PSD interim president wants to merge elections in Romania and 5-year mandates for mayors and MPs

Liviu Dragnea, the interim president of Romania’s largest party PSD (Social Democratic Party) will ask for changes in the electoral law, so that the local elections, parliamentary elections, and presidential elections would take place at the same time, once every 5 years. Dragnea explained that this would help Romania have sustainable multi-annual projects. “We now have elections once every two years. Maybe we’ll wake up at some point, all of us, the entire political class, maybe the president we’ll agree as well, and maybe we’ll manage to organize all the elections once every five years if we can change the Constitution,” Dragnea said in a talk show at Antena3 news station. According to him, this would mean extending the mandates of MPs and local officials to five years, so that parliamentary and local elections can be organized at the same time with the presidential elections. PSD will submit a draft project on this matter, Dragnea added. According to the Constitution, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies members are elected for four years, a period that can be extended only in a case of mobilization, war, siege, or emergency. A revision of the Constitution was one of the priorities announced at the beginning of the current legislature. The project was abandoned however when the Social Liberal Union (USL - made of the Social Democratic Party PSD and the National Liberal Party PNL) broke in early 2014, and the two-third majority needed to pass the bill in the Parliament was thus lost. Romania’s Social Democrat Party has new interim president Romanian minister Liviu Dragnea gets one year of probation for electoral fraud in 2012 referendum Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com