A new calendar for presidential elections
Presidential elections in Romania will be held in May this year
Corina Cristea, 09.01.2025, 14:00
Gathered in the first meeting this year, the political parties that make up the ruling coalition in Romania – PSD, PNL and UDMR – and the representatives of national minorities established the calendar for the new presidential elections. The decision comes after last year’s elections were annulled by the Constitutional Court due to external hybrid interference and the undeclared financing of the electoral campaign of one of the candidates. More specifically, the independent candidate Călin Georgescu, an extremist sovereigntist and admirer of Vladimir Putin, who took everybody by surprise managing to gather the largest number of votes in the first round of the elections that were later cancelled.
The coalition has agreed that the first round of the presidential elections will take place on May 4, and the second round on May 18. The decision is to be formalized next week through normative acts adopted by the executive – a draft emergency ordinance and the draft decision. When setting the dates, it was taken into account that the elections do not overlap with the Easter and Palm Sunday holidays, states a press release. The release also reads that the first round will take place at the same time as the partial elections in certain counties: elections for mayors in 13 communes, two cities and also for a County Council. The governing coalition has also reconfirmed that the former president of the PNL Crin Antonescu remains its candidate for the supreme position in the state.
Announced, on December 23, as the sole representative of the coalition in the race for Cotroceni, a few days ago Crin Antonescu had suspended himself from the agreement, citing the lack of a concrete date for the presidential elections, as well as the lack of support from the political forces that had proposed him. Wednesday was also the day when the Bucharest Court of Appeal published the reasons for the decision by which, on December 31, the legal action against the Central Electoral Bureau regarding the annulment of the presidential elections was rejected.
The right to vote and the right to be elected were violated through the exercise of an abuse of power – Călin Georgescu and the Coalition for the Defense of the Rule of Law claimed in their lawsuit. Călin Georgescu also claimed that the right of the Romanian people to exercise national sovereignty through its representative bodies, established through free and fair elections, was not respected, nor the right of the citizens of Romania to live in a democratic and legal state. The decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania are final and binding, therefore they cannot be challenged in court – writes the Bucharest Court of Appeal in its justification, also noting that by canceling these elections, the civil and fundamental rights of the citizens provided for in the Constitution were not violated. (MI)
