Romanian Senate president urges voters to boycott referendum initiated by president Iohannis

The referendum on justice initiated by president Klaus Iohannis, which will be organized in Romania on the same day with the European Parliament elections (May 26), is nothing else but a tool used to bring more people to the polls and favor the opposition party PNL, according to Calin Popescu Tariceanu, the president of the Romanian Senate and the leader of junior coalition partner ALDE (the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats). Thus, Tariceanu urged voters to boycott the May 26 referendum.

“The European Commission and the Venice Commission, so often invoked in Romania, said it’s not right to hold another electoral event on the day of the European Parliament elections. Have you seen any EU official, maybe Mr. Timmermans or Juncker, say a single word about this referendum? I take this opportunity to address the Romanian voters and ask them to boycott this referendum because this is not a tool for measuring the popularity of the president,” Tariceanu said at local news channel Antena 3, local News.ro reported.

He also said that the European elections are more important this year, as the stakes are higher.

“The referendum is organized to bring more people to the polls. The president tries to favor his party (e.n. opposition party PNL), believing that a higher turnout will mean a bigger score for PNL, with the hope that the result of elections, which is supposed to be one unfavorable for the ruling coalition and favorable for PNL, would create the premises to overthrow the government and eventually bring a form of government as it was in 2016, with the results we know, which were catastrophic but pave the way for the current president to win the autumn elections,” the Senate president said.

The referendum organized on May 26, at the request of president Klaus Iohannis, aims to stop the ruling coalition's attempts to change key legislation in the justice sector. Romanians will have to say if they agree to forbid amnesty and pardoning for people convicted for corruption offenses and to ban the Government from passing key justice legislation changes by emergency ordinances.

The ruling coalition made of PSD and ALDE has already passed some important changes to the justice laws and criminal codes through the Parliament or through emergency ordinances, despite critics from European partners. As a result, the ALDE group in the European Parliament has decided to break ties with the Romanian ALDE, led by Tariceanu.

Moreover, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the ALDE MEPs, will come to Romania at the campaign rally of the Alliance 2020 USR+PLUS in Bucharest this Friday, May 24, according to a press release. The event will take place in Izvor Park, near the Parliament Palace. This shows that USR and PLUS, the party of former prime minister Dacian Ciolos, may join the ALDE ranks in the EP.