In his position as acting president, Ilie Bolojan must contact the top American administration and explain the reasons why the presidential election was canceled and also assure there is no doubt that Romania will hold democratic elections, ruling coalition presidential candidate Crin Antonescu said.
"If President Iohannis didn't do it, Ilie Bolojan is bound to. Mr. J.D. Vance's intervention was correct. President Klaus Iohannis should have directly engaged in clarifying the reasons behind the Constitutional Court's decision. It wasn't possible. Now, Ilie Bolojan, as acting president, must contact the top American administration and explain why the election was canceled and that there is no doubt that Romania's next presidential ballot will be democratic," the politician wrote on Facebook on Saturday, said Agerpres.
Regarding the democracy watchdogs, Crin Antonescu believes that the American VP is right: "Too little has been done to prevent such an attack."
"The idea that the Romanian authorities must provide complete explanations got reinforced by Washington. Mind you, we are not required to provide them because J.D. Vance asked for this, but for the sake of the Romanian public opinion. We must strengthen our democracy and boost our immunity against election interference, not because the world's leaders demand it, but for ourselves," Antonescu emphasized.
In remarks delivered at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance accused the U.S.'s European allies of censoring free speech and undermining democratic values, criticizing in this regard the position of a former European commissioner who welcomed the decision to cancel the presidential election in Romania.
"The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America," said J.D. Vance. "I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. (...) These cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. (...) When we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. (...) We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them," the U.S. Vice President said.
The decision to cancel Romania's presidential election was made "on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors", the U.S. second-in-command noted, remarking also that "if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with."
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