The factual website, which deals with fact-returning, checked the statements of the candidates from the presidential debate on Tuesday evening organized by TVR at Cotroceni Palace. They discovered five false statements of the candidates.
In addition to the five false statements, factually showed that three of the statements were truncated, that is, they were taken out of context to be in favor of the one who tells them. They belonged to Crin Antonescu and Nicușor Dan.
Ponta, Funeriu, Banu-Muscel, Șandru and Popescu, each one lie
In the first 30 minutes of the debate, the former Minister of Education, Daniel Funeriu, claimed that “since 1918, the Romanians have respected the national minorities and built a model in Europe.” During the interwar period, in Romania the Legionary Movement, a fascist nationalist organization, characterized by anti -Semitism, xenophobia, religious mysticism and political violence, was born.
“The political organization from the interwar period, the Romanian colonizations in the territories inhabited by the Hungarians, the policy of the Ceausescu regime regarding minorities, including the distribution of Romanian graduates of higher education in areas inhabited by national minorities” are all examples by which the national minorities have suffered, over the last decades, for the last decades.
During the presidential debate, Victor Ponta said that Romania signed the strategic partnership with the United States in 2011. According to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the partnership was signed in 1997, when US President Bill Clinton was visiting Bucharest.
In 2011, the two states signed two documents that provide, within the Strategic Partnership, the cooperation between Romania and the USA in the field of national security, especially the development of a complex defense system against ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe, on the territory of Romania in the base of Deveselu.
Video the second electoral debate on TVR, with 10 out of 11 candidates, without George Simion / Nicușor Dan, he apologized after saying that only four candidates “I can hold this position” / Antonescu again accused Dan: Take care of the language, do not talk about the past of some securityists who misinforms
Lies about NATO and the involvement of Romania in wars
The independent John-Ion Banu-Muscel has claimed that he does not see a “so strong danger in an invasion of the Russian Federation”, because Romania is part of NATO and is already investing 2% of GDP for arming.
Due to the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the Russian Federation was condemned at the Vilnius NATO summit in 2023. At the same time, the member countries committed to invest a minimum of 2% of GDP in the field of defense. Romania assumed in 2023 to increase the defense allocation from 2% to 2.5% of GDP. However, the estimates of a NATO report that year showed that Romania used only 1.6% of GDP for defense. Also that report shows that Romania was under the target of 2% and below the average of the alliance of 1.73% of GDP, according to the factors.
The candidate put, Lavinia Șandru, lied to say that “every day we are less with 200. At the Revolution we were 23 million here, now we are 15 million”. According to the latest data of the National Institute of Statistics (INS), on January 1, 2024, the resident population in Romania was 19 million people.
Sebastian Popescu claimed that Romania is the only country that “took a war to conquer new territories, but every time it entered the fight to defend its own territories.”
“The positioning of Romania as a victim of the Western colonies is specific to the communist discourse, in which the Romanian Socialist Republic had to lead a continuous struggle with western expansionism,” explained factually.
Crin Antonescu, two truncated statements. Nicușor Dan, one
During the debate, Crin Antonescu spoke about the inauguration of the bridge from Ungheni for a few days. In fact, the bridge from Ungheni has not yet been inaugurated, the construction of the objective that will connect the Prut between Romania and the Republic of Moldova being started a few days ago.
The PSD-PNL-UDMR-minority candidate was asked how he would proceed as president in the case of a major earthquake.
“In general, the emergency situations to which it is expected, a presidential intervention, an immediate presidential action are mandatory. They are of two types: security and military situations, where the president is empowered to act directly and personally, or situations of natural calamities, as is the case of the earthquake, where we talk about the earthquake, Explicitly, concrete in the subordination of the prime minister.
The president can decrete the state of emergency, but the decision is not strictly personal or irrevocable. Both the Prime Minister and the Parliament have the opportunity to stop this presidential decree, explains the team from factual.
Asked what strategy he has to remove agriculture from the subsistence state, Nicușor Dan said that “we must have a national irrigation program because at this moment between agricultural lands we are about 10% that are irrigated.”
According to INS, in 2023, the cultivated area of Romania was over 8 million hectares. From this area, 1.4 million hectares with agricultural crops are prepared for irrigation this year, which represents 17% of the country's agricultural area, points out the fact-returning site.
