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PM Orban: Elections must be held on December 6, new Parliament must be mirror of citizens' choices
Prime Minister Ludovic Orban told on Sunday evening private broadcaster Romania TV, that the parliamentary elections must be held on December 6, mentioning that the Government has established this date legally and constitutionally and the law that gives Parliament the right to set the date of the election is not yet in force.
"Based on the constitutional and legal framework, the Government has set the date of the elections for December 6. This is the constitutional and legal date of the elections. In the meantime, I saw that another CCR [Constitutional Court of Romania] decision was issued which surprised me and I suspect not only me, but also others, but this is it. For the time being, it does not affect the electoral process. We have all the procedures in place and in progress, in accordance with the legal provisions and the Government decisions on the conduct of the elections. The law by which Parliament has assumed the power to set the date of elections cannot enter into force until the CCR reasoning. There is still to go until the entry into force of the law. So the draft law announced by Mr. Deputy Dohotaru, which aims to set the date of the elections on March 14 cannot go under debate because the law we appealed at the Court together with the President is not in force, and the Court rejected our appeal, which gives Parliament the power to establish the date of the election," Orban said.
He added that the Liberals will use all legal and constitutional leverage to elect a new parliament that would be "a faithful mirror of the citizens' political choices".
"Obviously, we have all the legal and constitutional levers we can use. We will use them because, from our point of view, we need a new parliament that is in line with the will of the people, that is a faithful mirror of the citizens' political choices. Today's Parliament was voted in 2016, it has nothing to do with the reality of Romania, with the political choices of the Romanians, it is a Parliament controlled by PSD [the Social Democratic Party], which makes only decisions that harm Romania. Every day that this majority, controlled by PSD, remains in office, leading to decisions that can lead to unsuspectedly serious consequences in the medium and long term for Romania. From our point of view, the elections must be held on December 6," Orban added.
He said that the budget for next year will be voted in the new Parliament, claiming that PSD "ruined" the emergency ordinance for budget revision.
În his opinion, the extension of the mandate of the current Parliament will generate "negative consequences", since the current Legislature is "dominated" by the PSD (Social Democratic Party), which is "just as inclined to do harm to Romania".
While the Social Democrats are allegedly considering to submit a draft law to delay the parliamentary elections from December 2020 to March 2021, such a bill has been tabled on Friday by independent deputy Adrian Dohotaru (former USR member). As a matter of fact, sources from the Parliament revealed that the law is actually designed and drafted by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which believes that a postponement of the general elections would be in their favour.
Sources say that PSD believes that a potential delay of elections by three months would help them obtain a better score. More precisely, PSD counts on the fact that the incumbent Government’s decisions not to increase pensions and child allowances, as well as cautious economic measures that they will have to take, will have a negative impact on PNL in the spring and will favour PSD instead.
Social Democrats have waited for the Constitutionaol Court’s decision on a referral related to a draft law that said the Parliament is the one that established the date of the parliamentary elections. The Liberal Cabinet has challenged the law to the Constitutional Court, with CCR rejecting the referral and awarding victory to the Parliament for setting the election date.
The law is currently on the President’s table right now, Iohannis being the only one now who can block the promulgation of the bill.