Romania, political crisis continues. President Iohannis resigns

Brussels – The long wave of the annulment of the first round of presidential elections in Romania has not subsided. There is a new election date, May 4. Still, tensions continue: cornered by right-wing parties, which have initiated proceedings to remove him from office, President Klaus Iohannis announced today (Feb. 10) his resignation “to spare Romania and its citizens this crisis.” In his place, Senate President Ilie Bolojan will take office on an interim basis.

As reported by local media, Iohannis made it clear that he will officially leave office “the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 12.” Leader of the National Liberal Party (NLP) and president since 2014, Iohannis was supposed to step aside last Dec. 21. Still, his term was extended following the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the elections that were overwhelmingly won by ultranationalist and pro-Russian independent candidate Călin Georgescu. The judges in Bucharest invalidated the outcome of the polls after the president ordered the declassification of some documents of intelligence reports indicating Russian interference in the elections, as suggested by the enormous visibility Georgescu had enjoyed on TikTok. The Chinese social network is also under scrutiny in Brussels. According to the European Commission, it has not implemented adequate tools to limit malicious interference in the Balkan country’s electoral process.

The affair triggered a political earthquake in Romania, with the three far-right parties Aur, Sos Romania, and the Youth Party—which, in the elections for the renewal of Parliament won by the Social Democrats, totalled 31 per cent of the vote—leading the protest against the Constitutional Court’s resounding intervention. After two failed attempts, the opposition succeeded in activating the parliamentary procedure to suspend Iohannis. In announcing his resignation, the pro-European president called the far-right’s move “damaging.” “Before long, the Romanian parliament would have voted on my suspension, and Romania would have entered a crisis. The whole society would have been shaken. There would have been no more discussions about presidential elections. We would have been the laughingstock of the world,” he commented.

The National Constitution provides that it will be the president of the Senate—and Iohannis’ colleague in the GNP—Ilie Bolojan, who will serve as interim president. Bolojan will hold this position until a new head of state is elected. In the rerun of the first round, scheduled for next May 4, the pro-Russian Georgescu, who has meanwhile received the endorsement from the extreme right-wing AUR, will have to contend mainly with Crin Antonescu, the unitary candidate chosen by the forces that make up the coalition executive in Bucharest, namely the social democrats of the PSD, the liberals of the PNL and the Hungarian minority of the UDMR. The possible runoff—if none of the candidates reaches 50 per cent of the vote in the first round—will be held on May 18.