PLUS's Ciolos: Gov't needs to draft a law on the extension of local elected officials' terms

The Government needs to start drafting a law on the extension of the local elected officials' term in office "for at least three more months, which is amount of time needed for the organisation of the elections", PLUS (Liberty, Unity, Solidarity Party) leader Dacian Ciolos said in a post on Facebook, on Wednesday.

"Dear members of the Government, dear MPs, today you must start drafting a law on the extension of the local elected officials' terms in office for at least three more months, which is the amount of time needed for the organisation of the elections. Otherwise, in the coming days, more and more localities and counties will remains without leadership," said Ciolos.

He said it was the second time in "this crisis" that Romania had been "completely exposed".

"The first time we were left without the necessary legislative framework for the state of emergency, and now we are left without a functional administrative apparatus at the local level. The causes are deeply political. On the one hand we have PNL (the National Liberal Party), which fails to manage legislative processes, and on the other hand we have PSD (Social Democratic Party), which uses institutions to achieve their own political purposes, both parties behaving irresponsibly in terms of the interests of the citizens and democratic processes. The Government has adopted an ordinance to extend the mandates of the local elected officials and the Parliament validated it according to the law, but both the ordinance and the validations have been rejected today by the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR)," said Ciolos.

He pointed out that once the term in office of the local elected officials ends, it can not be resumed or extended.

The normative acts that refer to the extension of the local elected officials' terms in office, but also to the factors designated to establish the date of the elections are contrary to the Constitution, the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) decided on Wednesday, according to some sources.

In the case of one of the two challenges was to be admitted, it was established that the extension of the terms in office of the local public administration authorities will be done by the Parliament, not through an emergency ordinance.

For the second challenge, CCR decided that there is a legislative parallelism that the Constitution does not agree with, the same sources specified.

On May 13, the plenum of the Chamber of Deputies adopted the emergency ordinance on the extension of the local elected officials' terms in office corresponding to the period 2016-2020, with modifications.