But as comments have said, even acknowledging interference after the fact and rejecting the result is a failure in democracy, because it's ripe for abuse. Thus, the Russian interference has still succeeded.
This is a bit like a football referee looking at the videos after a goal and deciding that it was a handball, thus invalidating the goal. It is not an easy decision to make but better to do it quickly.
acknowledging interference after the fact and rejecting the result is a failure in democracy
Citation very much needed. It seems you're desperately arguing towards a pre-determined conclusion. Especially if you're then equating this with a foreign government successfully installing a puppet regime.
I did not mean to imply that the population should vote again for the same candidate to demonstrate their independence. New evidence was presented to and by a high court and it's fair to expect it to be considered (for example for how convincing it is, and for what all the candidates have to say about it, and even for who presented it and for what reason).
If the evidence was serious it also would not make sense to let the election continue.
Finally I don't know about Romania, but in a few other countries in Europe, no matter what happens to that sullied candidate, these votes are not too likely to shift to the incumbent party. See for example the circumstances that enabled Macron to be elected the first time in France.
Far from some bold decision in defense of democracy, this is almost a coup by our constitutional court.
First, there is no process or even mention in any Romanian law about annuling an election. The Constitutional Court of Romania has two specified roles in an election: it validates candidates (or rejects them, as it did with another far right candidate in this very election), and it validates the election results (or invalidates them if there is a significant suspicion of fraud in the vote counts, after a recount). They issued a recount order for this same election as well, and then decided based on the results that the first round was valid. If they had decided it wasn't valid, there are laws for when it would have been repeated. However, they later came back to this decision, and quoting a vague article in the Constitution that says that they assure the electoral procedures are followed, they invented this concept of annuling the entire electoral process, from the very beginning (so even the candidate registrations have to be re-done).
Secondly, they did this based on evidence that was public knowledge for two weeks, including the last few times they met and validated the counts.
Thirdly, the evidence in question is vague accusations of Russian interference with no specifics. There are no names, no identified groups, no sums of money except for one lump payment by a businessman. The only clear accusation is campaign finance violations (which the authorities had already blatantly ignored, as the candidate in question had registered his campaign costing 0 RON, which was known to the relevant authorities since last month and to the public for two weeks).
There is a very surprising, out-of-nowhere win by an independent, that declared he spent 0eur on his campaign, as a result of what looks to be a large scale (presumably expensive to run) campaign on TikTok, that nobody knows who financed, which will await trial, commissions and investigations to figure out.
What could the court have said when they were prompted? Ignore this? I'm not really a 'Constitutional Court' apologist :). I am genuinely curious... what would have been the alternative here?
The court had already validated the first round of elections. This was a fait accompli. They could have let it stand, noting that people had voted and their votes were correctly counted, and that matters more than any other manipulation.
Consider we don't have any decision by any court (before this one) that confirms that any illegal action of any kind has taken place. It's only isinuations and beliefs, but nothing proven to the extent required by law.
The elections should have been allowed to continue. If needed, some special prosecutor whose independence from the next president, even if CG won, could be guaranteed could be appointed to continue investigating the facts of this campaign. Then, CG could be tried based on the findings, could be suspended by Parliament while this was going on, and he could be deposed if he indeed was found guilty, and new elections held at that time (in Romania, if the president's mandate ends suddenly for any reason, there is a temporary presidency, but only until snap elections are called).
Let's not forget that he might not even have won - the race was tight, but not unwinnable. So in that case, he could easily be investigated as a private citizen.
But if you believe it is highly likely this would happen (which presumably the CCR do believe, along with various state-defense relevant institutions), how is this whole process you described better than just cancelling them now?
Because it's legal. And what they did now is not legal.
They don't even have may proof that anything that happened in the first round campaign was illegal. The CCR is not even qualified to rule on the facts, on the legality of anything that happened.
So if nothing illegal is proven by any court to have happened, if there isn't even enough evidence to get a tmeporary arrest warrant in his name in a regular court of law, how can we annul the whole electoral process? The costs alone should require a much higher level of justification.
The court has not even ruled that he is not allowed to participate in the re-made elections.
I was mortified that he might win, don't get me wrong. My entire family was going to vote for Lasconi, even those that didn't really like her, just to make sure this idiot madman didn't win. But that doesn't make this decision be any closer to the rule of law.
> Because it's legal. And what they did now is not legal.
I am not an expert on this, so I'm not saying you are wrong, but why would they not have the prerogative to do this? Do you have any sources for that?
I know at least that there is precedent in the EU - Austria cancelled a round of elections in 2016, also for some electoral law incongruities / technicalities (that at least superficially by my knowledge were less serious than this scandal), done also by their constitutional court.
Romanian law also has provisions for ca celling the results of an election. The CCR followed the process, heard challenges to the validity of these results for the first round of elections, ordered a recount, and found based on the recount that all was well, and it certified the results.
What they found afterwards, on their own without any case brought before them, is that the campaign that preceded the first round of elections (which lasted for one month before the first round two weeks ago now) may have been influenced by outside forces, that a candidate may have flaunted campaign finance laws, and similar matters, and that because of this, the entire electoral process is invalid and annulled. The government has to restart this process from scratch, with anyone who wants to participate registering their candidacy again from scratch.
There is no procedure or standard in any law or in the Construction to specify such a process. The Court invented it from whole cloth, based only on a vague/broad power to oversee the election.
I still do not understand how it can be illegal for them to do this, if they do have the prerogative to cancel an election result. (In the sense that you can disagree with a judge's decision, he might even make an objectively wrong decision, but it does not make him taking that decision illegal, just perhaps wrong.)
I am curious to read more about this in the coming days. I do remember previous scandals related to the CCR and their (often said too close) relationship to the parties in power. But I guess in this case I just don't see why their decision would be illegal, and when compared to the alternatives I don't see why it would be wrong.
To also clarify, despite thinking this might be the correct decision, I actually think politically there is a higher probability now of yielding a worse president, since Ciolacu & Simion will probably end up in the secondary, the latter having chances, instead of Lasconi. Not that I think she's the greatest candidate either, but again... compared to the alternatives...
> I still do not understand how it can be illegal for them to do this, if they do have the prerogative to cancel an election result.
It is precisely because of how that power works that what they did yesterday is illegal, in my opinion.
The Court is not basing its decision on whether to validate or invalidate an election result on the Constitution directly, in regular elections. The constitution is too broad and vague for this kind of power. Instead, based on the constition, specific laws that govern how elections are run and at what parts of the process the Court is involved in them were elaborated, and those laws were validated by the Court itself. Specifically, this law is 370/2004 [0].
If the Court can just convene itself by fiat, analyze any evidence it wants, and decide what effect that can have on the election, then why did we need a specific law with specific articles on how election results are validated in the first place?
> First, there is no process or even mention in any Romanian law about annuling an election.
This is false. Law 370 20/09/2004:
Article 52
(1) The Constitutional Court shall annul an election if the voting and the determination of the results have taken place by fraud of such a nature as to alter the allocation of the mandate or, as the case may be, the order of the candidates eligible to participate in the second round of voting. In such a case, the Court shall order that the second ballot be held on the second Sunday after the date on which the elections are annulled.
(2) An application to annul the elections may be filed by political parties, political alliances, electoral alliances, organizations of citizens belonging to national minorities represented in the Council of National Minorities and candidates who participated in the elections, within 3 days after the close of the voting at the latest; the application must be substantiated and accompanied by the evidence on which it is based.
(3) The Constitutional Court shall decide on the application by the date stipulated by law for the public announcement of the election results.
Article 53
(1) The Constitutional Court shall validate the result of each ballot, ensure the publication of the election result in the mass media and in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, for each ballot and validate the election result for the elected President.
(2) The Validation Act shall be drawn up in three copies, one of which shall remain with the Constitutional Court, one of which shall be submitted to Parliament for the taking of the oath provided for in Article 82 para. (2) of the Constitution of Romania, republished, and the third shall be submitted to the elected candidate.
The articles from 370/2004 that you quoted contradict your thesis. They give the CCR specific power to decide to annul the specific election, and only if they find evidence of vote fraud " if the voting and the determination of the results have taken place by fraud of such a nature as to alter the allocation of the mandate or, as the case may be, the order of the candidates eligible to participate in the second round of voting". The court has already ruled in Tuesday based on this law, and they have explicitly found that no such fraud has taken place, and they have validated the results. And again, this only refers specifically to annuling one election, re-doing it the following Sunday, and only if vote fraud is identified.
The court yesterday decided to annull the entire electoral process, and not because of voter fraud, but strictly because of campaign finance violations. There is no such provision in that law or any other. The court did not "order that the second ballot be held on the second Sunday after the date on which the elections are annulled." - they ordered that the Government shall choose a new date, that candidates shall register a new etc. The next election will be, at the earliest, held in late February.
Also, article 2 was not followed in any way *. The current decision from the court was not based on any application to annul by any party whatsoever, the court convened of its own volition, based only on the declassified documents that appeared in the public sphere.
None of the other articles you quote give any such power. In fact, you'll see that the word "campaign" is not present anywhere in those articles. And yet the Court's decision is entirely based on problems they find related to said campaign.
* there was an application by two candidates to annull the first round of elections, those were investigated on Thursday and then Monday last week, and they were rejected. This new decision by the court is unrelated to that.
I'm not looking to get into a legal debate about this, as I'm not a legal scholar. You stated something factually wrong and I pointed you to the paragraph of the law.
The court is the single highest authority on constitutional matters and can pretty much decide what they want to on these matters, as well as how they interpret the law, but this is the case with every high court everywhere and it boils down to "who watches the watchers?".
Yes, the CCR can probably get away with what they’ve done, but when we’ve finished processing this there’s good chances that the decision will be proven to have been made outside of the court’s strict mandate.
And even if they have a good excuse, the optics are very bad and potentially fatal for whatever is left of the trust in Romanian institutions.
Who will decide that the court has acted outside its own mandate? They are the only authority on constitutional matters. If you're referring to "the people" - based on what I've seen there's no street protesting going on over this.
> And even if they have a good excuse, the optics are very bad and potentially fatal for whatever is left of the trust in Romanian institutions.
What I stated was not fa tally wrong, you are misinterpreting the law or my assertions. I have stated, and showed several times in different comments, that the law did not have an explicit power granted anywhere in the law to annul the entire electoral process.
While the CCR is indeed preeminent in its interpretation of the law, it's every citizen's right to evaluate the law on their own and decide with their own mind if the courts are fair in their interpretations of the law. If the CCR came tomorrow and said that X will be the next president for the next five years because they are the best suited to do Y, I wouldn't have to accept their view as a fair reading of the law/Constitution. It's not like I'm claiming I have some right to block the Court's decision, I'm just saying that by my own mind they are in blatant disregard of the legal framework.
Regarding Article 52, paragraph one, there is no proof of fraud. In fact, if I’m not mistaken a vote recount was done and the court accepted the results as valid.
There is an allegation of foreign influence which has not been proven in a court of law.
IMO the court has acted beyond its mandate and only made things worse.
By the way, where is the report from SRI? The internet is full of newspapers which quote it, but don’t link to the original document. From those articles, there is no smoking gun against the candidate themselves. Just some guy which paid people on Tiktok, with no statement on that guy’s connection to the candidate.
We're getting in murky waters about legally debating what constitutes as "proof" to a court that is the sole authority on the constitution and whether they need something to be proven in a different court to act. The vote recount you mention was a different court decision, not connected to this one, which stemmed from a new complaint.
While there is no smoking gun against the candidate, the declassified documents show that intelligence agencies believe a foreign state actor to have been involved in the candidate's TikTok campaign.
How is annulling an election any different from their power to invalidate results?
The power cited to ensure election procedure doesn't seem vague. It appears to be quite broad:
> The Constitutional Court shall have the following powers: ... (f) to guard the observance of the procedure for the election of the President of Romania and to confirm the ballot returns;
For the ballot returns, there is a whole law that details how that process works, what documents are to be sent to the court, who and how and when can contest the results, what happens if the results are annulled and so on. The court can't make up its own rules, there is a whole legislative cadre that specifies their powers, responsibilities, and their interaction with other institutions.
They trampled over all of these with this new decision: they didn't observe any time limits (they gave this decision out of the blue, while the voting for the second round had already started; could they have decided this same annulment two months from now? Nothing in this decision or motivation says they couldn't). They met to decide on this matter with no request from everyone, they brought this matter before themselves by their own power, which no court has the power to. They had no legal framework to demand this from any other institution.
Worse of all, they have specified no limits to this broad power they have found they have, nor any legal standards for what type of allegations are grave enough to objectively determine this annulment. What if next time a candidate that won 1% of the vote had a suspicious campaign, will that lead to annulment? What is the standard of evidence to be evaluated for this decision? The documents they based this decision on wouldn't even have constituted admissible evidence in a court of law, they are hearsay by institutions which aren't even making them under pain of perjury.
And related to that article of the Constitution, there is no reason to interpret it as a broad, decisional power. It is clearly meant to guide law makers to create specific laws for determining the CCR's specific role in the electoral process. There are many similar articles in the constitution about other institutions that don't grant them any direct powers in this way. For example, article 80, title 2 says:
> (2) The President of Romania shall guard the observance of the Constitution and the proper functioning of the public authorities. To this effect, he shall act as a mediator between the Powers in the State, as well as between the State and society.
If the President took the same approach as the court, it stands to reason that he could go into any public authority in Romania and block their decisions based on finding that they are not properly observing the Constitution, right?
> If the President took the same approach as the court, it stands to reason that he could go into any public authority in Romania and block their decisions based on finding that they are not properly observing the Constitution, right?
No. Article 80 you're quoting does not grant the President power. Instead it describes the role of President.
This is rather unlike Article 146 that explicitly grants the Constitutional Court power or the other articles that explicitly grant the President power.
