Solutions for local elections

A draft law on extending the mandate of the local authorities is expected in Romania this week, after the Constitutional Court has ruled out a government ordinance in this respect. In the meantime the opposition Social Democrats held talks with all the party leaders to issue a draft, which besides the extension of the present mandates also stipulates the new election date. Here is The PSD interim president Marcel Ciolacu

Marcel Ciolacu: " If we don't intervene quickly, local authorities can no longer continue their activity. I would like to also include a date for the future election, come up with an amendment so that if experts say that the population is still at risk, we may extend the date for these elections."

Liberal President Ludovic Orban, believes the Court's ruling over who is going to set the election date remains unclear.

Ludovic Orban: "We believe that a good date would be late September or early October. Now we are waiting as we haven't clearly understood from the Court's ruling who is going to set the next election date - the government, through a decision or Parliament. Until we see the court's motivation, we cannot precisely say tell that".

Local election should be staged in autumn and the ones for Parliament on the set date - was a message conveyed last week by politicians during a round of debates over the political parties' scenarios concerning the upcoming elections.

The Social Democrats have made an appeal for consensus among all the political forces, based on dialogue including with civil society. USR president Dan Barna pointed out that these local and Parliamentary elections might have the lowest turnout in the past 30 years at the same time pleading for the implementation of the postal voting. The measure was supported by the Liberals as well. Other proposals include a lower number of signatures and the possibility of forwarding online applications.

In turn, the PRO Romania leader Victor Ponta believes the period of time between the two election rounds must be as short as possible.

"One week, two weeks between them is the most logical option, also from the point of expenses, organisation, the risk of spreading the disease etc. And it also make sense from a political viewpoint," says Victor Ponta adding that PRO Romania will be supporting any modern voting measure provided all the security guarantees are respected. In another development, Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, president of ALDE last week announced that his group together with PSD and Pro Romania were holding talks on forging a center-to-left coalition in order to run in the future local and Parliamentary elections.

(translated by bill)