No, you prosecute and send for trial the people that committed the illegal acts. If that means deposing the acting president, the you do that - but you do it when you have the proof and a legitimate trial. Not the Constitutional Court inventing a power for itself that it doesn't have, based on vague wording in the Constitution (specifically, they based this decision on an article of the Romanian Constitution that says that "[the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed, and confirms the results of the vote", with no further stipulations - article 146, paragraph f).
> Not the Constitutional Court inventing a power for itself that it doesn't have, based on vague wording in the Constitution (specifically, they based this decision on an article of the Romanian Constitution that says that "[the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed, and confirms the results of the vote", with no further stipulations - article 146, paragraph f).
What powers do you believe this grants, that would make logical sense in a situation like this?
None essentially. It just enables other specific laws that organize the functioning of the court in this area, and perhaps it enables the court to settle questions on whether electoral processes have been followed.
For example, there is a specific law that specifies how the CCR can verify the results of the election (that certain institutions send the vote counts to it, in some specific format, within X days etc). The same law also specified what happens if the CCR finds that the vote counts are suspect - who can raise such concerns, within what dates, and most importantly, what happens next, when the elections are re-done and by whose decisions. This is how the court is supposed to function.
In contrast, the court has trampled on its own jurisprudence, where it only yesterday night (local time) declared that it can't hear any new claims about the elections until the end of the next round.
> None essentially. It just enables other specific laws that organize the functioning of the court in this area
> [the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed
I have no context on this beyond what you're writing, so I'm taking everything you're saying at face value. But even when I do that... don't you feel "the legislature shall have the power to organize the functioning of the court regarding elections" is a manifestly different sentence from "the court ensures that the procedures for the election of the Romanian President are followed, and confirms the results of the vote"?
Our constitution [0] uses this verbiage a lot. For example, here is what it says about the President:
> (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.
The official English wording of the role of the court is:
> f) to guard the observance of the procedure for the election of the President of Romania and to confirm the ballot returns;
Note the similarity of the verbiage. I don't think the first one can be read to mean that the president can interfere with any authority they think might not properly be respecting the Constitution. I don't believe this is the intended reading, and definitely no one recognizes such a power for the President of Romania. So, I don't think the equivalent verbiage in the article on the power of the CCR should be read to give them the power to decide anything they want on the electoral process.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, just a citizen of this country. But to me it doesn't seem proper that a Court can devise procedures that are not specified in any law.
My belief is that no one has the right, or the legal and constitutional power, to annul the elections based on campaign influence. The law only specifies a right to annul one election (a specific day, not the whole process as was done here), and then only if the voting process itself is corrupted (miscounting votes, stopping people from voting, physically coercing people to vote, etc).
The regular court system can pursue individuals who conspired with Russia (including, likely, Călin Georgescu himself!), prosecute and try them for treason.
Intelligence services and electoral authorities have the power to stop the interference while it is in progress, by forcing people and sites to take it down, banning entire domains if they don't comply, arresting people who are coordinating with foreign nationals, etc.
The election will be done again, and people can vote their favorite person again, this time with the full knowledge of who is behind them.
It sucks that authorities did nothing before the elections, but I suspect that disqualifying the fascist guy because of fraud and interference would have produced the exact same complains from his fans and the Ruzzian trolls.
Right? You would claim that he should be allowed to continue until the courts will decide it was fraud, and until the appeals are done and until the complains to the EU court are also complete.
