Reactions after consultations with political parties

Last week, President Klaus Iohannis held consultations with the parliamentary parties over the justice referendum scheduled for May 26

Corina Cristea, 15.04.2019, 13:14

We need a
justice referendum and it will be held on May 26th, jointly with the
European Parliament elections, Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis said at the
end of the consultations he had with the parliamentary parties. The topics of
the referendum are related to forbidding amnesty and pardon of corruption offences
and forbidding the government to pass emergency decrees related to criminal
offences, convictions and judicial organization. Consultations were called
amidst the high number of legislative changes in the field of the judiciary
promoted by the ruling coalition, which have sparked controversy and triggered criticism
from our country’s European partners.

Held over the course of two days, the
consultations brought little surprise. The first to meet with the president
were the opposition parties: the National Liberal Party, the Save Romania Union
and the People’s Movement Party, as well as the Democratic Union of Ethnic
Hungarians and the group of ethnic minorities other than Hungarian, which all
embraced the idea of organizing a referendum. It is vital for Romania that its
citizens should decide that they will no
longer put up with the ruling coalition’s systematic assaults on the independence
of the judiciary and on the citizens’ rights and liberties, the Liberal leader
Ludovic Orban said. On the second day of the consultations, the only group to
send a delegation was the main partner in the ruling coalition, the Social-Democratic Party, which President Klaus
Iohannis holds accountable for the predicament of Romania’s judiciary:

Klaus Iohannis: Since the beginning of their tenure, the Social-Democrats have mounted
a relentless assault on the judiciary. The Social-Democratic Party is the sole
responsible for the public concern over the Romanian justice system. Romanians
are worried, they fear the Social-Democrats will bend the Romanian judiciary to
their political will. And since citizens must respond to this assault, I chose
to organize the May 26 referendum.

The
Social-Democrats’ representative at the consultations, Eugen Nicolicea, who is
also the Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies, has announced that
Parliament will vote in favor of the president’s request to hold an advisory
referendum, which will not produce legal
effects. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, the junior partners in the
ruling coalition, refused to take part in consultations, accusing the president
of using the referendum as a pretext to start the presidential election
campaign earlier. On March 26th, the president consulted with
representatives of civil society, and on March 27th Klaus Iohannis
met with representatives of judges and magistrates’ associations to discuss the
current situation of the judiciary.