November 3, 2014 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news.
România Internațional, 03.11.2014, 12:15
Romania’s Social Democrat prime minister Victor Ponta will face the Liberal mayor of Sibiu, Klaus Johannis, in the second round of the presidential elections due on the 16th of November. In the first round on Sunday, they ranked first and second, respectively, out of a total of 14 candidates. With almost all votes counted, Ponta got 40.33% and Johannis 30.44%. No other candidate won more than 5% of the votes. Voter turnout stood at around 53%.
Romania’s outgoing President, Traian Basescu, has said that Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean and Minister-Delegate for the Romanians Abroad, Bogdan Stanoevici, should resign, for what he calls ‘serious deficiencies’ in the elections organisation abroad. The insufficient staff and the small number of polling stations set up abroad prevented a large number of Romanians from casting their vote, Basescu has said in a release. On the other hand, PM Ponta says that Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean and his team have guaranteed with their job that no Romanian citizen willing to vote in the second round of elections on November 16 will be left outside the polling stations. In the first round, on November 2nd, Romanians outside th country borders queued outside polling stations for hours, and even so, hundreds of them were unable to vote because polling stations closed at 9 pm. Tensions were reported outside polling stations in London, Munich and Chisinau, while French police were called at Romania’s embassy in Paris to prevent things from going out of control. Three requests for the first round of voting to be cancelled were submitted to the Constitutional Court. The Court should validate the first round of elections on Friday.
The Romanian Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that it does not recognise the so-called elections organised on November 2nd by the pro-Russian separatists in Doneţk and Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine. According to the Romanian officials, these two regions are part of the sovereign Ukraine and cannot be separated from it, which is why the elections have lo legal ground. The elections, the ministry says, are provocative actions aimed at granting a so-called democratic legitimacy to a very serious violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Bucharest’s reaction comes after the pro-Russian separatists have announced their victory in the elections organised by themselves. The West described the elections as illegal and illegitimate.
At least 24 illegal migrants drowned on Monday when a boat taking them towards European Union waters sank in the Black Sea just off Istanbul, Turkish media reported. Seven people were rescued and nine more were missing from the stricken boat, which had set off earlier from Istanbul and was heading towards Romania.
The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep has maintained her third place in the WTA ranking, after Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Three other Romanian players are to be found in the WTA top 100: Camelia Begu on the 42nd place, Monica Niculescu on the 47th place and Sorana Carstea, who is up 2 places from last week, on the 93rd place.
