A few hundred Romanians organized protests in Paris, London, Dublin and Vienna on Sunday requesting free elections and a higher number of voting polls in the second round of the Romanian presidential elections on November 16, according to Hotnews.ro.

Solidarity protests were also organized in Bucharest and other large cities in Romania, on Saturday and yesterday. A few thousand people took part in these protests, asking for Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s resignation. The largest protests were in Cluj-Napoca, where 5,000 to 10,000 people attended a solidarity meeting, writes local Mediafax.

The protests were triggered by the poor organization of the vote abroad, in the first round of the presidential elections, when thousands of Romanians queued for hours but didn’t get to cast their votes. The voting process took longer because each voter had to fill in a form saying that he didn’t vote elsewhere.

About 160,000 Romanians voted abroad in the first round of the presidential elections, on November 2. The mayor of Sibiu, Klaus Iohannis got 46% of the votes abroad, while Prime Minister Victor Ponta got only 16% of the votes.

Overall, Ponta won the first round of the elections, with 40.4% of the votes, while Iohannis only got 30.4%. The two made it to the second round, on November 16.

editor@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Wikipedia)