The government legislates political trasism

The government will legislate the political path, so that the mayors and chairmen of county councils will be able to switch to another party without losing their mandate, no later than 60 days before the June 9 election and until the date of entry into the exercise of the mandate, which will take place in the fall, according to the draft emergency ordinance put up for debate on Friday on the SGG website, a normative act regulating the joint holding of local and European parliamentary elections.

According to the draft normative act, candidates for the European Parliament can also register to run for local elections. The two polls would take place on June 9, 2024, between 07:00 and 22:00.

"Voters who are at the polling station headquarters at 10:00 p.m., as well as those who are in line outside the polling station headquarters to enter the polling station, can exercise their right to vote" and "can vote until much at 11:59 p.m.," the draft emergency ordinance states.

The legislative initiative also provides that citizens with the right to vote who have established their residence in the electoral district less than 60 days before the election date will be able to exercise their right to vote only in the commune, city, municipality or administrative-territorial subdivision of the municipality where they have their domicile. The draft GEO also establishes that the same electoral offices will handle both ballots and that voting will be done in the same polling stations. The text of the respective act stipulates: "In the elections of June 9, 2024, in the polling stations in the country, the voters vote in the same polling stations, in the same time interval, with the same stamps with the mention "VOTE", on separate ballots , the turnout being recorded on separate electoral lists for the two types of voting".

In the preamble of the draft normative act it is stated that the measure of combining the European parliamentary elections with the local ones is necessary because the elections for the European Parliament in June 2024 will take place in a special context, the political challenges faced by the Union and its member states being significant, and that there is a need to ensure greater representativeness of members from Romania in the European Parliament, to strengthen Romania's position in the European Union, by sending a clear signal that it wants to follow the pro-EU position and projects for the development of the Union for all administrative-territorial units , by the fact that local elected officials can motivate citizens to show up in greater numbers at the polls and express their voting options.

The opposition parties - AUR, Forţa Dreptei, USR and REPER - have announced that, after the adoption by the Government, during this week, of the draft GEO regarding the merging of elections, they will ask the People's Advocate to challenge the normative act at the Constitutional Court of Romania.

Furthermore, former Prime Minister Ludovic Orban criticizes the political route that will be regulated by the future normative act. In a post on the official Facebook page, Ludovic Orban states: "PSD and PNL decided behind closed doors to give free rein to the political path of local elected officials. That is, to allow local elected officials who were elected on the lists of one party in the 2020-2024 mandate not to lose their mandate if they run for the local elections in 2024 on the lists of another party. Everything this anti-democratic coalition does in terms of organizing elections is scandalous and should cause an uproar in the whole society. The merger of the local with the European Parliament, the advance of the presidential elections and the fixing of a date taken out of the belly that forces an electoral campaign exactly during the period when most Romanians are away on holidays, the legalization of political trasesism, etc. represent real attacks on democracy. Regarding political trasesism, I recall the infamous OUG 55, adopted by the Ponta government in 2014, which led to the migration to the PSD of almost 500 mayors of other political parties on the eve of the presidential elections, mayors lured with projects financed from public money through PNDL1. This ordinance caused an electoral fraud of presidential proportions. The 500 trasist mayors transferred hundreds of thousands of votes to the presidential candidate Victor Ponta, the current prime minister. At that time, after the passage of GEO 55 through parliament, the PNL parliamentarians attacked the law adopting the ordinance at the CCR, which was declared unconstitutional. I inform the members of the Ciolacu cabinet that, if they adopt such an unconstitutional ordinance, I will file a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice against all members of the government who has signed this ordinance and, obviously, primarily against Prime Minister Ciolacu".

For their part, those from REPER, the political formation around former prime minister Dacian Cioloş, claim that PSD and PNL are preparing a major attack on democracy, because they ban the representatives of this party in the polling stations and in the Central Electoral Bureau by introducing the wording that in these sections will have representatives only of political parties, citizens' organizations belonging to national minorities, political or electoral alliances that participate in the elections and to which mandates were assigned in the elections for members from Romania in the European Parliament in 2019.

However, the MEPs from the Reper side were elected in 2019 as being from the USR-PLUS Alliance and not from the current political formation, and according to the text of the future emergency ordinance, they would not meet the final requirement and would not have the right to have representatives in the wards vote.