June 6, 2015 UPDATE
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România Internațional, 06.06.2015, 12:15
The Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced he would discuss the political situation created by the corruption charges brought against the Social Democratic PM Victor Ponta during Monday’s consultations with the parliamentary parties. The president said he expected the PM to resign as he had previously requested, in order to avoid a prolonged political crisis and marring the country’s image. However the PM Victor Ponta rejected, on Friday, the idea of resignation saying that it is up to Parliament to dismiss him. On Monday the Legal Committee of the Chamber of Deputies will announce the timetable for the analysis of the anti-corruption prosecutors’ request for the start of legal proceedings against the PM for conflict of interests when he held the position of PM. For the other crimes the PM is supposed to have committed when he was a lawyer the National Anti-Corruption Directorate’s prosecutors did not need the approval of Parliament and announced they already started his prosecution. Prosecutors have charged the PM Victor Ponta with forgery in documents under private signature, accessory to tax evasion and money laundering. The crimes are related to the case of the Social Democratic senator Dan Sova, a former transport minister in Ponta’s cabinet, who is accused of corruption in the case of the Rovinari and Turceni energy companies. From these two companies Dan Sova’s private legal practice allegedly obtained undue benefits of about 750 thousand euros between 2007- 2008. Part of this money allegedly reached the then lawyer Victor Ponta who also in 2007 concluded a cooperation agreement with Dan Sova’s practice.
The start of legal proceedings against the Romanian PM and the president’s request for his resignation have caused reactions on the Romanian political scene. The Social Democratic Party considers its leader heads a legitimate government and that there is no legal and constitutional reason to account for his resignation from the PM position. In exchange the opposition has called on Victor Ponta to resign. In another development, prior to the start of legal proceedings against the PM, the National Liberal Party, the main opposition party, filed a censure motion against the government, accusing it of abuse of power as it prevented the Romanians in the country and aboard to exercise their constitutional right to vote. The document mentions that Victor Ponta wanted to become president by the deliberate sabotaging of the Romanian citizens’ in the Diaspora and he is now refusing to hold partial local and parliamentary elections meant to fill in the vacancies in the legislative and the local administrations.
The Romanian actor Marin Moraru and the German star Nastassja Kinski are today’s special guests in the last day of the Transylvania International Film Festival, in short TIFF, hosted by the city of Cluj Napoca. Nastassja Kinski will receive the Special Award for her contribution to world cinematography while Marin Moraru will receive the TIFF 2015 Excellence Award. For 10 days more than 220 productions from 60 countries have been screened at the festival, which has been attended by 850 guests from Romania and aboard.
As the country to chair next year’s G7 summit, Japan will do its best to work out a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine, said the Japanese PM Shinzo Abe on Saturday in Kiev, at the end of his meeting with the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. The latter hailed the ‘historical and symbolic character’ of the Japanese PM’s visit, the first to be paid by a Japanese premier to Kiev. Shinzo Abe will participate on Sunday and Monday in the G7 summit hosted by Elmau, in southern Germany. One of the main topics of the summit will be the Ukrainian crisis. Japan, which backs the western sanctions against Moscow and provides financial aid to Ukraine, is a staunch ally of the USA. At the same time Japan is trying to have a good relation with neighboring Russia, a country rich in energy resources which Japan lacks, France press reports.
Pope Francis brought a message of peace and reconciliation as he visited Sarajevo on Saturday. Sarajevo is a martyr city and the symbol of peaceful coexistence between cultures and civilizations, which he gave as an example against ‘barbarism’, France press reports. Before 65,000 believers gathered on the city’s Olympic stadium the Pope said he could sense an atmosphere of war in the world, purposefully fueled by those who want cultures and civilizations to clash. The coexistence of Orthodox Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Catholic Croats in this space stands as proof of the fact that cooperation among various ethnic groups and religions for the common good is possible, the Pope added. The Bosnian war, between 1992- 1995, left behind almost 100,000 dead and more than 2 million refugees, that is more than half of the country’s population, France press reports.
