THE USL DOES NOT ABIDE BY THE REQUIREMENT OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF ROMANIA CONCERNING THE REFERENDUM Antonescu, instead of Geoană

On Monday, the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled that the procedure for the suspension of Traian Băsescu as president was complied with, meaning that the president of the Senate, Crin Antonescu, will act as interim president of the Country, in the place of Mircea Geoană, who, after the elections of 2009, had become the second most powerful man in the country, but was successively replaced by Blaga, and by the current interim president six days ago.

Yesterday, the Constitutional Court also ruled that the law concerning the referendum complies with the Constitution, meaning that Traian Băsescu could be dismissed through a referendum with the votes of 50%+1 of those who will attend the ballot.

However, the CCR introduced a different validity requirement for the referendum: the referendum would be considered valid if 50% plus 1 of the voters on the lists, whereas the USL wanted didn't want the validity of the referendum to depend on the attendance ratio.

In the referendum for the dismissal of the president of May 19th, 2007, only 44.45% of the voters recorded on the lists attended the vote.

This reduces the likelihood of Băsescu being dismissed through a referendum.

However, the current government is disregarding the requirement of the Romanian Constitutional Court, as the Ministry of Administration and Internal Affairs (MAI) announced yesterday that the Emergency Ordinance of the government according to which the president will get dismissed by the majority of those who will attend the vote will still apply to the referendum of July 29th.

The reason provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs emphasizes the fact that the Constitutional Court of Romania has only issued a ruling on a legislative draft, which has not yet been passed by the Parliament.

Also, the Constitutional Court of Romania has rejected the complaints submitted by Vasile Blaga and Roberta Anastase, backed by the PDL, concerning the dismissals of the Chairmen of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, meaning that there is no constitutional hurdle to Crin Antonescu becoming the interim president of Romania.

In the event of the dismissal of Băsescu, he would have been replaced by Mircea Geoană, who was in turn dismissed as President of the Senate on November 23rd.

At the time it was Vasile Blaga from the PDL who replaced Mircea Geoană, only to then be replaced himself by Crin Antonescu.

Mircea Geoană had almost won the presidential elections (he even started jumping for joy, overeagerly clamoring his victory). He got 5,205,760 votes in the presidential elections of November/December, only 70,408 less than Traian Băsescu.

Crin Antonescu had obtained 1,945,831 votes in those elections, not enough to get into the second round.

And yet, here he is becoming President in the third round.