Could President Basescu Be Suspended?

Head of the Senate Calin Popescu Tariceanu has initiated impeachment procedures against the Romanian president.

This would be the 3rd attempt to remove the president from power in his ten years in office.

Romania’s first two post-communist presidents, Ion Iliescu and Emil Constantinescu, who were in power for a total of 15 years, have never been impeached as a preliminary step towards dismissal by referendum.

However, the present head of state, Traian Basescu, who is ending this year his 10-year term, risks a third round of impeachment procedures.

In 2007 he was accused of violating the Constitution. At that time he enjoyed widespread popularity, and was saved by a majority of voters.

Five years later, in 2012, when he was once again impeached, being accused of involvement in the government’s activity and the Liberal Democratic Party’s internal affairs, a great part of the same electorate opted for the dismissal of the president, who managed to avoid it only by a technicality in the Supreme Court, which invalidated the referendum for a lack of quorum.

Now the head of Senate Calin Popescu Tariceanu, former head of the Liberal Party and former PM during Basescu’s first term, has once again initiated impeachment procedures against the president.

He spoke about the reasons for this: “The president’s attitude, which oversteps the bounds of constitutionality, as he repeatedly supported a political party in an election campaign, when the president of the country is clearly bound by neutrality and impartiality.”

Tariceanu, who comes in second in the hierarchy of the Romanian state, believes that the president also violated the Constitution by getting involved in the procedure of appointing Romania’s representative to the new European Commission, and that he generally ‘promoted institutional relations in uncivilized forms with the participants in political life.

Tariceanu has proposed a calendar of the impeachment.

On September 23, Parliament is supposed to issue its final vote on the procedure, while on 2 November, during the first round of presidential elections, the referendum on the dismissal would be held.

At least a third of MPs must endorse impeachment in order to reach the floor of the legislative assembly.