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| REFERENDUM ON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE UNINOMINAL VOTING SYSTEM (24.10.2007) |
| (2007-10-24) |
| Last updated: 2007-10-25 16:30 EET |
President Traian Basescu’s decision to call on a referendum on the introduction of the uninominal voting system again sets the political scene on fire. Most parties claim the referendum is only used by the President as an opportunity to support his former party, the Democratic Party, in the Euro-parliamentary elections. A decree issued by the President on Tuesday sets November the 25th as date of the referendum, on the same day as the elections for the European Parliament. Basescu argues he had been campaigning for the introduction of the uninominal voting system since February and that the parties had promised to support his project, but that parliamentarians did not meet their promise to pass the new election law by the end of June. Traian Basescu explains the question to which voters will have to answer in the referendum:
“It is meant to be very clear and free of any interpretation and it sounds like this: Do you agree that starting with the following elections for the Romanian Parliament, all deputies and senators are elected in uninominal constituencies based on a majority uninominal ballot in two rounds? To translate the question, Romanians will have to decide whether they wish to elect their parliamentarians the way they elect their mayors, namely in uninominal constituencies.”
Crin Antonescu, the vice-president of the National Liberal Party, the senior partner in the coalition government it forms with the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, is a fierce opponents of the president’s decision, all the more so as the Government has just announced that it is willing to assume responsibility before Parliament on the amendment of the election law:
“It is clear, and this is not just my opinion, that the President’s unspoken interest, beyond the beautiful and partly true discourse about the need to reform the political class, and about Romanian society being overwhelmingly in favour of changing the election system, is a purely political interest. Holding the elections for the European Parliament at the same time as the referendum gives President Basescu the possibility to get directly involved in the election campaign and support the party he still serves and leads.”
The leader of the Greater Romania Party, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, goes even further by saying that the head of state is a demagogue who insults parliamentarians and comes up with false aims. Vadim believes the overlapping of the Euro-elections with the referendum will facilitate election fraud and favor the Democratic Party. His opinion is shared by the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians and the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Party. Its leader Mircea Geoana gave assurances that:
“We will back any initiative that leads to the adoption of a law that allows Romanians to elect the people they like and to be able to hold them accountable afterwards.”
Standing, as always, by the President, the leader of the Democratic Party, Emil Boc, believes Basescu only keeps a promise he made to the Romanians referring namely to introduce the uninominal voting system:
“Nobody has prevented Parliament in the last seven month to pass the law on the uninominal voting system so that we won’t have a referendum in November. And yet, the passing of this law has been delayed through every possible means, to prevent Romanians from electing their MP’s like they elect their mayors and hold them accountable at the end of their mandate.”
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