Gov’t consults with the parties to determine the presidential elections date

Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has announced since last week that he will consult with the parliamentary parties to establish the calendar of the presidential elections. The leader of the PNL, Nicolae Ciucă, will be absent from the negotiations, but from the side of the liberals, the Minister of the Interior, Cătălin Predoiu, will be present at the debate.

“Given the Government’s intention to finalize the electoral calendar for the presidential and parliamentary elections -2024, on Monday, July 1, consultations will take place with the political parties, at the Victoria Palace, according to the following schedule”:

10.00 – USR

11.00 – AUR

14.00 – UDMR

15.00 – SOS

16.00 – Group of National Minorities

17.00 – PUSL

Negotiations with other political formations will continue on Tuesday, July 2.

On behalf of the Government, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, Social Democratic Deputy Prime Minister Marian Neacșu and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs, the liberal Cătălin Predoiu, will be present.

The consultations at the Victoria Palace come in the context in which PSD and PNL have not been able to agree on the calendar of the presidential elections. Although they initially agreed that the date for the first round of the presidential elections would be on September 15, the liberals now want the elections to be held at the end of the year, in November.

At 1:00 p.m., the PNL leadership will reopen discussions about the election calendar in a meeting of the National Political Bureau. Until now, the other parliamentary parties have confirmed their presence at the consultations with the Government team.

 

USR asks for the compliance with the law and timely elections

The USR delegation reaffirmed, at the Government discussions regarding the election calendar, that it wants compliance with the law and timely elections, the new USR chairwoman Elena Lasconi, said on Monday at the end of the consultations at the Victoria Palace. “I think this dialogue was pointless, if they understood each other, but it seems that they are playing for democracy. We’ll see if a consultation was just faked (…). We were firm, just like in the previous statements – we said compliance with the law and elections on time”, declared Lasconi at the Government.

According to the USR leader, the discussions are focused on the elections, while the Romanians’ problems are different. “It seems absolutely incredible to me that starting today everything is getting more expensive and the price of diesel and gasoline is also increasing,” said Lasconi.

AUR wants the elections to take place on time

The President of the AUR, George Simion, declared on Monday, before the talks with Prime Minister Ciolacu, on the date of the presidential elections, that for the AUR it was opportune for the elections to take place on time in this year, accusing the prime minister and his PNL partners of being liars. He also said that it is a flawed electoral process and that the liberals are playing tricks on PSD.

“It seems to me that Mr. Ciolacu gives himself too much importance for what he is, a liar,” said the AUR president, before entering the consultations at the Victoria Palace. “We are not asking for anything, except that individuals like Marcel Ciolacu and Rareş Bogdan stop lying. Rareş Bogdan came up with this version of the joint ventures so that pensions would no longer be taxed. Now he really wants to save the schools. Can you imagine how Rareş Bogdan saves the schools, that there will be only one ballot to be counted, not five, as in the illegal combined elections. It’s a flawed electoral process. The liberal gentlemen are making fun of the PSD, they, who held the train?”, said Simion. George Simion also said that “for AUR it was opportune for the elections to take place on time this year”. But what to do, if the prime minister is a liar and his partners are even more liars?” added the AUR leader.

Diana Șoșoacă (SOS Romania): This government and this combined leadership will only lead Romania to breaking the law

The President of the SOS Romania Party, Diana Șoșoacă, said on Monday, before the consultations at the Victoria Palace on the date of the presidential elections, that “ this Government and this combined leadership is only leading Romania to break the law”.

“I don’t think they need to prove once again to Romanians and the whole world that this government and this combined leadership is only leading Romania to break the law. As for the curiosity of why we were invited here, I was surprised, because at this moment they respect the Constitution and the laws of the country. The European Parliament is mentioned in the Romanian Constitution, after it was amended in 2003, so the European Parliament parties are equal to the parliamentary parties. I don’t want to discuss the superiority of the Constitution over European law, but it seems to me that whoever advised Mr. Ciolacu to call us advised him well, because anyway he was attacked, however his notoriety is decreasing, there was no public support never and then I think it is a step to repair his image. He will not be able to fix it unless at some point in his life he resigns with honor along with the entire Government and they give the government to the nationalists, in this case the SOS Romania Party, they stop rigging the elections, so that we can recover what they destroyed for 34 years”, claimed Diana Şoşoacă.

Asked how she comments on the fact that, in the most recent survey, she comes first in terms of notoriety, but last in terms of trust level, Diana Şoşoacă answered: “Indeed, I am in first place in terms of notoriety, but I don’t have 97.5, but I have 100% and I’m telling you from the data of the European Parliament. If you are going to look at INSCOP, (…) in fact, Mr. Kelemen Hunor is in first place in terms of distrust, with 6 point I don’t know how many percent, after which comes Mr. George Simion and after whom I would come, with 20, 2% against Mircea Geoană’s 34%”.

UDMR prooposes October compromise

The leader of the UDMR senators, Cseke Attila, said on Monday that the Hungarian Democratic Union in Romania supports the separation of presidential and parliamentary elections and proposed, during consultations with Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, from the Victoria Palace, that the elections for the country’s president be set in October.

“We sent the prime minister some principles based on which we think the date for the presidential elections should be set. First of all, we believe that this issue needs to be closed as quickly as possible. It is the responsibility of the government coalition, and the legal attribute of issuing the election date is exclusively the Government’s. A second principle that I stated is the one related to the necessity, in our opinion, of separating the presidential elections from the parliamentary elections. Practically, we have been voting in such a system for 20 years and we believe that it is a good solution. The duties of the President of Romania are duties that are separate from those of the Parliament, the challenges of the presidency are different from the challenges of the Parliament”, said Cseke Attila, at the Government.

He added that the first round of the presidential elections on September 15 is no longer possible unless the Executive issues a decision in this regard on Tuesday, this being the last day when this is still possible. If the date of the elections on September 15 and September 29 the second round is no longer possible, as the coalition initially established, then we believe that these elections can be set for October. If there will be no agreement in the governing coalition, then the presidential elections will have to be held sometime in November. There is the possibility of organizing the presidential elections, in order to meet the constitutional deadlines, on November 24 the first round, on November 30 the parliamentary elections, and on December 8 the second round of the presidential elections. Here we would fall within the constitutional term related to the convening of the new Parliament”, he said.

REPER will go to the Victoria Palace on Tuesday morning

Ramona Strugariu and Dragoş Pîslaru, co-presidents of the REPER Party, and deputy Alin Prunean, vice-president of REPER, will participate, on Tuesday, starting at 9:00, in the consultations called by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on the topic of establishing the calendar for the organization of the presidential elections in the fall.

According to the leaders of REPER, these consultations should have taken place with the political parties and civil society before deciding to merge the European parliamentary elections with the local ones and to assume an emergency ordinance for the organization of the elections which ignored the law and violated the rights of the parties political to have delegates in the wards.

“After pseudo-consultations, we expect an assumption of the disastrous management of the June 9 elections, the resolution of the REPER recount requests, which the Central Electoral Bureau ignored, as well as the initiation of an electoral reform that would allow, among other things, the correct representation of political formations and independent candidates in the wards, local elections for mayors in two voting rounds, equal access to the electoral competition, without absurd and prohibitive rules such as the condition of collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures in order to participate in the elections. The political monopoly of the electoral legislation is not part of the democratic game”, said the co-presidents of REPER, according to a press release.

AURcalendarconsultationsLiberalsnicolae ciucaparliamentary partiespresidential electionsPrime Minister Marcel CiolacuSOSUDMRUSR
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