Reactions after the referendum

A draft law on civil partnership will be forwarded to Parliament next week. The announcement was made soon after a referendum to redefine family in the Romanian Constitution was invalidated

Corina Cristea, 09.10.2018, 12:48

Over 90% of those who went to the polls to
vote in the referendum organised in Romania to revise the Constitution to
redefine family as the consented marriage between a man and a woman voted YES.
The referendum hasn’t been validated, however, because only 21% of the voters
went to the polls, failing to reach the 30% threshold. Once the things settled,
reactions emerged, causing turmoil on the political scene. All political
parties, except for the Save Romania Union, USR, had expressed support for
changing the Constitution, voting in Parliament the law to revise the fundamental
law of the country. From the ranks of the Social Democratic Party, the senior
party in the left-of-centre ruling coalition in Romania- vice-president Paul
Stănescu considers the referendum to be a failure not only for the
Social-Democrats, but also for the whole society.

I’m disappointed about what happened with the referendum. I expected
that many citizens of Romania would say ‘YES’. We should make an analysis of the
causes leading to the poor turnout. It is simply the failure of the whole
Romanian society- people simply refused to go to the polls.

The result of the referendum reflects the
citizens’ lack of interest, says Călin Popescu Tăriceanu, the president of the
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, the junior partner of the Social Democratic
Party in the ruling coalition, who announced that no analysis was or will be
made at the level of his party, because the national referendum was not
organised by ALDE. In exchange, the National Liberal Party, the main opposition
party in Romania, has already made an analysis of the way in which it
positioned itself in the referendum, after several party members accused President
Ludovic Orban of pushing the party into a political failure, that he does not
modernise the party, but he pursues an out-dated policy. Ludovic Orban:

Honestly, I would have expected these colleagues of mine to tread on the
Social-Democratic Party, to attack the Social-Democrats for having confiscated
the referendum, for the resounding failure, to join us on the offensive against
them, on all frontlines.

In another move, the leader of the Save
Romania Union, Dan Barna, finds regrettable the attitude of the representatives
of the Coalition for Family organisation, which, managed to collect 3 million
signatures to organise the referendum, and are now accusing the way in which
the referendum was organised and the way the parties boycotted it. By these
signatures, the Romanians have been called to the polls to express their
stance, and they said this initiative does not concern them, the majority of
the Romanian citizens, Dan Barna has explained. The Romanian Patriarchate has launched
a call for spiritual unity and for further defending family, following the
invalidation of the referendum.

(Translated by D. Vijeu)