore a sense of normalcy, given that the party-list voting system worked just fine up until 2004 and continues to be used in most countries with a proportional representation system. Two rounds of elections, in 2008 and 2012, have revealed the deep flaws in the current election law, which also sparks political turmoil, Hasotti went on to say.



    Under the new law, the election threshold will be set at 5% of the total number of votes at national level, or at 20% of the votes in at least four constituencies for all candidates. Additionally, in the case of political coalitions or election alliances, apart from meeting the election threshold in order to ensure representation, the second member of the alliance will need to grab 3% of the votes at national level, while every other member will need to secure 1% of the votes cast in all constituencies, up to a maximum value of 10% of these votes.



    The reform of the Parliament is not a new idea in itself. Several months ago president Klaus Iohannis held consultations with political parties in this respect. On the sideline of the meeting the president and party representatives agreed on a timetable, under which Romania commits to fully reforming its election and party funding legislation by the end Parliaments current tenure. At the time, president Iohannis said cutting the number of MPs was not a populist move, nor was it motivated by any financial reasons, but argued that a smaller Parliament is an efficient Parliament.