The president of the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR), Simina Tănăsescu, spoke on Wednesday, in an interview on TVR Info, about the unprecedented decision of the CCR to completely cancel the presidential elections from the end of 2024, after the first round of voting had taken place.
Asked about the reasons that led the institution to decide to cancel the presidential elections, the head of the CCR said that the decision was based on serious violations of the Constitution and electoral legislation.
“Our decision is published in the Official Gazette (…) The reasons relate to the violation of the electoral rights of the voters, the violation of the candidates' right to be elected and the flagrant non-compliance with the rules regarding the financing of the electoral campaign. There are three extremely solid reasons anchored in the text of our Constitution”, listed Simina Tănăsescu, at TVR Info.
“They belong to the competence of the CCR, as far as we are talking about fundamental electoral rights. And they are reasons that were detailed in a decision that passed quite a few legal tests, and the test of the Venice Commission and the test of the European Commission. The reasons are well presented in the Decision”, she emphasized.
Regarding the fact that the CCR had already validated the first round of the presidential elections, then decided to cancel the entire electoral process, the president of the Constitutional Court said that “together with the whole country, we became aware of the information from the declassified documents”. And from those declassified documents, the CCR judges were interested in that information related to the way the campaign was carried out, Simina Tănăsescu also said.
“The CCR validated the first round of the elections, that was on Monday. The annulment of the entire electoral process – which means from the phase of submitting candidacies, including the electoral campaign – was on a Friday. (…) Not all candidacies reach the CCR unless they were challenged. Some candidacies did not reach the CCR level at all. Issues related to the campaign and financing were the subject of analysis at the end of the procedures.”
“Some aspects are not within the competence of the CCR, but of other state institutions that deal with the way the campaign is carried out in the mass media. We had no way of establishing the violation of the citizens' right to vote previously. Together with everyone, we became aware of documents that were declassified, in an unprecedented move. It was information that no one had. (…) The objective reality remains the same: some information became known in the public space only after the declassification of those documents”, explained Simina Tănăsescu.
The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) decided, on December 6, 2024, to cancel the entire electoral process regarding the election of the country's president and restart it from scratch, in its entirety.
READ ALSO:
