THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT IN FULL MORAL HAZARD All the options, or none at all, who knows?

1. About 20% odds for each of the options, even though, like I said, the invalidation of the referendum should be quoted at 100%. But, even so, the invalidation of the referendum does not mean that Băsescu would return to Cotroceni. Because the Parliament will delay meeting "to determine the steps to follow" (I don't think there are any deadlines imposed by the law) and thus the interim president will stay longer in the Cotroceni palace.

2. But, if Antonescu says that the odds of "Băsescu returning to Cotroceni are feeble" and the delegated minister of the Administration and Internal Affairs Radu Stroe says that "the new data centralization, of the local administrative units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs can lead to surprises", then perhaps, quite the opposite, the validation of the Referendum has a 100% chance of going through, because they must know something we don't.

The uncertain factor, in the case of a report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is supposed to establish that there are only approximately 16 million voters, is whether the Romanian citizens living abroad will be excluded from the lists or not (if the Court took them into account, this would be the second time the people living abroad save Băsescu's skin).

3. Some sources claim that tomorrow the Court will issue a ruling, rather than putting it off any longer (besides, one doesn't need any "sources" to see that the Constitutional Court is being pressured from every side to do that - by Băsescu, by Ponta, even from abroad), but nevertheless, if the judges of the Court fail to render a ruling in favor of the USL, with 6 votes in favor and 3 against (and the information about this negotiation ended up with the political power), then that still leaves the backup solution: say that they were unable to clarify the lists, due to the obstructions of the mayors of the PDL, meaning that the ruling would have to be postponed.

Some of the people of the PDL have begun lobbying in support of a ruling with a 5 votes in favor and 4 against; I assure them that if the idea gets adopted, if five judges were to vote in favor of validating the referendum, but most certainly, in that case, those same PDL members would dispute the decision, complaining in Venice.

4. An alternative which people spoke very little about is the Constitutional Court requesting the referendum to be held again, due to how difficult it seems to be to mathematically determine the number of voters.

I don't think that it is the jurisdiction of the Court to issue that kind of ruling, but if they did, the judges would hit the jackpot: "Why should I go to all that trouble? Let's make some clear rules: determine the number of validated voters and hold the referendum again, and then the result will come by itself".

This option is the most harmful for Romania (economically speaking, but also in terms of image and extended political instability).

5. Passing the buck to the Parliament, if the Constitutional Court decided not to make a clear ruling, is actually a branch of number four, where it is the Parliament, rather than the Constitutional Court that would decide for the Referendum to be held again.

No comment.

Readers are free to raise or reduce the likelihood quota of each alternative, as desired.

If you can think of another, then the list is open.