| Romania targets Dobre’s role in referendum probe |
BUCHAREST Romanian prosecutors said on Friday they had asked parliament to agree to a probe into a former junior minister suspected of abuses in organising a referendum to impeach President Traian Basescu.
The move is yet another twist in a bitter, months-long saga that has tarnished the political scene in the former communist country.
Victor-Paul Dobre, who resigned on Monday along with interior minister Ioan Rus, is suspected of “deliberately misusing his office to pervert the functioning of institutions” which ran the referendum, prosecutors said.
At the heart of the spat is the July 29 referendum on whether Basescu should be booted out in line with a parliamentary vote. Though 87 per cent of voters said he should be, only 46.24 per cent of the electorate showed up to the polls, below the 50 per cent threshold for results to be valid.
Dobre is alleged to have asked an aide to write a note to the constitutional court, which he signed, saying his ministry could not guarantee the accuracy of the electoral rolls. The note caused confusion, as the interior ministry had earlier certified that the rolls were up to date, a key issue in declaring whether the failed referendum was valid.
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that another junior interior minister, Ioan Nicolae Cabulea, was under investigation for also telling the head of the register office to write the letter to the court. The letter prompted the court to delay to August 31 a ruling on the validity of the vote.
Meanwhile, the press has published what it says are transcripts of conversations between Dobre and Rus referring to USL pressure to trim the lists by 1.6 million people to favour validation of the poll.
Rus, who is quoted as refusing to make any alterations, resigned citing “unacceptable” pressure from politicians, including both suspended centre-right president Basescu and interim president Crin Antonescu of the centre-left.
“One of them told me to make the voters’ lists longer, the other wanted me to make them shorter,” he told Mediafax news agency.
Basescu had once been one of the country’s most popular politicians, but his job-approval ratings plummeted amid austerity cuts in 2010. The referendum was called in line with the constitution after parliament, where Prime Minister Victor Ponta’s centre-left coalition holds a majority, voted to impeach Basescu amid a political feud.
Since the row broke over the electoral rolls, Ponta’s governing Social Liberal Union (USL) has announced a “mini-census” will take place until the end of August.
In a memo to mayors and local authorities, the government asked officials to make sure dead people had been taken off lists. Other moves provoked strong reactions, including the possible purge of citizens whose identity cards had expired or who work overseas but maintain a home in Romanian. Alina Mungiu Pippidi of the Romanian Academic Society condemned the government’s attempt to tweak voter lists.
Agence France-Presse
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