ALDE's Tariceanu: I will unconditionally support coalition decision to start procedure to suspend President

National leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), minor at rule, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu said on Sunday evening that he will unconditionally support a decision of the ruling coalition to start the suspension from office of President Klaus Iohannis, adding that he will not attend a meeting Monday because he has scheduled long ago to go on a vacation abroad.

He said he met with national leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), major at rule, Liviu Dragnea on Friday and had a political discussion about the next week's actions.

He said that he would not tolerate individual rights and freedoms of the citizens being violated, or any exemption from the rule of law, so if a suspension decision is to be taken, he will support it unconditionally.

"The rulings of the Constitutional Court are binding. If one of the major state institutions - in this case the President - does not respect the court's rulings, then anybody from top to bottom, to the last citizen has the right to ask whether he or she should respect any of the court's rulings. It only makes a very serious situation of what many people want to say - the functioning of the rule of law in Romania. On the other hand, it is true - and I have expressed myself more than once in this respect, the Constitution does not provide other intermediary tools to oblige the president to do certain things that he legally has to accomplish; we do not have the extreme measure of suspension, and I said that this measure has to be very well weighed because it can also solve some of the problems we are dealing with but it can create many other problems. (...) What I can tell you is that I will unconditionally support any decision by the coalition to initiate the suspension procedure, given that ALDE is one of the two pillars on which the ruling coalition is created; as you know, ALDE and I personally had the courage to talk about justice abuse and excesses, a shadowy state, since 2014 when few people would dare do so; we started this approach that many considered to be very risky and as far as I am concerned, these risks even materialised in the investigation and the court trial opened on me. I will never tolerate individual rights and freedoms of the citizens being violated, derogations from the rule of law being made, and consequently, if such a decision is deemed to be taken, we will go ahead," Tariceanu explained.

He also said that the PSD-ALDE coalition will take all necessary steps to ensure that the parliamentary majority is secured if the decision to suspend the head of state is made.