PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES DEBATE Ludovic Orban took the breaking-news, Geoană - scalded by his 2009 visit to Moscow

The long-announced debate of the candidates for the presidential elections on Sunday - the debate organized by the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj in partnership with Digi 24 was announced 45 days ago - turned out to be a fiasco, due to the lack of PSD and PNL candidates - Marcel Ciolacu and Nicolae Ciucă, but one in which Ludovic Orban took the breaking-news, and Mircea Geoană scalded again with his spring 2009 visit to Moscow.

After greeting everyone on stage, except for Geoană, Ludovic Orban calmly announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential race and that until Saturday morning, at 7 am, he would campaign for USR candidate Elena Lasconi, inviting his own electorate to credit her for advancing to the second round of the presidential elections. Going beyond the fact that the percentage that the former PNL president brings to Elena Lasconi is a tiny one, which does not really matter in the calculations for advancing to the second round, Orban's gesture was intended to be more of an image shot, at a time when TV audiences are usually at high levels, a calculated gesture, which would have been derisory if it had been announced in a simple press conference as George Simion, the AUR candidate, conveyed to him. It remains to be seen, however, whether Ludovic's announcement will reach all his voters, because, as Kelemen Hunor, the UDMR candidate, stated, the ballots are already printed, and Orban's name also appears on them, which could create confusion on Sunday at the polls among his supporters who might wonder how he withdrew since he appears on the ballot and, in the end, apply the "Voted" stamp to him instead of stopping at the first name on the sheet in question, that is, Elena Lasconi.

As for Mircea Geoană, he seems visibly uncomfortable with the obsessive question "What were you looking for, sir, in Moscow in the spring of 2009?". Questioned by a journalist from Digi 24 regarding the purpose and duration of the visit and the quality in which he was present, a question that brought a happy smile to George Simion's lips, Mircea Geoană replied: "I'd rather go to Moscow than have the Russian come here and never leave like it happened decades ago. I went to Moscow in 2009 on a private, exploratory visit, as a candidate for the Presidency of Romania, where I discussed with an advisor to the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev."

By his answer, Geoană did not realize that he was doing himself harm or perhaps he was aiming for some of the Russophiles behind George Simion and Diana Şoşoacă to look at him with sympathy and possibly vote for him, because he, the PSD candidate in the 2009 presidential elections, went to Moscow, more than half a year before the elections, to obtain... what? Mr. Mircea Geoană did not specify this to us, but his opponents could accuse him of going to obtain approval for his candidacy and to assure the Russians that as president of Romania, he would not bother them too much.

• Mircea Geoană suggests that Ukraine cede territories for accession to NATO and the EU

Only that Geoană sought to get some light from Medvedev, who for two years has been threatening Romania with reprisals for supporting Ukraine with military equipment and ammunition in the conflict with the Russian Federation, through which the Ukrainian army defends its own national territory.

Moreover, when questioned about a possible solution to end the conflict in Ukraine, Mircea Geoana, former NATO Deputy Secretary General, once again hit a snag or stepped on a few toes, stating that he is campaigning for a peace treaty, through which, if Ukraine is forced to cede territory illegally occupied by the Russian Federation, it will be given the freedom to join the European Union and NATO, because this is the supreme interest of that state in the face of permanent aggression from Moscow.

Geoana's statement horrified Elena Lasconi, who immediately replied that she would not want the former NATO Deputy Secretary General to become the country's president and for Russia to attack Romania with him at the controls, because he would cede Romanian territory only to make peace.

Geoana's supporters might say that his proposal is not new, as long as Romania gave up northern Bukovina, southern Bessarabia and the Serpilor Island through the treaty concluded with Ukraine, a treaty that was a condition for our admission to NATO. However, our country is a signatory to the Helsinki Accords of August 1, 1975 and, according to them, recognizes the borders existing at the time of signing these documents. However, in those agreements, the respective Romanian territories appeared as belonging to Ukraine, which was incorporated into the USSR.

In the present case, the Russian Federation violated the territory of another state with which it had a treaty recognizing the respective borders and did so not just once, but twice: the first time in February 2014 when it invaded and annexed Crimea and caused unrest in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and the second time in February 2022 when it invaded Ukraine and annexed the two regions mentioned above.

Therefore, Geoana's peace proposal is a hilarious one, which cannot be considered by any sovereign and independent state in the democratic world, because it is not based on any valid legal argument and because it would not be accepted by the authorities in Kiev, an imposition of which would risk increasing the degree of insecurity throughout Eastern Europe.

These would be the main elements of the presidential debate from which Ciolacu and Ciucă were absent. Otherwise, we found that Elena Lasconi has serious shortcomings regarding the duties of the country's president regarding foreign policy, especially the relationship with NATO, that George Simion still does not know that heterosexual means a man who is attracted to women, that Kelemen Hunor poses as the voice of reason, which is, however, too close to social democracy, and that the former foreign minister, Cristian Diaconescu, although he offers presence, was left with aftereffects from the political adventure he had with PSD and PMP.

Under these conditions, who do we vote for?